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Klamath Tribes and Fishers Say Dams Must Go!
This article from the Eureka Times-Standard is about the hearing calling for the removal of dams on the Klamath River on Tuesday.
DAM OPERATIONS / KLAMATH RIVER BASIN
Klamath people tell feds dams must go
Eureka Times-Standard - 6/23/04
By John Driscoll, staff writer
The time is now to consider bringing down dams on the Klamath River and breath life back into its fishery, dozens of speakers told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Tuesday.
More than 200 people packed a large hotel conference room, all adamant that Portland, Ore.,-based PacifiCorp properly weigh its effects on the river. Most at the public hearing insisted the small amount of electricity produced by the facilities doesn't match the benefits restored salmon fisheries would have.
"This is wrong, and this is a chance to right that wrong," said Yurok Tribal Chairman Howard McConnell.
PacifiCorp, a division of Scottish Power, is seeking a 50-year license for Iron Gate, Copco I and Copco II, J.C. Boyle, Keno and Link River dams. All told, the dams generate 150 megawatts of electricity -- enough to supply 70,000 homes.
McConnell pointed out that despite the dams, many on the Yurok Reservation are without power. He said PacifiCorp has failed to do the most basic studies on the dams' impacts to the river and its people.
The license for the dams expires in 2006.
FERC will determine the range of issues PacifiCorp must analyze. The agency said it hopes to have a draft environmental impact statement done in July 2005.
The lowermost dam, Iron Gate, stops salmon from reaching historic spawning grounds in the upper river. Despite protest from American Indian tribes and fishermen, PacifiCorp has opted not to consider building fish ladders, opting only to look at trucking fish around the dams.
The company has also resisted the idea of removing any of the dams, though lower river advocates, the National Research Council, and the California Energy Commission, among other groups, have encouraged such an evaluation.
Nancy Stark, aid to California Assemblywoman Patty Berg, D-Eureka, read a statement asking FERC to demand an analysis of decommissioning all the dams.
PacifiCorp has proposed plans to improve whitewater rafting, fishing and recreation at its facilities, and said it's open to exploring oxygenating water in the often fetid Iron Gate Reservoir.
Yurok elder Richard Myers told the commission staff that the fish in the Klamath can't afford another 50 years of dams. The past few years, which have seen major die-offs of both adult and juvenile fish, have been troubling, he said.
"We need to pray and make these men change their minds," Myers said, urging PacifiCorp to remove its dams.
A number of speakers talked about the devastating impacts the dams and other problems on the Klamath have had on North Coast communities. The commercial salmon fishery in Northern California and Southern Oregon is all but closed in an effort to protect the Klamath's ailing stocks.
Eureka commercial fisher Marge Salo said FERC shouldn't need an 80-pound document to "do the right thing."
Salo said coastal communities are dying, while her boat is tied up.
"I resent it," she said. "I really do."
By deadline, dozens more still had not addressed the commission staff.
Klamath people tell feds dams must go
Eureka Times-Standard - 6/23/04
By John Driscoll, staff writer
The time is now to consider bringing down dams on the Klamath River and breath life back into its fishery, dozens of speakers told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Tuesday.
More than 200 people packed a large hotel conference room, all adamant that Portland, Ore.,-based PacifiCorp properly weigh its effects on the river. Most at the public hearing insisted the small amount of electricity produced by the facilities doesn't match the benefits restored salmon fisheries would have.
"This is wrong, and this is a chance to right that wrong," said Yurok Tribal Chairman Howard McConnell.
PacifiCorp, a division of Scottish Power, is seeking a 50-year license for Iron Gate, Copco I and Copco II, J.C. Boyle, Keno and Link River dams. All told, the dams generate 150 megawatts of electricity -- enough to supply 70,000 homes.
McConnell pointed out that despite the dams, many on the Yurok Reservation are without power. He said PacifiCorp has failed to do the most basic studies on the dams' impacts to the river and its people.
The license for the dams expires in 2006.
FERC will determine the range of issues PacifiCorp must analyze. The agency said it hopes to have a draft environmental impact statement done in July 2005.
The lowermost dam, Iron Gate, stops salmon from reaching historic spawning grounds in the upper river. Despite protest from American Indian tribes and fishermen, PacifiCorp has opted not to consider building fish ladders, opting only to look at trucking fish around the dams.
The company has also resisted the idea of removing any of the dams, though lower river advocates, the National Research Council, and the California Energy Commission, among other groups, have encouraged such an evaluation.
Nancy Stark, aid to California Assemblywoman Patty Berg, D-Eureka, read a statement asking FERC to demand an analysis of decommissioning all the dams.
PacifiCorp has proposed plans to improve whitewater rafting, fishing and recreation at its facilities, and said it's open to exploring oxygenating water in the often fetid Iron Gate Reservoir.
Yurok elder Richard Myers told the commission staff that the fish in the Klamath can't afford another 50 years of dams. The past few years, which have seen major die-offs of both adult and juvenile fish, have been troubling, he said.
"We need to pray and make these men change their minds," Myers said, urging PacifiCorp to remove its dams.
A number of speakers talked about the devastating impacts the dams and other problems on the Klamath have had on North Coast communities. The commercial salmon fishery in Northern California and Southern Oregon is all but closed in an effort to protect the Klamath's ailing stocks.
Eureka commercial fisher Marge Salo said FERC shouldn't need an 80-pound document to "do the right thing."
Salo said coastal communities are dying, while her boat is tied up.
"I resent it," she said. "I really do."
By deadline, dozens more still had not addressed the commission staff.
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dams also block organic and mineral nutrients from traveling down the river into the estuary, where the river meets the ocean..
this can slow the growth of plankton and other life forms as they are depending on river sediment silt for mineral uptake..
Eelgrass, catails and other plant species need the minerals trapped behind the dams..
Comparing the Klamath to Rio Colorado, where minerals are removed from behind the dams (like Hoover), seperated by element/compound, and some possibly used to build military equipment to drop on Iraqi children..
dams are another form of mining, similar to Black Mesa..
proof is in the pudding..
this can slow the growth of plankton and other life forms as they are depending on river sediment silt for mineral uptake..
Eelgrass, catails and other plant species need the minerals trapped behind the dams..
Comparing the Klamath to Rio Colorado, where minerals are removed from behind the dams (like Hoover), seperated by element/compound, and some possibly used to build military equipment to drop on Iraqi children..
dams are another form of mining, similar to Black Mesa..
proof is in the pudding..
The Bureau of Reclamation (BuRec) will be celebrating its centennial on June 17, at Hoover Dam, which straddles the Arizona/Nevada border southeast of the glittering casinos, opulent swimming pools, fountains and green grass links of Las Vegas.
On that day, 100 years ago, Congress passed the Newlands Reclamation Act, the legal foundation for BuRec’s gigantic empire of river destruction now totaling more than 600 dams across 17 western states.
BuRec’s festivities will commence with closing Highway 93 across the dam for eight hours beginning at 3:00 p.m. Buses will depart Las Vegas with 2,400 private party goers. Gale Norton, Dick Cheney (invited) and other Bush administration planet destroyers will accompany villains from water, power, agribusiness and real estate who helped put them in office. The exclusively catered dinner for the river-mangling elite will occur in the cool and humming bowels of the dam’s power plant. After dinner, official speeches will be heard on the transformer decks outside, with listeners serenaded by the sweet lullaby of crackling high-voltage wires. Later, aerial killers from the Air Force Thunderbird Squadron will perform, and finally as the roiling sun settles below the desert horizon, a laser light and fireworks display will pollute the night skies above Black Canyon in patriotic fashion.
At noon on June 17, Living Rivers and representatives of a number of other groups will be arriving at Hoover Dam to convey a different message—down with BuRec and down with dams. The theme will be a wake to mourn the submergence of pristine river canyons, the de-watering of thousands of miles of critical riverine habitat and the loss of the cultural heritage of a number of indigenous tribes.
From the Columbia to the Rio Grande, BuRec has been wasting taxpayer money by subsidizing low-value crop production for cattle feed. Nearly half of the water taken from western rivers is used to grow alfalfa, the most water-consuming and least revenue-generating crop. Merely switching to less water intensive crops, or better yet the elimination of large-scale irrigation altogether, would free up huge amounts of water to restore the West’s dying river habitat.
A tough battle, however, as BuRec is under the control of irrigation districts which have no interest in altering the arrangement that brings their members cheap water and huge bank accounts. The irony of this is that the 1902 Reclamation Act was designed to support the creation of small family farms of not more than 320 acres. BuRec, however, has allowed a host of loopholes to enable large-scale agribusiness to get ahold of the land and water such that many farms now exceed 15,000 acres.
The Reclamation Act required federal irrigation projects to pay for themselves, both in terms of total repayment costs for construction and all costs associated with regular delivery of the water. This has never occurred. On average, only 30 percent of the costs are presently recovered. Today, BuRec requires $750 million annually from taxpayers to help keep these farms—and the agency—in business.
Although spiraling construction costs, growing environmental concerns and dwindling numbers of dam sites, has dramatically reduced BuRec’s dam building, it has not come to an end. BuRec has plans underway to construct a dam and water diversion project on the Animas River near Durango, Colorado. Not only would this inundate ancient burial grounds and cost federal taxpayers another couple hundred million dollars, it would contribute to the de-watering of the San Juan River downstream—critical habitat for endangered fish, the razorback sucker and Colorado pikeminnow.
Lack of instream flows is both making national headlines and bringing increased criticism on BuRec for de-watering rivers—from the San Juan to the Rio Grande to the Klamath. But this has so far been marginalized by BuRec’s entering into the usual partnership arrangements with environmental groups to study the problem and conduct experiments until such time as the habitat is too far gone to recover.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the world-renowned Grand Canyon, just upstream of Hoover Dam, where the big party is planned. Twenty percent of the Grand Canyon was inundated by Hoover Dam, but of key concern now is how the remaining 80 percent of the canyon’s river corridor is dying a slow death as a result of Glen Canyon, 370 miles upstream of Hoover. Sandwiched between these two dams, the Grand Canyon’s mighty Colorado River corridor has been transformed into the Grand Ditch.
The temperature of water released into the river from Glen Canyon Dam is too cold for the native fish to spawn. The sediment and nutrients that used to feed the Grand Canyon’s ecosystem have for 40 years been trapped behind Glen Canyon Dam. The critical natural flow conditions necessary to properly distribute the sediment load are non-existent. As a result, the canyon’s entire food web has been dramatically altered. For example, three of eight native fish species are gone and two more are on their way. The beaches, so revered by the canyon’s river runners, are vanishing as well and all at the hands of BuRec.
But there is more to contemplate than just BuRec’s ecosystem destruction that is inherent in its 100-year legacy of dam building and consumptive water conveyance systems that pump water uphill. Dams can and do fail for such reasons as poor design, old age, catastrophic natural events and the accumulation of impacted sediment. On June 5, 1976, Teton Dam in Idaho failed soon after its initial filling. The wake of this dam failure killed 11 people and caused $400 million dollars worth of damage to the communities downstream (see EF!J June-July 2001). In 1983, Glen Canyon Dam’s spillways nearly failed during a normal 25-year flood cycle. Other design flaws were also realized in the 1980s that include the Fontenelle Dam on the Green River in Wyoming and Navajo Dam in New Mexico on the San Juan River. Questions about the lack of confidence in BuRec’s dam designs draw logical conclusions when considering the effects of a soon-to-appear 100-year flood cycle. Living Rivers is currently in a Freedom of Information Act battle to acquire the inundation maps BuRec possesses that would detail the extent of damages caused by a failure at Glen Canyon Dam. The seriousness of a potential dam failure is obviously such a concern to BuRec that it won’t let the information out.
Should Glen Canyon Dam fail, a 500-foot wall of water will go racing through Grand Canyon toward Hoover Dam. Even if Hoover survives, a 75-foot-high wall will pass over its crest and destroy the communities downstream; not to forget the catastrophic cost to the downstream environment and the loss of human life. In the aftermath, the Colorado River plumbing system will be completely destroyed. How is BuRec going to explain their unwillingness to share such information with the 25 million people that will be directly affected?
The June 17 counter-rally at Hoover Dam will be the conclusion of a five-day roadshow designed to highlight the damage BuRec has caused, especially to the Grand Canyon. Beginning on the banks of the relatively free-flowing Colorado River downstream of Moab, Utah, a kick-off rally and music festival will provide background fun as a dump truck will be filled with sediment for transport to the Grand Canyon and beyond. Known as the “Sediment-al Journey” the caravan will travel to events at: “Lake” Powell reservoir and Glen Canyon Dam with Navajo activists; Lee’s Ferry, with wilderness advocates for the No-Fee Demo day of action; and the amphitheater near the South Rim at Grand Canyon National Park for a major rally with a host of long-time river activists, Native Americans and former National Park Service personnel. According to Dave Haskell, former science director for Grand Canyon National Park, lack of sediment is the number one problem that needs to be dealt with if we are going to save the canyon. This of course further amplifies the need to get rid of Glen Canyon Dam—just one of many dams that need to go—a key message for the final event at Hoover Dam.
John Weisheit is the conservation director of Living Rivers and lives in the Colorado River town of Moab, Utah. He is a longtime Colorado River boatman who has seen the river’s devastation above and below Glen Canyon Dam.
For more information, contact Living Rivers, (435) 259-1063; http://www.livingrivers.org.
On that day, 100 years ago, Congress passed the Newlands Reclamation Act, the legal foundation for BuRec’s gigantic empire of river destruction now totaling more than 600 dams across 17 western states.
BuRec’s festivities will commence with closing Highway 93 across the dam for eight hours beginning at 3:00 p.m. Buses will depart Las Vegas with 2,400 private party goers. Gale Norton, Dick Cheney (invited) and other Bush administration planet destroyers will accompany villains from water, power, agribusiness and real estate who helped put them in office. The exclusively catered dinner for the river-mangling elite will occur in the cool and humming bowels of the dam’s power plant. After dinner, official speeches will be heard on the transformer decks outside, with listeners serenaded by the sweet lullaby of crackling high-voltage wires. Later, aerial killers from the Air Force Thunderbird Squadron will perform, and finally as the roiling sun settles below the desert horizon, a laser light and fireworks display will pollute the night skies above Black Canyon in patriotic fashion.
At noon on June 17, Living Rivers and representatives of a number of other groups will be arriving at Hoover Dam to convey a different message—down with BuRec and down with dams. The theme will be a wake to mourn the submergence of pristine river canyons, the de-watering of thousands of miles of critical riverine habitat and the loss of the cultural heritage of a number of indigenous tribes.
From the Columbia to the Rio Grande, BuRec has been wasting taxpayer money by subsidizing low-value crop production for cattle feed. Nearly half of the water taken from western rivers is used to grow alfalfa, the most water-consuming and least revenue-generating crop. Merely switching to less water intensive crops, or better yet the elimination of large-scale irrigation altogether, would free up huge amounts of water to restore the West’s dying river habitat.
A tough battle, however, as BuRec is under the control of irrigation districts which have no interest in altering the arrangement that brings their members cheap water and huge bank accounts. The irony of this is that the 1902 Reclamation Act was designed to support the creation of small family farms of not more than 320 acres. BuRec, however, has allowed a host of loopholes to enable large-scale agribusiness to get ahold of the land and water such that many farms now exceed 15,000 acres.
The Reclamation Act required federal irrigation projects to pay for themselves, both in terms of total repayment costs for construction and all costs associated with regular delivery of the water. This has never occurred. On average, only 30 percent of the costs are presently recovered. Today, BuRec requires $750 million annually from taxpayers to help keep these farms—and the agency—in business.
Although spiraling construction costs, growing environmental concerns and dwindling numbers of dam sites, has dramatically reduced BuRec’s dam building, it has not come to an end. BuRec has plans underway to construct a dam and water diversion project on the Animas River near Durango, Colorado. Not only would this inundate ancient burial grounds and cost federal taxpayers another couple hundred million dollars, it would contribute to the de-watering of the San Juan River downstream—critical habitat for endangered fish, the razorback sucker and Colorado pikeminnow.
Lack of instream flows is both making national headlines and bringing increased criticism on BuRec for de-watering rivers—from the San Juan to the Rio Grande to the Klamath. But this has so far been marginalized by BuRec’s entering into the usual partnership arrangements with environmental groups to study the problem and conduct experiments until such time as the habitat is too far gone to recover.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the world-renowned Grand Canyon, just upstream of Hoover Dam, where the big party is planned. Twenty percent of the Grand Canyon was inundated by Hoover Dam, but of key concern now is how the remaining 80 percent of the canyon’s river corridor is dying a slow death as a result of Glen Canyon, 370 miles upstream of Hoover. Sandwiched between these two dams, the Grand Canyon’s mighty Colorado River corridor has been transformed into the Grand Ditch.
The temperature of water released into the river from Glen Canyon Dam is too cold for the native fish to spawn. The sediment and nutrients that used to feed the Grand Canyon’s ecosystem have for 40 years been trapped behind Glen Canyon Dam. The critical natural flow conditions necessary to properly distribute the sediment load are non-existent. As a result, the canyon’s entire food web has been dramatically altered. For example, three of eight native fish species are gone and two more are on their way. The beaches, so revered by the canyon’s river runners, are vanishing as well and all at the hands of BuRec.
But there is more to contemplate than just BuRec’s ecosystem destruction that is inherent in its 100-year legacy of dam building and consumptive water conveyance systems that pump water uphill. Dams can and do fail for such reasons as poor design, old age, catastrophic natural events and the accumulation of impacted sediment. On June 5, 1976, Teton Dam in Idaho failed soon after its initial filling. The wake of this dam failure killed 11 people and caused $400 million dollars worth of damage to the communities downstream (see EF!J June-July 2001). In 1983, Glen Canyon Dam’s spillways nearly failed during a normal 25-year flood cycle. Other design flaws were also realized in the 1980s that include the Fontenelle Dam on the Green River in Wyoming and Navajo Dam in New Mexico on the San Juan River. Questions about the lack of confidence in BuRec’s dam designs draw logical conclusions when considering the effects of a soon-to-appear 100-year flood cycle. Living Rivers is currently in a Freedom of Information Act battle to acquire the inundation maps BuRec possesses that would detail the extent of damages caused by a failure at Glen Canyon Dam. The seriousness of a potential dam failure is obviously such a concern to BuRec that it won’t let the information out.
Should Glen Canyon Dam fail, a 500-foot wall of water will go racing through Grand Canyon toward Hoover Dam. Even if Hoover survives, a 75-foot-high wall will pass over its crest and destroy the communities downstream; not to forget the catastrophic cost to the downstream environment and the loss of human life. In the aftermath, the Colorado River plumbing system will be completely destroyed. How is BuRec going to explain their unwillingness to share such information with the 25 million people that will be directly affected?
The June 17 counter-rally at Hoover Dam will be the conclusion of a five-day roadshow designed to highlight the damage BuRec has caused, especially to the Grand Canyon. Beginning on the banks of the relatively free-flowing Colorado River downstream of Moab, Utah, a kick-off rally and music festival will provide background fun as a dump truck will be filled with sediment for transport to the Grand Canyon and beyond. Known as the “Sediment-al Journey” the caravan will travel to events at: “Lake” Powell reservoir and Glen Canyon Dam with Navajo activists; Lee’s Ferry, with wilderness advocates for the No-Fee Demo day of action; and the amphitheater near the South Rim at Grand Canyon National Park for a major rally with a host of long-time river activists, Native Americans and former National Park Service personnel. According to Dave Haskell, former science director for Grand Canyon National Park, lack of sediment is the number one problem that needs to be dealt with if we are going to save the canyon. This of course further amplifies the need to get rid of Glen Canyon Dam—just one of many dams that need to go—a key message for the final event at Hoover Dam.
John Weisheit is the conservation director of Living Rivers and lives in the Colorado River town of Moab, Utah. He is a longtime Colorado River boatman who has seen the river’s devastation above and below Glen Canyon Dam.
For more information, contact Living Rivers, (435) 259-1063; http://www.livingrivers.org.
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http://www.earthfirstjournal.org/efj/featu...
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