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President Donald Trump issued a memorandum last week blocking an effort that was underway during the Biden-Harris administration to remove four hydroelectric dams in the Snake River. Trump’s memorandum revokes a directive from the previous administration, which Trump described as an effort by “radical environmentalism” to raise the “equitable treatment for fish” above that of human flourishing. “The negative impacts from these reckless acts, if completed, would be devastating for the region, and there would be no viable approach to replace the low-cost, baseload energy supplied,” Trump stated in the memo. If the experiences of those in northern California living...

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The largest dam removal project in US history is finally complete, after crews last week demolished the last of the four dams on the Klamath River. It’s a significant win for tribal nations on the Oregon-California border who for decades have fought to restore the river back to its natural state. The removal of the four hydroelectric dams — Iron Gate Dam, Copco Dams 1 and 2, and JC Boyle Dam — allows the region’s iconic salmon population to swim freely along the Klamath River and its tributaries, which the species have not been able to do for over a...

The decades-long push led by tribal communities to remove four dams along the Klamath River reached another victory this week as crews began the project’s final stages, restoring historic water flows to the river for the first time in over a century. The fight to remove dams along the Klamath began over two decades ago, when poor water quality and river flows caused tens of thousands of the river’s fish, mostly Chinook salmon, to die in a massive fish kill in 2002. For thousands of years, Chinook salmon have been a fundamental source of physical, spiritual and economic sustenance to...

The Shasta Indian Nation will be returned 2,820 acres of ancestral land in northwestern California, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday. The land return is the largest in California history and comes as a reconciliation effort to apologize to Native communities for historical injustices, the release said. Newsom's office said he discussed the land return with the Shasta Indian Nation earlier this month after visiting the Klamath River dam removal project, which is on ancestral lands near the California-Oregon border. The project is the largest dam removal and river restoration in the country intended to restore land and more than 300...

A weekend spring storm that drenched the San Francisco Bay area and closed Northern California mountain highways also set a single-day snowfall record for the season on Sunday in the Sierra Nevada. The wet weather system had mostly moved out of the state by Sunday morning, but officials warned that roads would remain slick after around two feet (60 centimeters) of snow fell in some areas of the Sierra. “Did anyone have the snowiest day of the 2023/2024 season being in May on their winter bingo card?” the University of California, Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab asked on the social...

If April showers bring May flowers then what does May bring? Apparently significant snow at higher elevations. The National Weather Service in Reno has issued a winter weather advisory for the greater Lake Tahoe basin and parts of the high Sierra. The NWS says snow accumulations up to three to six inches are expected around Lake Tahoe and six to 12 inches over higher Sierra passes, with up to 10 to 14 inches across the Sierra crest above 7,000 feet. The bulk of the storm moves through Saturday and wraps up by 8 a.m. on Sunday, May 5. Roads, especially...

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Parts of California have seen record-setting snow this year. The statewide Sierra snowpack is 192% of the average right now, the Northern Sierra is at 154%, the Central Sierra is 197%, and the Southern Sierra is at 230% of the average for this date. The following ski resorts already have more than 600 inches of snow this season. China Peak: 606 inches Boreal: 610 inches Sugar Bowl: 605 inches Dodge Ridge: 612 inches The UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab is reporting that "this is the ninth snowiest year since the Snow Lab was built in...

All across California, residents are being told to scrimp and save water because of historic drought conditions. Meanwhile, state officials are dumping freshwater into the ocean while intentionally depriving rice farmers of the water they need to grow food. Colusa County in Northern California is the top producer of rice in the Sacramento Valley. The area generates more than 150,000 acres of rice in a normal year – but as you can probably tell by now, 2022 is anything but a normal year. Officials there say that only a fraction of the usual rice crop will be grown there this...

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,...

On Tuesday March 26th, the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors declared a local State of Emergency in regard to the adverse impacts of the Klamath Dam removal project affecting the Klamath River.

Tuesday, March 26th 2024 was a long and contentious day at the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors (‘BOS’) meeting. This board meeting followed the March 5th, Siskiyou County Health Department advisory warning that people should not enter the Klamath River or drink the water. “SISKIYOU COUNTY, Calif. — Residents should not be in or drink water from the Klamath River due to high levels of arsenic, lead and aluminum, the Siskiyou County Environmental Health said today.” Activists favoring dam removal seem to be hypnotically willing to look past any and all unintended adverse impacts that have unfolded and are further...

A well-funded environmentalist group played a key role in the push to remove dams in the Pacific Northwest’s Klamath River ahead of premature deaths of thousands of salmon. American Rivers — an organization that has received millions of dollars from left-of-center environmentalist grantmaking organizations in recent years — was “the orchestrator of the Klamath dams removal project,” according to Siskiyou News, a local outlet in Northern California. The drawdowns of several reservoirs pursuant to the scheduled removal of four dams in the river preceded the deaths of “hundreds of thousands” of young salmon in the waterway, according to Oregon Public...

...A large number of young hatchery-raised salmon that were released into the Klamath River recently were killed when they passed through a tunnel near the base of the Iron Gate Dam on the river...

Hundreds of thousands of salmon released in Northern California river die in 'large mortality' event / As many as hundreds of thousands of fall-run Chinook salmon died early last week due to suspected gas bubble disease. The fish were released into the 257-mile-long Klamath River near the California-Oregon border following November’s historic dam removal at the site, which was intended to help the stream flow freely again and bolster the habitat for the protected species.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom backed the controversial proposal to remove four Klamath River hydroelectric dams along the California-Oregon border. Now, the same fish he swore to protect could be killed in the process. The dams had been breached on claims that it would help salmon migrate, but the Klamath River is now full of destroyed spawning salmon beds and pollution including decomposed algae, organic deposition, chemicals, and fine silt which is killing its ecosystem, according to a report from the California Globe. Additionally, dead endangered steelhead trout and other species have been rising to the surface of the Klamath River,...

If 10 million cubic yards of sediment were to settle in the river, we’d see the equivalent of six lanes of freeway piled eight feet deep for nearly 100 miles. There are 192 river miles below the lowest dam, Iron Gate. In total, the river is approximately 250 miles long. For most of February, turbidity levels in the Klamath River hovered around 500 to 1,000 units over a stretch of at least 100 miles, according to U.S. Geological Survey measurements.2 These turbidity levels are 10 to 20 times what juvenile salmon can survive, according to a 2001 research report by...

Let’s face facts; some people are getting richer off the removal of the Klamath River dams. Glen Spain member [formerly] of Klamath River Renewal Corp. ‘KRRC’ board and fisherman’s advocate said “Economics Not Salmon Is the Reason PacifiCorp is Removing the Dams” It is now estimated by some experts that the total direct cost for the Klamath River dam removal project, will reach $800-million dollars, not the $450-million cost estimate projected over tens years ago. And then we have the costs related to the liabilities that are already arising from what is seen by many as an ill-fated project. According...

For over 100-years after the first dam was installed (Copco 1 Dam) and over 60-years after Iron Gate Dam was installed, there was nevertheless a decent run of Salmon and steelhead in the Klamath River, even with all of the changing ocean conditions, climate change, and OVERFISHING by both indigenous people and others. Any fishing guide on the Klamath River below Iron Gate Dam would attest to the fact that fishing was great. Therefore, this is the ONLY relevant Question: Is the deaths of millions of wildlife (mammals, birds, fish, etc.) and the collapse of an entire ecosystem, on top...

Before the 1950s, an estimated 5.5 million coho salmon, Chinook salmon and steelhead returned to California rivers as part of their natural life cycle. In 2022, only 93,000 of the iconic fish spawned in the state’s rivers, a number so low it prompted closure of the commercial fishing season. A report released by CalTrout in 2017 in partnership with the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences found that 74% of California’s native salmon, steelhead, and trout species are likely to be extinct within a century or less if present trends continue