Photo by American Rivers
Summary
Dams remain one of the ultimate demonstrations of human power over nature. Wild rivers can be tamed to deliver energy for industry, lakes for recreation, and water for agriculture. But severing the link between land and sea has come with grave ecological costs. The impact of dams on salmon populations has been especially obvious and painful.
This is part one of a two-part series on dam removals. In this episode, we return to the Klamath river to examine the fierce conflict (and unlikely partnerships) in pursuit of the deconstruction of 4 major dams. Part 2 is here.
Click here to read a transcription of this episode
UPDATE
In November of 2022, the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the removal of the 4 key dams along the Klamath River - a huge victory for salmon and for the Indigenous tribes and environmental groups that had worked for over two decades towards this end. The dams are expected to be removed by the end of 2024 in what will be the largest dam removal effort in history. Scientists hope to study the impacts of dam removal on the Klamath river’s ecology and salmon populations. We’ll continue to follow this story as it unfolds and we’ll let you know what happens.
Shownotes
This episode features Ryan Hilperts, Erica Terrence, Bill Tripp, and Senator Jeff Merkley.
Special thanks to Schuyler Lindberg, Vincent van Haaff, Jose Isordia, Kirsty Johnstone Munroe Cameron, Ilana Fonariov, Danica Long, Arianna Nagle, Beatrice Hittos, and Andrjez Kozlowski.
Music for this episode was produced by Brian D. Tripp, Loam Zoku, Kieran Fearing, Sour Gout, the Western Family String Band, the Clan Stewart Pipe Band, and Sunfish Moonlight.
Citations
A lot of research goes into each episode of Future Ecologies, including great journalism from a variety of media outlets, and we like to cite our sources:
Agee, J. K. (2007). Steward’s Fork: A Sustainable Future for the Klamath Mountains. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Andersen, M. K. (2005). Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Native Resources. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Bartholow, J. M., Campbell, S. G., and M. Flug. (2004). Predicting the Thermal Effects of Dam Removal on the Klamath River. Environmental Management 34(6): 856-874.
Blum, M. C., and A. B. Erickson. (2012). Dam removal in the Pacific Northwest: Lessons for the Nations. Environmental Law 42: 1043-1100.
Breslow, S. J. (2014). Tribal Science and Farmers’ Resistance: A Political Ecology of Salmon Habitat Restoration in the American Northwest. Anthrolopological Quarterly 87(3): 727-758.
Cuerrier, A., N. J. Turner, T. C. Gomes, A. Garibaldi and A. Downing (2015). Cultural Keystone Places: Conservation and Restoration in Cultural Landscapes. Journal of Ethnobiology 35(3):427-448. http://www.bioone.org.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/doi/full/10.2993/0278-0771-35.3.427
Diver, S. W. (2014). Giving Back Through Time: A Collaborative Timeline Approach to Researching Karuk Indigenous Land Management History. Journal of Research Practice 10(2): N18.
Diver, S. W. (2016). Co-management as a Catalyst: Pathways to Post-colonial Forestry in the Klamath Basin, California. Human Ecology 44: 533-546.
Gosnell, H., and E. C. Kelly. (2010). Peace on the River? Social-Ecological Restoration and Large Dam Removal in the Klamath Basin, USA. Water Alternatives 3(2): 361-383.
Hamilton, J., Rondorf, D., Hampton, M., Quionones, R. M., Simondet, J., and T. Smith. (2011). Synthesis of the effects to fish species of two management scenarios for the secretarial determination on removal of the lower four dams on the Klamath River. Yreka, CA: US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Harling, W., and B. Tripp. (2014). Western Klamath Restoration Partnership: A Plant For Restoring Fire Adapted Landscapes. Retrieved from Western Klamath Restoration Partnership: http://karuk.us/images/docs/dnr/2014%20Western%20Klamath%20Restoration%20Partnership_Restoration%20Plan_DRAFT_FINA%20%20%20.pdf
Hormel, L. M., and K. M. Norgaard. (2009). Bring the Salmon Home! Karuk Challenges to Capitalist Incorporation. Critical Sociology 35(3): 343-366.
Jacobs, J. P. (2017). Republicans in hot seat over landmark deal for dam removal. E&E News. Retrieved from: https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060051348
Jenkins, J. S. (2011). The Reproduction of the Klamath Basin: Struggle for Water in a Changing Landscape. APCG Yearbook 73: 69-78.
Lake, F. K., Tripp, W., and R. Reed. (2010). The Karuk Tribe, Planetary Stewardship, and World Renewal on the Middle Klamath River, California. Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America: 147-149.
Love, M. (1998) Probably More Than You Want to Know About the Fishes of the Pacific Coast.
McEvoy, A. F. (1986). The Fisherman’s Problem: Ecology and Law in the California Fisheries, 1850-1980. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Most, S. (2006). River of Renewal: Myth and History in the Klamath Basin. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.
National Research Council (NRC). (2004). Endangered and Threatened Fishes in the Klamath River Basin: Causes of Decline and Strategies for Recovery. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
Norgaard, K. M. (2014a). Karuk Traditional Ecological Knowledge and the Need for Knowledge Sovereignty: Social, Cultural, and Economic Impacts of Denied Access to Traditional Management. Retrieved from Karuk Tribe Department of Natural Resources: https://karuktribeclimatechangeprojects.wordpress.com/about/karuk-tek-knowledge-sovereignty/
Norgaard, K. M. (2014b). Retaining Knowledge Sovereignty: Expanding the Application of Tribal Traditional Knowledge on Forest Lands in the Face of Climate Change. Retrieved from Karuk Tribe Department of Natural Resources: https://karuktribeclimatechangeprojects.wordpress.com/retaining-knowledge-sovereignty/
Norgaard, K. M., Vinyeta, K., Hillman, L., Tripp, B., and F. Lake. (2016). Karuk Tribe Climate Vulnerability Assessment: Assessing Vulnerabilities of Increased Frequency of High Severity Fire. Retrieved from Karuk Tribe Department of Natural Resources: https://karuktribeclimatechangeprojects.wordpress.com/climate-vulnerabilty-assessment/
Putman, N. F., Lohmann, K. J., Putman, E. M., Quinn, T. P., Klimley, P., Noakes, D. L. G. (2013).Evidence for Geomagnetic Imprinting as a Homing Mechanism in Pacific Salmon. Current Biology, 23 (4): 312-316
Quinones, R. M., Grantham, T. E., Harvey, B. N., Kiernan, J. D., Klasson, M., Wintzer, A. P., and Moyle, P. B. (2015). Dam removal and anadromous salmonid (Oncorhynchus spp.) conservation in California. Biological Fisheries 25: 195-215.
Roberts, H. H. (1932). The First Salmon Ceremony of the Karuk Indians. American Anthropologist 34(3): 426-440.
Salter, J. F. (2003). White Paper on the Behalf of the Karuk Tribe of California: A Context Statement Concerning The Effect of the Klamath Hydroelectric Project on Traditional Resource Uses and Cultural Patterns of the Karuk People Within the Klamath River Corridor. Mid Klamath Watershed Council.
Strange, J. S. (2010). Upper Thermal Limits to Migration in Adult Chinook Salmon: Evidence from the Klamath River Basin. Transactions of the American Fisheries Society 139(4): 1091-1108.
Swezey, S. L., & R. F. Heizer. (1977). Ritual management of salmonid fish resources in California. The Journal of California Anthropology 4(1): 6-29.
Tonra, C. M., Sager-Fradkin, K., Morley, S. A., Duda, J. J., & Marra, P. P. (2015). The rapid return of marine-derived nutrients to a freshwater food web following dam Removal. Biological Conservation, 192, 130-134. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2015.09.009
Witze, A. (2015). Let the River Run. Science News, 187(1), 22.
This episode includes soundscape audio recorded by Andrzej Kozlowski and music from the Project Gutenberg Library. It also includes audio recorded by Kayyy, alienistcog, CastleofSamples, Hampusnoren, sidohzen, Kane53126, scriotxstudios, FillMat, klankbeeld, and InspectorJ(Bubbling, Large, A.wav), protected by Creative Commons attribution licenses, and accessed through the Freesound Project. A heartfelt thanks to klankbeeld, whose underwater sounds pack made this episode a pleasure to mix.
You can subscribe to and download Future Ecologies wherever you find podcasts - please share, rate, and review us. Our website is futureecologies.net. We’re also on Facebook, Instagram, iNaturalist, Soundcloud and Youtube. We’re an independent production, and you can support us on Patreon - our supporters have access to cool supporter-only mini-episodes and other perks.
Future Ecologies is recorded on the unceded territories of the Musqueam (xwməθkwəy̓əm) Squamish (Skwxwú7mesh), and Tsleil- Waututh (Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh) Nations - otherwise known as Vancouver, British Columbia.
This season of Future Ecologies is supported in part by the Vancouver Foundation. Learn more at https://vancouverfoundationsmallarts.ca/.
Transcription
Music 00:12
[Water rushing over river rocks, steady guitar begins to fade in, before a spash, after which, watery-guitar music underscores the audio]
Ryan Hilperts 00:37
You look at, restorationists look at the landscape and they think, they dream on it, they dream about ecologically what could be happening in that place. And so it's this kind of foresight, you know, you do a visioning, you're visioning something. So, if you could actually vision in whatever place: What would you like to see in terms of human relations on a place in 20 years? And then backcast and think: What seeds do we need to be planting right now?
Music 01:09
[Bass tones break through, then music becomes more pensive]
Ryan Hilperts 01:11
Part of, you know, part of how we know each other is through telling stories from our lives and the way we have stories to tell us that we have experiences. You know, and-and we learn a lot through storied knowledge. When I was doing interviews, I found that when people started speaking in metaphor, that's when stuff got really interesting, because we use metaphor to talk about things that have truth larger than just the thing that we're talking about. And when people started to describe stories in real detail, right, and their emotion came into it, they get more creative with their language. And when people use metaphor, or they start to use that kind of language they're pointing to almost like a poetic knowledge of the world that's rooted in wisdom, right? You know, in that, in that we build a weapon, and a reciprocity, with land and water when we when we know it in the way that it's the character in our stories, and we're a character in it's story.
Music 02:21
[Guitar breaks through, strongly underscores following dialogue]
Ryan Hilperts 02:22
I realize I'm just so very into kind of the symbolic, but I think dam removals are just the most compelling restoration project, because it is-they are just so- it's such pure symbolism; you know? In sort of a romantic way. But it's just-I mean-terms of a, in terms of the kind of restoration that can capture people's imaginations; I just think that they're-they're so powerful for that reason.
Music 03:01
[Guitar cords play, building momentum, playing over recorded dialogue]
Adam Huggins 03:06
Ready?
Mendel Skulski 03:06
Ready.
Adam Huggins 03:06
1-2-3:
Adam Huggins and Mendel Skulski 03:06
[simultaneously] Jump! [spalsh]
Music 03:08
[Stops, river water returns as soundscape]
Adam Huggins 03:10
For a long time in North America, especially in the West, we've told ourselves a singular, unshakeable story about dams. In many ways, it's a love story...
Music 03:22
[Ride of the Valkyries enters and underscores]
Adam Huggins 03:22
...full of romance and conflict, usually pitting the indomitable will of man, against the chaos of nature. Wild rivers which epitomize the unpredictable, untapped resource, are transformed by human ingenuity for the betterment of all. By constructing dams, we can produce clean energy for burgeoning communities, create recreational areas for boaters and weekenders, and provide a dependable water source for industry and agriculture.
Mendel Skulski 03:53
And construct dams we did. Beginning in the 1890s, accelerating through Roosevelt's New Deal, spreading out to every corner of the world and culminating in the monumental Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River in China, humanity is smack dab in the center of a dam building craze that shows little signs of abating. Even now, a new era of dam construction has begun worldwide, fueled by the demand for clean energy, and the hunt for the few remaining wild rivers, yet to be tamed and harnessed. The controversial Site C dam on the Peace River in Northern British Columbia is just one example of the latest wave of mega projects across the globe.
Adam Huggins 04:33
This story of man's triumph over nature, and the marvels of human ingenuity and audacity, is a powerful one, deeply rooted in our collective imagination. But it isn't the only story being told about dams here in North America.
Mendel Skulski 04:48
Right now, up and down the Pacific Coast and beyond, there's a growing awareness of the ecological and social costs of dam construction. Costs that, until recently, have been overshadowed by the sheer marvel all of our technological achievements. And little by little, bit by bit, this second story is eroding away the foundations of the first. Eating away of its themes, its plot points, creating cracks, which then become fissures, until . . .
Adam Huggins 05:15
. . . [Warrior-like] The floodgates open!
Music 05:17
[Explosive water breaking free and spilling forth, Ride of the Valkyries fades out beneath it]
Mendel Skulski 05:24
And damn metaphors aside, all hell breaks loose.
Music 05:27
[Intense, pulsating music underscores]
Media 05:28
[Someone overseeing a meeting] I think we've seen how strong the passions are today about, uh, about water and . . . water is our lifeblood. [Unspecified Speaker] What do I think of this? I think it's a dam[n] scam! [First speaker] This has gone on, and on, for years. [New Unspecified Speaker] This bright idea here, has the potential of destroying our way of life and the economy. [News Anchor] Native American tribes, farmers, fishermen and conservation groups battled each other over access and control of scarce water supplies in the region. [New Unspecified Speaker] Billion dollars of taxpayer and ratepayer costs, all driven, we're told, by the best available science. [New Unspecified Speaker] It's really a tragedy and-and it's government imposed. [New Unspecified Speaker] Intentional falsification of scientific data. [New Unspecified Speaker] Reliable, sustainable, low cost power. [Protestor, through megaphone] 68,000 dead salmon can't be wrong. Dams kill fish! [New Protestor, through megaphone] There's no salmon and our river. We all grew up eating fish, catching fish, and now theres nothing! [New Unspecified Speaker, on the verge of tears] It's not getting any better! [Protestors Chanting] Bring down the dams! Bring down the dams! [Speaker overseeing meeting] I respect the strength of your convictions. We agree that decisions like this must, must, be done in tandem and in concert with Indigenous Peoples, but those challenges have passed.
Adam Huggins 06:42
So, if restoring a landscape, or a river, requires restory-ing that landscape, or river, what are the stories that we're going to tell to ourselves, and to our kids, and grandkids about dams?
Mendel Skulski 06:59
In this two part series, we're going to look at the stories of two rivers: one in Washington, and one in Northern California. And what the decades long battles to restore them can tell us about the future of rivers and the communities that rely on them. This is part one, which we've decided to call:
Adam Huggins 07:16
Swimming Upstream.
Music 07:23
[Pensive, electronic music continues]
Introduction voiceover 07:25
Broadcasting from Vancouver, British Columbia, on the unseeded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Peoples, this is Future Ecologies. Where your hosts, Adam Huggins and Mendel Skulski, explore the future of human habitation on planet earth through ecology, design, and sound.
Music 07:48
[Pensive electronic music fades out]
Bill Tripp 07:49
[Voice tuned watery, eternal, above the sound of a running stream] I'm from the spawning ground: it's the one that we all know. At one time or another, we all swam from the same hole. That's when my water broke, that's when my father's broke. He said, when I was young, I was told know how the water tastes, know which way it flows, feel the wind, know which way it blows, learn from the animals, the birds and the bees. Say a prayer for the homeground: the rivers, the rocks, the mountains the oceans and trees.
Music 08:31
[Indigenous Music underscores] [Singing in Indigenous Language]
Music 08:31
[A thunderstorm breaks]
Mendel Skulski 08:37
Imagine for a second, that you are Pacific salmon, far out at sea. You're King Salmon, also known as a Chinook; Oncorhynchus , meaning hooked nose in Greek, chacha, a Russian reference to Chinook. And I want you to imagine that you're a king among King Salmon. You're five feet long, 100 pounds. And you've been terrorizing smaller fishes and zooplankton in the North Pacific for over four years, since just a few weeks after you hatched in a riffle, up some distant river. Every nautical mile you've swum has taken you further and further from that river, out into the unknown, the majestic Northern Pacific Ocean. You've spent years gorging on krill and copepods, herring, and rockfish; you've grown, you're plump, fat, and swimming free.
Music 09:33
[Indigenous Music fades out, replaced by tembling, creeking music]
Mendel Skulski 09:45
But something feels missing: you're the only one of your hundreds of brothers and sisters who have survived this far: most were eaten by something long ago. And your parents died weeks before you hatched: you're completely alone. But from the depths of that hole in your fishy heart, there comes a faint remembrance. It stirs within you, transforming your sadness, into conviction, your despondency, to determination, your paralysis into motion. You are beginning to great migration, the defining event of your existence, the test of your strength and your fat reserves. You are returning from whence you came.
Adam Huggins 10:50
It's still a bit of a mystery how salmon do this, but a recent publication on Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River suggests that salmon navigate their way towards the river they were born in using, at least in part, the Earth's magnetic field. From there, it appears they use olfactory and other sensory clues to find their natal stream. But this is a mystery for another day. Today, I'm going to ask you to join me one more time in the Northwest corner of California known as the Klamath Knot. And this time, Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon is going to help me tell you all about it.
Music 10:54
[Tembling music resolves]
Music 11:27
[Vibrant, "good-ol-days" fiddle music underscores]
Media 11:28
[Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon] Mr. President, I rise tonight to tell you a tale about the Klamath Basin and share a little bit of the vision. First, let me tell you about the magical place that is the Klamath Basin. It's in Southern Oregon and Northern California. It's an area of the country that is rich with agricultural resources and exceptional wildlife populations.
Adam Huggins 11:52
And here to tell the story of the Klamath River, local resident Erica Terrance.
Erica Terrence 11:56
I'm Erica Terrence and I was born and raised on the Salmon River, which is 15 miles from here, up river.
Adam Huggins 12:03
Erica is also the Outreach and Development Coordinator for the Mid Klamath Watershed Council, affectionately known as MKWC [Mik-wic].
Erica Terrence 12:10
The Klamath River Watershed starts in Oregon, the headwaters are near Crater Lake and up in the Spray and Williamson and Wood Rivers, near Klamath Falls area, peloquin area, and it's really volcanic up there.
Adam Huggins 12:27
Volcanic as in, the Southern end of the Cascades Volcanic Range, which extends from British Columbia in the north, down through Western Washington and Oregon, to Lassen National Park in California.
Erica Terrence 12:39
Actually, that's part of what gives the water and the upper Klamath is character, that was really good for Spring Chinook Salmon. But mainly what you find is a lot of farming and ranching communities up there.
Media 12:49
[Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon] The basin contains approximately 1400 family farms and ranches encompasses over 200,000 acres of farmland irrigated with water from the Klamath River and the Klamath Lake.
Adam Huggins 13:01
These farming and ranching communities live mostly in what is referred to as, "The Upper Basin".
Erica Terrence 13:07
From a geographic perspective, I mean, we often say the Klamath is-is an upside down river basin, because unlike most river basins, it's, you know, pretty flat and pretty deserty up in the top, and the further down you go, the more densely vegetated, the wetter, the more narrow the river canyon.
Music 13:27
[Jumpy fiddle music is slowly overtaken by water running over rocks]
Adam Huggins 13:28
As the river flows out of the arid plateau of the Upper Basin, it descends through a series of mountain ranges known collectively as the North Coast or Klamath Ranges of California. This includes the Marble Mountains, the Trinity Alps, and the Siskiyous. This whole region is famous for its incredible botanical diversity, and the lower basin is really rugged, remote country. We've actually been there before in Future Ecologies, in our recent mini-series "On Fire". So the Klamath cuts its way through these mountains, until it reaches the Pacific.
Erica Terrence 14:00
And down near the mouth, you don't have a really broad river delta, you have still a pretty tight little bottleneck.
Adam Huggins 14:07
When Erica says that the Klamath watershed is upside down, what she means is that usually a river's headwaters will be somewhere up in a mountain range, or something, and begin as a narrow, winding stream, cutting down through a canyon, before eventually winding its way across a wide, flat plain, and emptying out in a broad delta into the ocean. That's kind of the archetypical, hydrological cycle version of a watershed. The Klamath sort of does the opposite: that's one of the things that makes it special. The plains are upstream, the mountains are downstream, and smack dab in the middle: four major dams.
Music 14:42
[Running water is overtaken by a somber piano cord, piano continues underneath]
Erica Terrence 14:45
So then the Klamath River starts up in Southern Oregon and crosses the California/Oregon border, right around where those large dams are in the system. So those large dams bisect the whole watershed and block off more than 100 miles of pretty good salmon habitat.
Adam Huggins 15:01
These four dams, Copco one and two, the J.C. Boyle, and the Iron Gate, were constructed between 1918 and 1962, mostly to generate power for the region.
Erica Terrence 15:12
So it's about a 300 mile run of the Klamath River, that's pretty long. Um, a lot of diverse interests, the further down you come, you know, it starts out with all those farming and ranching communities. Then you have the Karuk Tribe's uppermost edge of their territory is Yreka [wy-REE-ca], that's right around the border. And then, you know, you get down to Happy Camps, ohms, Orleans, that's more the center of our service area at MKWC, and that's a lot more tribal communities, a lot more fishing communities, a lot more watershed restoration going on. And that's really our economic engine these days. And then when you get you know, out to the mouth, that's Yurok Tribal Territory and a lot of timber interests all down there. And out on the coast, you have commercial fishermen, so when, you know, in the whole pitched battle to remove dams, what you had often the narrative, that-that came out about that was, you know, fishermen versus farms . . .
Erica Terrence 16:12
. . . which is a pretty tough place to start.
Adam Huggins 16:19
So the long and short of it is, in the Lower Basin, you have fishermen, the tribes: Karuk, Hoopa, and Yurok, and small tight-knit communities of homesteaders and marijuana growers in the mountains, and in the Upper Basin, farmers and ranchers, and the Klamath Tribes as well, in between: dams. But there's one more critical piece to this puzzle.
Bill Tripp 16:41
[Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon] The Klamath is sometimes referred to as the "Western Everglades". The basin attracts 80% of the Pacific Flyway's waterfowl, and supports the largest overwintering population of Bald Eagles anywhere in the lower 48 states. It is also home to one of the most productive salmon river systems in the country.
Music 16:42
[Deep, plusing music overtakes piano]
Adam Huggins 17:04
The Klamath historically hosted incredible salmon runs, which the 49'ers and early settlers quickly began capitalizing on, after giving up their search for gold.
Media 17:13
[Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon] And of course, this region has a history long before settlers from the East came to it. It was already inhabited by Native communities that had lived in the Klamath Basin for 10,000 years, and who have a deep connection to this amazing place.
Bill Tripp 17:31
Well, I mean, there's there's a lot to that.
Music 17:34
[Guitar joins deep, driving music]
Adam Huggins 17:34
That, of course, is Bill Tripp, the Deputy Director of Eco-Cultural Revitalization for the Karuk Tribe. We spoke to him in our mini series "On Fire". Before the dams were built, all the tribes, up and down the river, carefully coordinated the Salmon Harvest through First Salmon Ceremonies.
Bill Tripp 17:53
Before the Salmon Ceremony, at [Native Placename] just up here and [Native Placename], before that no one, no one else fished. And then you know, after that Ceremony was done, then Runners would, would go down. And then the Yurok would build their wier and then they would start fishing. But that-that made sure that a lot of those first fish that could make it farther in, through the system, could make it.
Adam Huggins 18:23
This way, enough of the healthiest fish made it up river to spawn and ensure the future of the run. And then each tribe would be able to harvest what it needed, ever mindful of the needs of those tribes that were still upstream. At that time, the salmon were so abundant that it was said you could walk across the river-
Erica Terrence 18:40
-on the backs of buffalo and that's a reference to when people could walk across the rivers, you know, on the backs of the salmon. They were so densely packed in the rivers that . . . you could literally walk across.
Adam Huggins 18:53
It's hard to imagine today, that the salmon were so thick, you could walk across the river on their backs. And you can understand why, all of these tribes, all of these people, relied heavily on salmon year-round. And even so, when the settlers arrived, it seemed like there was just an unlimited amount of fish. That is, of course, until the dams were built.
Music 19:16
[Deep driving music returns to running water]
Erica Terrence 19:17
There were millions of salmon, right? And now we're talking like, the number of salmon that are supposed to get upstream and spawn is 29,000. And after 29,000, that's when they start allowing people to catch fish. And so, you know, in a good year, you might have 60,000, or something like that, but we often don't see good years. It's such a small number, you know, tribal people can barely feed their families and their elders are relying on fish from the previous year from the freezer, sometimes which is so demoralizing and demeaning and unjust. So it's it's really quite a-quite a change. We've experienced the-the decline in salmon populations is . . . affects everything here.
Bill Tripp 20:04
Just when I was a kid, it always just seemed like we always had plenty, of salmon, but even then, from what I understand, there's people told stories about, "I used to be able to walk across the river on their backs", and-and I never did-I remember seeing some really big fish caught, and they end up like Alaska-size fish caught in the Klamath River, [Indengious Placename] Falls and you just don't see that anymore. I mean, but we did see a couple years there, I mean, when I was young, I never did picture the whole walking across the rivers on the backs thing. But there was a couple of years where I saw you know, finally in my adult life, where-where, we saw a one-one or two week window where-I was just-there were so many fish-you can finally-I was like you can imagine what-what that was, I mean, I try to . . . so many fish that you'd try to dip 'em out of the falls and you couldn't even get your poles down through them and it's like, you know, missing them all, and you just wonder: how could I have missed that many fish? Yeah, you don't see that anymore.
Adam Huggins 21:10
And in the past few years, the bottom has fallen out on those low populations. For their annual First Salmon Ceremony, in 2017, for the first time, the Yurok tribe actually had to purchase salmon for the event, from Alaska.
Music 21:25
[Fades to silence, then a deep, bubbly oceanic soundscape rolls in]
Mendel Skulski 21:30
It's been months out at sea, swimming slowly and steadily towards your destination. And it hasn't been easy avoiding roving pods of killer whales and the beckoning hooks of longline fishermen. But at long last, you catch a familiar scent.
Music 21:46
[Rustic guitar cord, plays alongside the oceanic soundscape]
Mendel Skulski 21:48
Suddenly, you know this place, you've been here before, when you were just a smolt. And look, there's some other salmon too! They look different; they must be Coho. But over there, Chinook! They're all gathered in a big group together at the mouth of the river, so you head towards them.
Music 22:09
[Soundscape and guitar are supersceeded by a frantic whirlwind]
Mendel Skulski 22:10
But as you approach it becomes hard to breathe-your gills seize up, and you start to overheat-frantic, you struggle to reach the other Chinook, who are all gathered in a pocket of cold, oxygenated water.
Music 22:22
[Whirlwind gives way to a steady, upbeat drumline]
Adam Huggins 22:24
For most of the past few decades, stakeholders in the Upper and Lower Basins of the Klamath River have been locked in a series of caustic water wars.
Bill Tripp 22:34
[Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon] Now, let me tell you that the allocation of water in this basin has always been a source of enormous tension between the farmers and ranchers, the fishermen-both the in-stream fishermen and the offshore fishermen-and the tribes. Tribes want to be assured of their rights to continue fishing practices that they have passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years. Farmers and ranchers want to be sure that they will have water they need to sustain their operations that the families depend on for success. For decades, the tension over water has been accentuated in times of drought, culminating most famously in a standoff in 2001 that made national news. During that 2001 drought, irrigation water for the Klamath reclamation project was shut off [Sound of a valve shifting] to protect endangered fish species. Thousands of people gathered at Klamath Falls in sympathy with the farmers. There was civil disobedience, and people were worried about the possibility of violence. Vice President Cheney intervened and guaranteed water deliveries, rather than fish protections, and the result was the largest fish kill in US history.
Erica Terrence 23:47
Those guys upstream really, um, control a lot of what happens downstream. Farmers were so concerned that their crops would die off in such a drought year that they turned off the head gates at the top dam in the system and prevented water from coming downstream. And then, of course, what resulted was this 2002 fish kill. The mainstem Klamath River was so warm-and stressful for them-that they were looking for that little bit of cold water with oxygen in it. And they were also packed in so close together that they-you know-one got the disease and they all got the disease, and it was close to 80,000 adult salmon that died. And when you put that in perspective with the 29,000 number, it's really a big impact.
Music 24:37
[Fades to silence]
Bill Tripp 24:39
Meanwhile, agriculture was still damaged; families saw major losses and some had to sell their farms: there were no real winners. At the time, many people thought these issues were intractable, that the arguments and lawsuits would continue interminably, perhaps for generations to come. But a number of years years ago, a group of leaders in the community had the boldness to start rethinking how they framed their quest for water and the water wars.
Music 25:12
[Funky, bubbly water enters then gives way to the ocean soundscape]
Mendel Skulski 25:20
After what seems like a lifetime, you make it to the group of salmon, and you can breathe again. The water is cool, and there's enough oxygen to catch your breath. But as you look around at the other salmon packed into this little lens of water, you notice that they look stressed and ill. Something is wrong. Their gills: they're red and swollen with little white dots, and there's dead brown tissue around the edges. Panic starts to set in. When suddenly a wave of cool water flows over you, and the group disperses, headed upstream. You follow, feeling a sense of relief in this moment, but also trepidation.
Adam Huggins 25:59
When cool river water sits in reservoirs, in the sun, it heats up and can't hold as much oxygen. And in a drought year, when less water is coming downstream in the first place, and water is still being diverted for agriculture and industry, well, the temperature and oxygen levels in the mainstem of the river become lethal. Even for strong, relatively temperature tolerant Chinook Salmon. The fish are forced to crowd into the mouths of creeks, where bubbles of cool water can form. But crowding decreases oxygen levels even further, and increases the odds of parasite and disease transfer, which increases stress, which increases the odds of parasite and disease transfer, and so on. High temperatures, low oxygen and stressed fish, packed into small areas create conditions that favor the rapid spread of a parasite known as White Spot. [Latin Binomial] , often known as Ich [Ick] for short. Ich is a ciliate protozoan, whose adult stage feeds on the gills and skin of stressed fish, resembling a white spot. It can kill fish within 30 days, if secondary infections of columnaris-a freshwater flavobacterium-don't finish the job first. And this is exactly what happened in 2002. Now, as it happened, the 2002 fish kill coincided with the FERC relicensing process. Basically, dams need to be periodically relicensed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Committee in Washington DC, to remain in use. And the four dams on the Klamath, they have some problems, like they don't have fish ladders, which are required by law. So they're vulnerable. And the Lower Basin community senses that, and takes the opportunity to make a move on them.
Music 26:02
[Bubbles pitch shift up and give way to deep piano notes]
Erica Terrence 27:29
Basically, I would say that the effort the campaign to remove four dams on the Klamath started in 2001 when the dams-the license for those dams-was up for renewal with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. And the way that this campaign really catalyzed was a bunch of tribes overcoming their differences in this basin and saying, we're going to get dams out and we need to work together to do it. And so, all four tribes-who had some significant differences-took this trip, to send a delegation to Scotland-right?-when those dams were owned by Scottish Power.
Music 28:23
[Distant Bagpipes, possibly playing the Skye Boat Song]
Bill Tripp 28:23
Yes, I did go over there. That was, um, interesting. Yes, if there was one thing I did, was I came up with the idea to use recycled scotch barrels to cook our fish with, cuz you can-couldn't find firewood. You don't really allow open wood burning. And so, there's a ceremony on Calton Hill in Edinburgh, where they, there's a Celtic ceremony every year. And so, we end up getting permission from the Celtic people to build a fire on their sacred fireplace, and we got permission from the Scottish government to build the fire there, to cook fish and feed the people. And so we did. We had a bunch of wild Atlantic salmon and we built a fire. But we couldn't find wood, and so they're like, wow, what are we gonna do? What are we gonna do? And so, I guess that was probably my, my contribution was, oh, and it would seem like there would be recycled scotch barrels around here someplace. [Laughs] And sure enough, the whole truckload of these little oak, scotch-scotch soaked oak blocks, turned out pretty good. But just talking to the people there. Out in front of the shareholders meeting for Scottish power, was you know, people were coming up and taking our fliers and one person said, he said, "You know what? I'm on. I want one of those". And he said, "You know why I want one?". I said, "Why?". He said, "Because these things happen all the time, but usually when they do, this whole place is littered with flyers". He said, "I walked up and down the street a couple times while you guys went out here and I haven't seen a single one on the ground, so I want to know what you have to say". And I thought that was pretty interesting. So, it seemed like it was really, really well received from the people in that place.
Music 30:17
[Bagpipes fade away, a deep voice singing in an opera-like fashion fades in]
Erica Terrence 30:18
And Scottish Power was so . . . uncomfortable under the microscope that they sold off that, you know, albatross as fast as they could, to MidAmerican Energy, which owns PacifiCore, which is, MidAmerican energy is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, owned, majority of the shares, owned by Warren Buffett.
Adam Huggins 30:36
This sale was a major early victory for the tribes. But initially, the new owner, PacifiCore, isn't super excited about the idea of taking out the dams. After all, they just bought them. So it seems like to bring PacifiCore to the table, the stars have to align, which isn't exactly what happens. Instead, Hell freezes over. After the break . . .
Music 31:00
[Music reaches a conclusion and fades out, break]
Adam Huggins 31:10
So remember that FERC relicensing process? Well, that process catalyzed a series of discussions between . . . very unlikely bedfellows.
Adam Huggins 31:19
[Escalating, industiral music enters]
Bill Tripp 31:20
[Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon] Individuals representing parts of the community that had often been bitter enemies together, and they were talking about sitting down and hammering out a different vision for the future. To replace the lose/lose water battles of the past with something different.
Erica Terrence 31:38
It was a large group of stakeholders-out of necessity-that had to be at the table for that process. So it was, you know, the four major tribes so, Yurok, Hoopa, Karuk, Klamath tribes at the table, commercial fishing interests, and sport fishing interests, handful of environmental groups-or conservation groups-whatever you want to call them, government agencies, State, Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, BLM, BOR, Bureau of Reclamation had a lot to say about it, because they're so entrenched in how water is managed in the West, of course, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, they're really involved in all the biological opinions about what salmon need in rivers, and then of course, agricultural interests were at the table too, so you had federal irrigation districts, and you had individual farming and ranching interests at the table.
Music 31:47
[Music shines through with electronic, stellar tones]
Erica Terrence 32:08
So that was a lot of pretty . . . diverse needs and interests.
Bill Tripp 32:39
[Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon] Leaders from many different parts of the community, sitting down together, because as they said to me, you know, Senator, the only folks who are winning right now, are the lawyers.
Erica Terrence 32:51
A lot of things went out on the table pretty quickly, right? I mean, for example, PacifiCore doesn't want any liability for removing dams, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service has legal obligations to protect salmon. But they're also, you know, responsible for having created these federal irrigation districts and kind of caring for those irrigation districts' interests. And obviously, tribes had already been fighting tooth and nail and had, you know, for more water in the river: enough to prevent fish kills, like the one that happened in 2002.
Bill Tripp 33:22
[Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon] As we say, in the West, "Whiskey: that's for drinking and Water: that's for fighting". But these folks said, we are going to pursue a different path. And I pledged that if they were able to develop a solution, I would do everything I could at the federal level to help implement it.
Erica Terrence 33:43
So when I got in there, even though I had grown up here and was familiar with the place, in some ways, and the communities in some ways, was just a whole new world of a lot of lessons in politics, like a crash course in politics, and you know, I spent a lot of time listening and kind of interviewing people at the breaks, you know, we would like break for a caucus, for all the environmental groups to get on the same page or the tribal reps or-or the Ag guys to figure out how they wanted to respond to something and I would be busy, like pulling people aside and just trying to understand their perspectives to the point where I can form my own opinion about is the settlement good? Is it bad? Is it good enough? Like I said, they were not without contention. I ultimately raised the money and hired a couple of hydrologists to analyze those water models to make sure that there would be enough water in the river for fish. And we're running these really complex models to try to figure out how can we come up with water? Additional water, basically. Right? And, you know, a lot of the negotiating gets done at the bar, afterwards. It was a big lesson. Yeah. I mean, you know, a lot of that is about building trust, and you know, if you if you are going to the bar with the guy that used to be your enemy, you can;t probably completely hate him. You know, It's really about like, finding the inefficiencies in the system, you know, you can't like, make more water, and whether there's enough to go around . . . it has partly to do with how much you trust each other and how much you're willing to like, talk to your neighbor and take less than you think you should get just so the other guy gets by too.
Adam Huggins 35:20
But even with the stakeholders willing to take risks and come together to manage the system, collectively, there was still no guarantee that there'd really be enough water to support the salmon.
Erica Terrence 35:31
You need a minimum flow, there's like a floor number for fish to survive. And fish biologists at the tribes were looking at that and saying it's really not about the number, it's about getting the fluctuation in the hydrograph. Right? So you need the big water years in the winter to scour out the disease, the algae on the rocks, and to rearrange all the gravels that fish are going to spawn in, and to blow certain holes out, and build gravel bars and rock bars and other places, and create structure and complexity in the stream channel. That's really essential.
Music 36:06
[Music fades out and is replaced by a river flowing over rocks]
Mendel Skulski 36:09
You're swimming up river now, and the water is just bearable. It's tough going, but this is what you were born to do. And every fiber of your being is bent on working your way upstream, back to that riffle where you first came into the world.
Music 36:23
[Weird synthy noises fade in]
Mendel Skulski 36:24
Suddenly though, the water around you is filled with big chunks of green goo, giving the water and ugly smell and clouding up the way forward. As you swim, little bits of it break off and hang on your scales, trailing behind you. It's coating all of the rocks along the side of the river, and even spreading into the central flow.
Music 36:46
[Resolves with gentle gong noise, as ruminating, tonal music backdrops]
Adam Huggins 36:54
Toxic algae blooms have become a pretty common occurrence in the Klamath River. Locals are used to being able to swim in the river in the springtime, but by June, the algae builds up to levels they make the river pretty uninviting. Most folks will head to cooler tributaries to swim in the summertime, the same places where Coho Salmon tend to find refuge from the higher temperatures that exist in the main stem of the river.
Erica Terrence 37:09
And a water quality problem that became a centerpiece of the campaign to get the dams out was this toxic algae, this bright green-microcystis aeruginosa is the Latin name for it-and it's an algae bloom that produces a liver toxin, a hepatotoxin. And that can effect, a person, a dog, a deer-drinking from the river-a fisherman, whatever, you know, and it isn't something that will kill you right away, but it bio accumulates in your liver and can take years off your life. That algae species was found at levels 4000 times higher than the World Health Organization said was a moderate health risk. Because of solar radiation in those reservoirs, it's just a bathtub environment, right? It's the perfect conditions for that algae to thrive. You might get a little bit of it in a free flowing wild river, you know, but a very minimal amount and then it's-it's filtering itself a lot more, right? Sometimes you look at that river and you know you wouldn't want to get in it. You don't have to be a water quality scientists or work with the World Health Organization to know like, Nope! I should not swim in that.
Adam Huggins 38:20
After years of negotiations-almost a decade-in 2010, this large group of stakeholders come to an agreement that they can all get behind.
Bill Tripp 38:29
[Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon] So these stakeholders have developed a collaborative agreement and signed it, called the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement, or KBRA. The irrigators commit to reducing the total amount of water they take from the river, through a variety of conservation practices. They're working collaboratively with the community and these tribes to restore habitat. In exchange, they get certainty and predictability for guaranteed amounts of water. The tribes, and conservation groups, and fishing organizations agree to stop challenging these irrigators' water allocations, in exchange, they get a community partner to restore natural resources that are of cultural and economic importance to the tribe, and to help them reacquire some of the land they last 50 years ago; complementing all of this and augmenting the natural resource restoration, is a plan to remove four antiquated dams and open up new habitat for fish.
Adam Huggins 39:24
Around the same time, PacifiCore decides that taking out all the dams is in its best interest as well.
Media 39:29
[Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon] The private utility that owns these dams, agrees that the best business decision is to remove these dams. So this is a win-win situation, or actually a win-win-win-win situation.
Adam Huggins 39:46
Everything is set, the agreements are made. All that needs to happen now is congressional approval.
Music 39:53
[Fades out]
Erica Terrence 39:55
So the agreements needed congressional approval because some of the parties to the agreements were federal agencies, right?
Adam Huggins 40:03
This was in 2010, the year Republicans took the house on the back of the Tea Party, and Congress decided to obstruct pretty much everything.
Bill Tripp 40:11
[Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon] The development of the Klamath Basin restoration agreement is a historic step forward for the region, and if it were already in place, it would provide a powerful set of collaborative tools for dealing with droughts, for dealing with years when there is a shortage of water . . . But Congress has not yet acted. And those tools are not in place.
Adam Huggins 40:37
So again, that was Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon trying to convince Congress in 2010 to support the agreement, but no dice.
Erica Terrence 40:45
Some of the major roadblocks were these very ideological, entrenched folks in Siskiyou County...
Music 40:51
[Ride of the Valkyires Returns]
Erica Terrence 40:51
...who support dams on principle and even though these dams are hydroelectric dams, they don't provide any irrigation water, they don't provide any flood control, in fact, probably the opposite. They're kind of risky. They're still very opposed to dam removal, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. Some of them, their-their parents or their grandparents worked on building those dams. And it's just very hard to let go of dams representing progress, and, you know, there's that myth of dam-I mean, there are good dams and bad dams, for sure, on a much smaller scale, dams can be fine. But that myth of, you know, clean, green energy coming from dams of this size, and that, that power is easily replaceable by energy that would be at least as clean and green, much cleaner and greener, in fact.
Adam Huggins 41:38
And so, these vocal constituents and their Republican representatives in Congress, were able to prevent congressional ratification of the deal in 2010, and 2011, and 2012, 2013, 2014, and finally, in 2015, time had run out for the KBRA. The deal was set to expire completely if Congress ignored it again. And just imagine this agreement, with roots in a historic water crisis and fishkill, at the dawn of the new millennium, that has been painstakingly hammered out, and finally signed in 2010, nearly a decade later, this agreement sitting for five years in Congress, while the original stakeholders experienced drought year, after brutal drought year on the Klamath, and with fish populations dwindling, this agreement was about to fall apart. Here's Senator Merkley in 2014 making his final, desperate appeal:
Bill Tripp 42:35
[Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon] The Energy and Natural Resource committee voted the bill out of committee on a bipartisan basis. The Klamath County Chamber of Commerce has endorsed the bill, the Klamath County Farm Bureau has endorsed the bill, the Klamath County Cattlemen's Association, and the Statewide Oregon Cattlemen's Association have endorsed the bill. The Klamath Falls City Council has endorsed the bill, and the Oregon Water Resources Congress has endorsed the bill, the Senate has been ready to act. But the US House of Representatives has not. And so here we are, in the last days of this Congress, unable to complete this bill. They have done everything we could have ever asked the group to do to prepare for this legislation to be passed. But that cannot last forever, Congress has to act to seal the deal. Without cooperation, this vision so carefully, diligently, and painfully constructed over a years of involvement by community stakeholders will fall apart. This opportunity might not come again.
Adam Huggins 43:47
And Congress did nothing.
Music 43:50
[The final note of the Ride of the Valkyries plays before a quick fade to silence]
Music 43:50
[River running, with triumphant orchestral music backdropping]
Mendel Skulski 43:59
Muscles burning, you forge ahead through algae filled water, you've avoided parasites, predators, and suffocation. You are a King among King Salmon, after all. And as you swim, you imagine the beautiful gravel beds in the tributary stream where you hatched. You imagine the mates that you'll find there, and the thousands of fertilized eggs you'll produce together.
Music 44:23
[Quick bubbly noise]
Mendel Skulski 44:23
You imagine-
Music 44:24
[Silence]
Adam Huggins 44:27
But you're gonna have to hold that thought, because the dams are still there.
Erica Terrence 44:32
Well, as I said, fish can no longer get to that upper 100 plus miles of habitat. It's really great habitat, especially for Spring Chinook, a lot of tributaries that they would have utilized quite a bit.
Adam Huggins 44:45
So for now, everything is hanging in the balance.
Erica Terrence 44:49
For right now, what we're doing is this kind of stopgap, like keep Coho alive by building them these little ponds that they can survive in! You know, but ultimately, what we need is this bigger scale work, you know, that can only happen with dam removal.
Adam Huggins 45:02
But there is some hope on the horizon. And next episode, we're heading up to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington to see what might be possible for rivers like the Klamath.
Music 45:12
[Morphed bubbles, then an upbeat, confident jam fades in with previously recorded audio]
Adam Huggins and Mendel Skulski 45:18
[simultaniously] Jump! [Splash]
Adam Huggins 45:19
1-2-3:
Adam Huggins 45:24
Thanks for listening. We'll be back in a couple of weeks. Please tell everyone you know, subscribe, rate, and review the show, wherever podcasts can be found. It really helps us get the word out.
Mendel Skulski 45:35
In this episode, you heard: Ryan Hilperts, Erica Terrance, Bill Tripp, and Senator Jeff Merkley via c-span.
Adam Huggins 45:44
This has been an independent production of Future Ecologies. Our first season is supported, in part, by the Vancouver Foundation. If you'd like to help us make the show, you can support us on Patreon. We have a whole series of mini-episodes available to our supporters. To get access to them, head to Patreon.com/FutureEcologies.
Mendel Skulski 46:02
You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and iNaturalist. The handle is always Future Ecologies.
Mendel Skulski 46:09
[Music relaxes into a gentle, guitar rhythm]
Adam Huggins 46:10
Special thanks to Jose Isordia, Kirsty Johnstone Munroe Cameron, Ilana Fonariov, and Andrjez Kozlowski.
Mendel Skulski 46:18
Music in this episode was produced by: Brian D. Tripp, Loam Zoku, Kieran Fearing, Sour Gout, the Western Family String Band...
Adam Huggins 46:27
...the Clan Stewart Pipe Band...
Mendel Skulski 46:30
...and Sunfish Moonlight. You can find a full list of musical credits, show notes, and links on our website: FutureEcologies.net.
Adam Huggins 46:40
Finally, we'd like to extend our extra special thanks to Skyler Lindbergh and Vincent van Haaff for untangling some seriously garbled audio for us. We could not have done this episode without you. Thank you.
Music 46:52
[Guitar plays out into the jumping-into-the-water audio from earlier, people can be heard treading water]
Adam Huggins 47:00
Oh Barnacles! Oh that was great
47:10
Yeah!
Adam Huggins 47:13
I feel so
Mendel Skulski 47:14
[Laughs]
Adam Huggins 47:16
I feel so good
Female Voice 47:17
[Cries out as they leap into the water] Sorry! I keep forgetting I'm not supposed to make noise. I think I've just been introduced on your podca-[Laughs]
Mendel Skulski 47:26
Did you scream during the jump?
Female Voice 47:28
Yes! [Unintelligible]
47:28
[All laugh]
Adam Huggins 47:32
Oh my god.
Female Voice 47:34
We'll have to do it again then
Mendel Skulski 47:36
I could do that one more. You've already done it once
Female Voice 47:38
Okay, I'll be quiet
Transcribed by https://otter.ai and edited by Wren Hieu