Free Republic

...Klamath River... Now, plans to demolish four hydroelectric dams on the river’s lower reaches to save salmon — the largest such demolition project in U.S. history — have placed those competing interests in stark relief. Each group with a stake — tribes, farmers, ranchers, homeowners and conservationists — sees its identity in the Klamath and ties its future to the dams in deeply personal terms. “We are saving salmon country, and we’re doing it The project, estimated at nearly $450 million, would reshape the Klamath River and empty giant reservoirs. The proposal fits into a trend toward dam demolition in...

A series of storms pushed California’s biggest reservoir past its historical average for mid-March this weekend and put the second largest one on track for doing the same by Monday afternoon, officials said. Together the Lake Shasta and Lake Oroville reservoirs have the capacity to hold more than 8 million acre feet of water and after a wet weekend in Northern California, they were 79% and 70% full, respectively ... According to the National Weather Service, it rained nearly a foot in El Dorado County and more than nine inches in Shasta County between Friday and Monday mornings. Since March...

California, Oregon and the federal government are working on a way around congressional barriers to the removal of hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River. The states, the U.S. Interior Department and the owner of the dams, PacifiCorp, announced Tuesday that they have agreed in principle to pursue removal through the federal dam relicensing process. The move comes after a complex deal to decommission four hydroelectric dams and restore portions of the historic salmon river fell apart when Congress failed to act on a crucial piece of the pact by a Dec. 31 deadline. Republican members of Congress and local elected...

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...

A 75-year-old lawyer who fought private property rights battles alongside Idaho U.S. Rep. Helen Chenoweth and her Nevada rancher husband Wayne Hage in the 1990s is still cultivating the Sagebrush Rebellion's roots. Fred Kelly Grant has been slowed by age and heart surgery, but he's in demand from counties — and tea partyers who attend his $150-per-person seminars — as conservative elements in the West's continue to clash with the federal government. California's Siskiyou County is paying Grant $10,000 to help block removal of four Klamath River dams. Montana and Idaho counties have enlisted him to trim hated wolf populations...

Dear All: The local enviro-nazis in the Klamath Basin (southern OR, northern CA) are attempting to tear down 4 perfectly good dams on the Klamath River and have the power generation replaced with solar, simply because dams are displeasing to these folks. The local news is running a poll at http://www.localnewscomesfirst.com (lower right-hand corner of the screen) and the enviro side is winning. PLEASE PLEASE help turn the numbers our direction. Please vote against dam removal. It will destroy this region. Thanks.

WASHINGTON - The Interior Department's inspector general didn't find political interference by Vice President Dick Cheney on a key environmental policy in part because investigators weren't looking for it, an Interior official said Tuesday. A 2004 report by the inspector general found no basis for a claim by then-Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry that White House political advisers interfered in developing water policy in the Klamath River Basin in California and Oregon. But investigators did not ask about Cheney — and no Interior employee volunteered information about him, said Mary Kendall, deputy Interior inspector general. A former high-ranking Interior official,...

GRANTS PASS, Ore. - A Pacific Northwest utility must build new fish ladders and take other steps to help salmon swim freely past four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River if it wants to renew its license to produce electricity, federal fisheries agencies said Tuesday. The cost of the ladders, turbine screens and fish bypasses was estimated at nearly $300 million. The high cost could boost pressure on the utility, PacifiCorp, to remove the dams altogether — something environmentalists have been pushing for. Removing the dams would open access to 350 miles of salmon spawning habitat that have been blocked...

A federal judge on Monday ordered the government to institute a Klamath River management plan immediately instead of waiting five more years, which means farmers could be deprived of irrigation if water levels drop low enough to threaten the survival of coho salmon. U.S. District Court Judge Saundra B. Armstrong, who sits in Oakland, said if river levels fail to meet 100 percent of the water flow needed for the coho as determined by the National Marine Fisheries Service, then farmers who rely on the Klamath will have to do without. That should not be a problem this year because...

Fourteen hundred farmers owning 200,000 acres in the Klamath River Basin of southern Oregon and Northern California were denied their water rights during the summer of 2001 because of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA). Nearly $200 million of life savings and hard work were wiped out instantly as the farmers were left with essentially worthless land. They are not alone. This has been the legacy of the ESA from its inception. It has confiscated billions of dollars of private property, harmed or destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans and has not saved one endangered species!...

<p>The dramatic die-off of 33,000 salmon last fall along the Klamath River in Northern California was directly caused by the Bush administration's decision to pump extra water from the river to farmers, biologists from the California Department of Fish and Game have concluded.</p>

Klamath Basin Farmers Get $50 Million in Aid KLAMATH FALLS, Oregon, June 18, 2002 (ENS) - Farmers in the Klamath Basin whose crops and livestock suffered last year from lack of water will benefit from $50 million in aid earmarked in the 2002 Farm Bill. Farmers in the Klamath Basin faced last summer with no water for irrigation, as all available water has been diverted to protect endangered sucker fish and threatened coho salmon. Last month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) issued an opinion stating that the Klamath Basin irrigation system threatens two endangered fish, the Lost...

The Klamath Bucket Brigade Reacts harshly to the Fishermen’s Association's Lawsuit (Lawsuit against Bureau of Reclamation could threaten user water supply) Report By J.J. JohnsonPublished 04. 26. 02 at 15:37 Sierra Time KLAMATH FALLS --   On April 24, 2002, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, EarthJustice, The Oregon Natural Resource Council, WaterWatch, The Klamath Forest Alliance, and several other environmental groups filed a lawsuit in Federal Court in Oakland asking for a temporary restraining order against the Bureau of Reclamation to shut off the irrigation water to the Klamath Project farmers for the month of May, or...