Posted on 09/30/2009 7:54:18 AM PDT by SmithL
In what is being touted as the world's biggest dam-removal project, an agreement was reached Tuesday to remove four dams on the Klamath River and restore a 300-mile migratory route for California's beleaguered salmon.
The tentative agreement was reached after a decade of negotiations among 28 parties, including American Indian tribes, farmers, fishermen and the hydroelectric company that operates the dams and distributes the water. The plan would set in motion one of the most ambitious efforts in U.S. history to restore the habitat of a federally protected species if it receives final approval by the parties in December, as expected.
The dams - Iron Gate, Copco 1, Copco 2 and J.C. Boyle - have blocked salmon migration for a century along the California-Oregon border and have been blamed for much of the historic decline of chinook and coho salmon and steelhead trout in the Klamath. Under the plan, the dams operated by the utility, PacificCorp, would be dismantled beginning in 2020.
The ultimate goal of the so-called Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement is to restore what has historically been the third-largest source of salmon in the lower 48 states, behind the Columbia and Sacramento rivers. Chinook once swam all the way up to Upper Klamath Lake in Oregon, providing crucial sustenance to American Indians, including the Yurok, Karuk, Klamath and Hoopa Valley tribes.
"This is the deal that we have all been working on for 10 years," said Steve Rothert, the California director of American Rivers, a national nonprofit river conservation group. "There were a lot of people who didn't think we could do this, and some groups that worked actively to prevent it. It's fantastic that we've reached this spot."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Just Dam!
Turn out the lights.
FISH more important then humans ping.
How are we suppose to charge our electric cars?
Do fish ladders not work?
Every day I get happier I left California. I used to miss the redwoods and mountains (as if there weren’t any others anywhere else). I only wish I could get my extended family to leave. Sad days for the west.
I guess they don’t want the water and the electricity. Who knew SF was self sufficient?
Each salmon will be caught as it enters the river and an empty rechargeable batter and a generator will be attached to it. As it swims upstream it will charge the battery. Then the batteries will be retrieved when they reach their mating ground and sent to San Francisco to run their city lights.
SF has the megawatt mouth of Nancy Pelosi.
Well other than a small piece of Oregon there are no Redwoods anywhere else. I miss them too. It is sad that California has seemingly been lost.
We are sheep. If we were real men like our forefathers we would form up into units, march down there, are reclaim it from the invaders, traitors and idiots who have taken it over. So we post, we whine, we collaborate, we move, we talk, we lament.
We are all like old women now.
Yeah, who knew? In some ways, I would really like it if CA simply rebelled and said they were going their own way. Thing is, despite how looney they like to appear, they are rock-hard clear on exactly how important it is to have the rest of us as a backstop.
Say what??
What about global warming? Hydro power is carbon free and renewable. Doesn’t that count for something?
I wonder how the people of Yreka feel about drowning?
Last year, the Chinese fishing fleet took more than 17 MILLION TONS OF FISH from the Pacific. I suppose they had nothing to do with this "decline"..............
JeffHead ping
My Dad worked in the Klamath area when he worked in the CCC camps during the Depression. It wouldn’t surprise me if he worked on these dams. One liberal project destroying another.
ECC 2: 11 Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.
“Do fish ladders not work?
No, they have lost feet, hands and opposable thumbs through evolution...
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