The multi-year effort to pass a comprehensive package of legislation in Congress to restore the Klamath River collapsed last December, but from the ashes of that defeat, the groups involved in the restoration agreements forged a strategy to keep the dam removal component of the deal intact. These efforts culminated in the signing of an amended Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement (KHSA) on April 6 by the governors of Oregon and California, the U.S. Department of the Interior, and dam owner PacifiCorp to allow the dam removal process to move forward.
The amended KHSA, which uses existing nonfederal funding and follows the same timeline as the original agreement, will be filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) this summer for consideration under their established processes for decommissioning dams. Under the agreement, PacifiCorp will transfer its license to operate the Klamath River dams to a private company known as the Klamath River Renewal Corporation. This company will oversee the removal of the fours dams — Iron Gate, Copco No. 1, Copco No. 2, and J. C. Boyle — in 2020. PacifiCorp will continue to operate the dams until they are decommissioned.
Removing the dams will give salmon and steelhead access to over four hundred miles of additional spawning habitat and colder water in upper-basin tributaries that have been closed off to them for nearly a century. “This historic agreement will enable Oregon and California and the interested parties to get these four dams finally removed and the Klamath River restored to its pristine beauty,” Governor Jerry Brown said at the signing ceremony.
Dam Removals Back on Track
PacifiCorp started down the path to FERC relicensing in the early 2000s and determined back then that it would cost more to install fish ladders and retrofit its dams than to tear them down, which is why the private company signed on to the original KHSA. The amended KHSA includes two key provisions that PacifiCorp requires: transfer of responsibility for dam removal to a third party and strict limits on its liability for any property damage caused by the dam removals.
PacifiCorp has been charging its ratepayers a surcharge for several years to fund the dam removals and is on track to collect its committed contribution of $200 million by 2020. The State of California is committing up to $250 million of Proposition 1 funds, and together, these two sources should cover the full expense of the dam removals.
Farmers and Ranchers
The latest development in the effort to move ahead with dam removal is rich in irony. Republicans in Congress blocked the comprehensive Klamath legislation for years, based on their opposition to the dam removal component of the package, which they feared would establish a dangerous precedent and accelerate the push for more dam removals in the West. In a remarkable example of the law of unintended consequences, the direct result of the stonewalling strategy has been the emergence of this new approach — removing the dams through a process that does not require Congressional approval or funding. Now opposition lawmakers are scrambling to explain to the farmers in the Klamath Basin why they allowed legislation that guaranteed water allocations to them to expire without passing while dam removal is moving forward on a separate track.
The big missing pieces in this new approach are the guarantees of water deliveries and stable energy rates that farmers and ranchers had negotiated as part of the original settlement agreements. The Klamath Basin Recovery Act (KBRA) — one of the other pieces of the legislation that was not passed by Congress, based on the agreement that has now expired — contained the critical water and energy provisions. The KBRA also included millions in funding for river-restoration projects and water-quality improvements. Many farmers in the region are feeling nervous and left out of the new direction of the amended KHSA and fear that they are unlikely to get a deal as good as the one promised in the legislation that Congress failed to enact.
The amended KHSA acknowledges that additional work is necessary to restore the Klamath Basin, advance the recovery of its fisheries, uphold trust responsibilities to the tribes, and sustain the region’s farming and ranching economy. Additionally, many parties have signed on to a new Klamath Power and Facilities Agreement, which addresses some of the priority issues in the now-defunct KBRA.
Girding for a Fight
The amended KHSA signing has stirred up a fierce backlash from dam removal opponents in the staunchly conservative rural areas of Siskiyou County in California and the Klamath Basin in Southern Oregon, home of the movement to create an independent “State of Jefferson” that is premised on an abiding mistrust of federal government intervention in local affairs. These conservatives are now crying foul and saying that it is wrong for the dam removals to proceed without Congressional involvement.
Doug LaMalfa, the congressman whose district includes Siskiyou County, captured this sentiment in a press release. “This seems like a front company in a process designed to avoid public scrutiny and open-government laws. The administration is moving forward with its goal of dam removal while ignoring the water supply issues that impact thousands of residents.”
It is an interesting argument to be made by those who distrust the government so intensely and fails to acknowledge that PacifiCorp, as a private corporation, is entitled to use the established FERC process to pursue the best interests of its ratepayers by decommissioning and removing the dams. Furthermore, the dams provide no water for irrigation and only negligible hydroelectric power. The dam removals were also approved previously by the public utility commissions of California and Oregon, which is when the cost analysis showed that removing the dams would cost about half of what it would take to retrofit them and add fish ladders.
Nevertheless, the opposition from conservatives and the concerns of farmers and ranchers underscore the need to make sure that a more inclusive and comprehensive approach emerges to take the place of the expired KBRA. Farmers receive water deliveries from the section of the Klamath River located above the four dams, but without the water-balancing formulas contained in the KBRA, farmers fear that tribes will exercise their senior water rights in dry years and leave them with insufficient water for irrigation. As part of the KBRA, farmers agreed to take less water in exchange for more reliability: each year, they would have a guaranteed allocation based on the available water flows, and tribes would be assured of a sufficient flow downriver to sustain spawning and out-migrating of salmon.
Next Steps in the Negotiations
“It’s encouraging to see continued action toward the recovery of the Klamath River and its native salmon,” said Curtis Knight of California Trout. “Dam removal is an essential first step, but certainly not the only step, in this process. California Trout remains committed to the comprehensive vision behind the hard-won Klamath Agreements, which identified a balanced approach to water use, environmental restoration, and community sustainability throughout the basin.”
After so many years of hope and disappointment, it’s understandable if local residents of the Klamath Basin have a healthy dose of skepticism about where the latest turn of events will lead and if they worry about a possible return to the open hostilities and lawsuits of the past. However, with the dams on what appears to be a fast track toward removal, there is no turning back the clock. In fact, there is even more motivation to put the pieces of a comprehensive solution back together.
