The largest dam removal project in U.S. history was completed Wednesday, marking a major victory for tribes in the region who have fought for decades to free hundreds of miles of the Klamath River near the California-Oregon border.
Through protests, testimonies and lawsuits, local tribes demonstrated the environmental devastation caused by the four towering hydroelectric dams, especially for salmon, which are culturally and spiritually important to tribes in the region. The dams cut salmon off from their historic habitat and caused them to die in alarming numbers due to poor water quality.
Without the work of the tribes “to point out the damage these dams were doing, not only to the environment, but also to the social and cultural fabric of these tribal nations, there would be no dam removal,” says Mark Bransom, CEO of the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, the nonprofit created to oversee the project.
Energy company PacifiCorp built the dams to generate electricity between 1918 and 1962. But the structures stopped the natural flow of the waterway once known as the third-largest salmon-producing river on the West Coast. They disrupted the life cycle of the region’s salmon, which spends most of its life in the Pacific Ocean but returns to the cold mountain streams to lay eggs.
At the same time, at full capacity, the dams produced only a fraction of PacifiCorp’s energy – enough to power about 70,000 homes. According to Klamath River Renewal Corporation, they also did not provide irrigation, drinking water or flood control.
Since breaking the damssalmon regained access to their habitat, water temperatures dropped and quality improved, said Michael Belchik, senior water policy analyst for the Yurok Tribe.
But tribal advocates and activists consider their work far from complete; some are already focusing their efforts on revegetation and others. restoration work on the Klamath River and surrounding land.
Here’s a look at just a few of the many tribal members at the center of this dam removal fight:
When Karuk Tribe member Molli Myers took her first big step in the fight for Klamath Dam removal, she was six months pregnant, had a toddler in tow and was abroad for the first time. It was 2004 and she had organized a group of about 25 tribe members to fly to Scotland for the annual general meeting of Scottish Power, then the parent company of PacifiCorp.
They protested outside for hours with signs, sang and played drums. They cooked fish on Calton Hill over a whiskey barrel fire and handed it out to locals while explaining why they were there.
“I really felt an urgency because I was having babies,” says Myers, who was born and raised in the middle of Klamath in a traditional fishing family. “And so I internalized the responsibility of taking care of their future.”
The first reason for her to take action came two years earlier, when she saw some of the tens of thousands of salmon in the river dying due to a bacterial outbreak caused by low water and high temperatures.
“Looking back on it now, I wonder where we would be if that hadn’t happened,” says Myers, 41. “Looking back on it now, I can say, ‘Was this our creator’s call to action ?’”
She spent the next two decades protesting and flooding state and federal meetings with tribal testimony, including waiting with other tribal members at the doors of a 4 a.m. Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting in 2007 to denounce Warren Buffett. asking what he was going to do about the dams. . At the time, PacifiCorp was part of Buffett’s conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
Today, those same children with her in Scotland are ages 21 and 19, and now that the dams are gone, Myers said she sees the hope she and her other three children have about the future.
“They can do what is necessary because they have seen it happen and lived it, so now there is no impossible for them,” she said.
For Yurok elder Jacqueline Winter, her feelings about the newly free-flowing river are more complicated. The 89-year-old’s son, Troy Fletcher, was the tribe’s point man for dam removal for 20 years. He testified before the U.S. Congress and made presentations before state and federal regulatory committees.
But his true power came from his ability to bring together people with radically conflicting views – from farmers to commercial fishermen to tribal members. Winter said this came from his belief that everyone who lives along the river is family and deserves to be heard.
“We are all family. None of us should be left hurt and we all have to give a little,” was his message, she said.
But at the age of 53, the former executive director of the Yurok tribe died unexpectedly of a heart attack, nearly a decade before that vision of a free-flowing river would finally become a reality. Winter said when she saw the dams breach last month, it felt like his spirit was there through those he touched and she could finally let him go.
“His vision became a reality and I don’t think he ever doubted it,” she said. “He never doubted it. And those who worked closely with him never doubted that.”
Former Klamath Tribes Chairman Jeff Mitchell’s dam removal work since the 1970s grew out of the belief that salmon are their kin.
“They were gifted to us by our creator and given to us to preserve and protect and also to give us life,” said Mitchell, chairman of the tribe’s Culture and Heritage Committee. “As such, the creator has also instructed us to ensure that we do everything in our power to protect those fish.”
The headwaters of the Klamath River are in the tribe’s homelands in Oregon, and members once relied on salmon for 25% of their food. But their waters have been salmon-free for more than a century, he said.
Mitchell and other tribe members’ fight to bring them back takes many forms. There were years of protests, even including collecting fish carcasses after the 2002 fish kill and leaving them on the doorsteps of federal office buildings. There were days when he walked through the state legislature in Salem, Oregon, meeting with lawmakers about the millions in funding needed to accomplish dam removal.
Today he said he feels like they’ve accomplished the impossible, but there’s still more work to be done.
“I’m glad the dams are gone and we have passage,” he said. ‘But now I think: what do those fish come home for? And that is really the focus now: how do we get the parties to take recovery actions and make that the top priority?”