http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/03/us/03fish.html?ref=business
Tribes Call for Removal of Dams That Block Journey of Salmon
(snip)
Craig Tucker, a spokesman for the Karuk tribe, which has about 3,400 members, said the tribes intended to put pressure on Gov. Theodore R. Kulongoski of Oregon and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California to find ways to pay for removing the dams, providing power from other sources and restoring fish habitat along the river, which begins in southern Oregon and meets the Pacific Ocean in Northern California.
Mike Carrier, Mr. Kulongoski’s natural resources policy director, is to meet with tribal leaders on Thursday. Mr. Carrier said the governor favored positions of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, both of which say PacificCorp must provide some form of passage for salmon above the dams. The National Marine Fisheries Service specifically says dams should be removed to make that happen, Mr. Carrier said.
Removing the dams and restoring the river for fish would be enormously expensive, Mr. Carrier said, and would “really need significant federal support.” He said he knew of no reliable estimate of the costs. He said he did not view Mr. Fehrman’s comments on Wednesday as a breakthrough, “especially with the caveat of ‘as long as our customers are not harmed and our property rights are respected.’ In other words, don’t ask us to bear the costs.”
Bump
Ping to above.
I think money for this (for California) is still buried in the infrastructure bonds (Prop 1E/AB 140), although the current version of the law stripped all of the detailed spending amounts that were included in prior versions (SB 74/AB134). The generic language remains: "restoration", "wildlife habitat improvement", etc.)
Between the moslims and the Enviroweenies........I'm not sure who will get us back to the dark ages faster............
The full cost of dam removal must include mitigation for lost tax revenue to the County for (1) the value of the dams, (2) the value of lake front private property for more than 1000 landowners; just compensation to those property owners for the loss of value in their property from having the lake drained and bass fishery destroyed; restoration of raw lake bottom to something aesthetically pleasing for the landowners who see it; arrangement for continued access for landowners to the river for recreation; mitigation for properties destroyed or impaired downriver of Iron Gate for raising river levels during certain tiles of the year by more than 4 feet - including several resorts; some sort of flood control mitigation and some sort of regulation of flows to protect recreational boaters, fishermen and miners from dangerous erratic flows; mitigation for the loss of premier white water rafting opportunities in the upper part above Copco; mitigation for any damage to fisheries from release of sediment onto spawning areas and lack of flow control. The estimates for full mitigation amount to well over a billion dollars.
The Klamath River tribes like to say it is only the cost of fish passage vs. actual removal of the dams. Nooooo, there is much more unless all the other parties are to get the shaft.
The question also remains where the stock to reseed the spring chinook and alleged upper Klamath salmon will come from. There were only 50 spring chinook that returned last year to the Salmon River. This is really not enough to reseed an entire system. It is also doubtfull that a race of chinook "still" exists in the system that could make it all the way from the ocean, through the Klamath lakes and into the Sprague and Williamson.
Is it all just a pipe dream - can we go back to the days of yore? Should we try smaller steps like fish passge first instead of ripping out all the plumbing?
If I were the power company I would say, "get the government to give us the right to build, without interference and undue delay, a nuke power plant and we will take down these dams. The parties who want the dams taken down will stand the cost of any flood damage caused by removal of the dams and the cost of removing them".
Flood control was mentioned by FReepers but what about all the sediment behind those dams. It will destroy salmon spanning beds for years in the lower Klamath...
You know, as a former power company engineer, I will tell you this - the ratepayers and taxpayers better buy some KY, if these dams are removed, because they are about to get gang #####.