Free Republic

April 9 Letter from FERC to KRRC, ‘… Kiewit has aborted the Iron Gate Development drilling program in its entirety…’ .. This is part of a series about the Klamath Dam Removal project in Siskiyou County. The removal of dams along the Klamath River in Siskiyou County, Northern California was sold as necessary to save salmon – specifically, “to restore habitat for endangered fish.” The dams are part of the Klamath project, a series of seven dams built in the 1910’s and 1920’s in the Klamath Basin to bring electricity and agricultural water mitigation for Southern Oregon and Northern California,...

They purposefully made a disaster and are leaving taxpayers and the locals to clean up their mess

Gov. Gavin Newsom has appealed directly to investor Warren Buffett to support demolishing four hydroelectric dams on a river along the Oregon-California border ... which would be the largest dam removal in U.S. history. The dams are owned by PacificCorp, an Oregon-based utility that is part of Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. conglomerate. The $450 million project would reshape California’s second-largest river and empty giant reservoirs. ... Newsom supports a 2016 agreement under which PacifiCorp would transfer its federal hydroelectric licenses for the dams to a nonprofit coalition, the Klamath River Renewal Corp., that was formed to oversee the demolition. ......

When the steel claw of an excavator slashes into the berm of the Great Works Dam on Monday morning, it will mark the start of a multimillion-dollar project to allow endangered and dwindling species to return to their historic spawning grounds along Maine’s longest river, the Penobscot. When the project is done - scheduled for 2015, after an additional dam is razed and another bypassed - it will open access to 1,000 miles of habitat for the native fish, including endangered Atlantic salmon and short-nosed sturgeon that journey from the Gulf of Maine to breed in the cold, fresh waters...

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK With its soaring granite walls and spouting waterfalls, Yosemite's Hetch Hetchy Valley was described by conservationist John Muir as "a grand landscape garden, one of Nature's rarest and most precious mountain temples." Much of the glacially carved valley now lies under 300 feet of water. It was dammed and flooded more than 80 years ago to supply drinking water and hydropower to the San Francisco Bay area. For years, environmentalists have advocated draining the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir and returning the valley to its original splendor, while opponents say that would cost a bundle at a time when...

VANCOUVER, Wash. — Fish advocates see the plan to demolish Condit Dam on the White Salmon River as good news for salmon everywhere, but the state Ecology Department says the project could hurt fish downstream and might violate the federal Endangered Species Act. Demolition of the 125-foot-high hydroelectric dam, owned by Portland-based PacifiCorp, is proposed for October 2008. The project would open 33 miles of steelhead habitat and 14 miles of salmon habitat in the area of the river blocked by the dam since 1913. The river forms a portion of the boundary between Klickitat and Skamania counties along the...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 - The Bush administration on Tuesday ruled out the possibility of removing federal dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers to protect 11 endangered species of salmon and steelhead, even as a last resort. In an opinion issued by the fisheries division of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the government declared that the eight large dams on the lower stretch of the two rivers are an immutable part of the salmon's environment. Endangered fish, the opinion said, can be protected by a variety of measures, including carrying fish around dams and building weirs - a new...

Bay Area water could be stored at Don Pedro Reservoir downstream, according to a new study. By Mark Grossi The Fresno Bee For less than $2 billion, San Francisco could drain its drinking water out of a glacial valley in Yosemite National Park. That's the bottom line in the most detailed study yet on the controversial topic of restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley, where a 117 billion-gallon reservoir has submerged nature since the 1920s. The basic idea: capture San Francisco's share of the Tuolumne River farther downstream in Don Pedro Reservoir. The study, presented Monday by the national advocacy group Environmental...

Tucked away in Orange County, N.Y., a 90-year-old dam will start coming down today. Piece by piece, a team of engineers from the Nature Conservancy and the Army Corps of Engineers will begin removing major parts of the Cuddebackville Dam on the Neversink River as part of a painstaking effort to save an endangered mussel that is blocked by the dam from going upstream. The project is the first in New York history in which a dam is being removed for purely environmental reasons. It also signals a change of purpose for the Army Corps of Engineers, which has spent...

<p>Sen. John Kerry would appoint a salmon czar who would answer directly to him and his vice president if he´s elected president.</p> <p>But neither he nor his chief opponent (at the time) for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. John Edwards, are willing to support studies of breaching four dams on the Snake River to aid the fish.</p>

<p>A controlled explosion late this morning at a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' dam on the Monongahela River will close a portion of the river to boating and fishing from about 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.</p> <p>The demolition of a 90-foot section of the 100-year-old fixed crest dam at Locks and Dam 2 at Braddock is scheduled for noon. All river traffic and activity will be restricted about one-quarter mile in each direction.</p>

<p>Klamath basin overhaul is urged in report The proposal for helping fish includes the removal of up to three dams. .</p> <p>The National Research Council called for a watershed-wide set of fixes Tuesday to help threatened salmon and other fish in the Klamath basin, an embattled expanse of farms, forests and depleted salmon streams on the California-Oregon border. In a 334-page report, a scientific panel recommended the removal of up to three dams, restoration of wetlands and other measures to restore fish and prevent conflicts like one that exploded in 2001. The fight pitted farmers against environmentalists and Indian tribes and flashed a national spotlight on how the Bush administration handles water disputes.</p>

President Bush waded deeper into controversy over his environmental policies in the Pacific Northwest on Friday as he rejected calls for hydroelectric dams to be razed to make way for endangered migrating salmon. Bush viewed water ladders at Washington's Ice Harbor Lock and Dam, meant to help the fish get up and down the Snake River to spawn, after facing several thousand demonstrators angry about issues from the U.S.-led occupation in Iraq to proposed forest thinning in Oregon. On a break from his August vacation at his Texas ranch to visit states that were problems for the Republicans in the...

KETCHUM, Idaho - Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt says the lower Snake River dams are standing in the way of salmon recovery. The Clinton administration Democrat told a Ketchum fund-raiser yesterday that those dams will be breached, despite the Bush administration's anti-environment policies. Babbitt claims there's virtually no long-running economic reason to keep the four dams standing. And, he says Bush wants to trample any opposition, rather than looking for a resolution of the issue. EarthJustice Steve Mashuda says his group plans to sue Idaho Power Company and others to make them realize the cost of keeping dams in place.

57 Dams in 16 States to be Removed in 2003 Says American Rivers 8/19/03 2:45:00 PM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: National Desk and Environmental Reporter Contact: Serena McClain, American Rivers, 202-347-7550; Helen Sarakinos, River Alliance of Wisconsin, 608-257-2424; Leon Szeptycki, Trout Unlimited, 703-284-9411 WASHINGTON, Aug. 19 /U.S. Newswire/ -- 57 dams in 15 states and the District of Columbia are scheduled for removal in 2003, continuing the strong trend in recent years for restoring rivers and improving public safety by removing stream blockages. Each summer, American Rivers surveys government and private conservation organizations to determine how many dams and other obstructions...