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.

Find shownotes, sources, and musical credits at https://www.futureecologies.net/listen/fe1-9-swimming-upstream

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.

– – –

💖 Support Future Ecologies: join our community on Patreon at futureecologies.net/patrons

[Water rushing over river rocks, steady guitar begins to

fade in, before a spash, after which, watery-guitar music

underscores the audio]

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

What would you like to see in terms of human

relations on a place in 20 years? And then backcast and

What seeds do we need to be planting right now?

[Bass tones break through, then music becomes more

pensive]

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.

[Guitar breaks through, strongly underscores following

dialogue]

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.

[Guitar cords play, building momentum, playing over

recorded dialogue]

Ready?

Ready.

1-2-3:

[simultaneously] Jump! [spalsh]

[Stops, river water returns as soundscape]

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...

[Ride of the Valkyries enters and underscores]

...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.

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.

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.

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 . . .

. . . [Warrior-like] The floodgates

open!

[Explosive water breaking free and spilling forth, Ride of

the Valkyries fades out beneath it]

And damn metaphors aside, all hell breaks

loose.

[Intense, pulsating music underscores]

[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.

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?

In this two part series, we're going to look at

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:

Swimming Upstream.

[Pensive, electronic music continues]

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.

[Pensive electronic music fades out]

[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

Say a prayer for the homeground:

mountains the oceans and trees.

Say a prayer for the homeground:

[Indigenous Music

[A thunderstorm break

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 swu has taken you further an

further from that river, ou into the unknown, the majesti

Northern Pacific Ocean. You'v spent years gorging on krill an

copepods, herring, and rockfish you've grown, you're plump, fat

and swimming free

[Indigenous Music fades out, replaced by tembling,

creeking music]

But something feels missing: you're the only

one of your hundreds of brothers and sisters who have survived

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.

It's still a bit of a mystery how salmon do this,

but a recent publication on Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser

[Tembling music resolves]

River suggests that salmon navigate their way towards the

river they were born in usi g, at least in part, the E

rth's magnetic field. From the e, it appears they use olfacto

y and other sensory clues t find their natal stream. But t

is is a mystery for anothe day. Today, I'm going to ask

ou to join me one more time n the Northwest corner of Cali

ornia known as the Klamath Kno . And this time, Senator Jeff M

rkley of Oregon is going to h lp me tell you all abo

[Vibrant, "good-ol-days" fiddle music underscores]

[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.

And here to tell the story of the Klamath River,

local resident Erica Terrance.

I'm Erica Terrence and I was born and

raised on the Salmon River, which is 15 miles from here, up

river.

Erica is also the Outreach and Development

Coordinator for the Mid Klamath Watershed Council,

affectionately known as MKWC [Mik-wic].

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.

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.

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.

[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.

These farming and ranching communities live mostly

in what is referred to as, "The Upper Basin".

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.

[Jumpy fiddle music is slowly overtaken by water

running over rocks]

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.

And down near the mouth, you don't have a

really broad river delta, you have still a pretty tight little

bottleneck.

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

that's one of the things that makes it special.

The plains are upstream, the mountains are downstream, and

four major dams.

[Running water is overtaken by a somber piano

cord, piano continues underneath]

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.

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.

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 . . .

. . . which is a pretty tough place to start.

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.

[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.

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.

[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.

Well, I mean, there's there's a lot to that.

[Guitar joins deep, driving music]

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.

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.

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-

-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.

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

[Deep driving music returns to running water]

built.

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.

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

how could I have missed that many fish?

Yeah, you don't see that anymore.

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.

[Fades to silence, then a deep, bubbly oceanic soundscape

rolls in]

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.

[Rustic guitar cord, plays alongside the oceanic

soundscape]

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.

[Soundscape and guitar are supersceeded by a frantic

whirlwind]

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.

[Whirlwind gives way to a steady, upbeat drumline]

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.

[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.

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

[Fades to silence]

impact.

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.

[Funky, bubbly water enters then gives way to the

ocean soundscape]

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

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

When cool river water sits in reservoirs, in the

trepidation.

[Bubbles pitch shift up and give way to deep piano

sun, it heats up and can't hold as much oxygen. And in a drought

notes]

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 o

parasite and disease transfer and so on. High temperatures

low oxygen and stressed fis , packed into small areas crea

e conditions that favor the rap d spread of a parasite known

s White Spot. [Latin Binom al] , often known as Ich [Ick]

or short. Ich is a ciliate prot zoan, whose adult stage feeds

n the gills and skin of stresse fish, resembling a white spot.

It can kill fish within 30 d ys, if secondary infect

ons of columnaris-a fre hwater flavobacterium-don't fin

sh the job first. And this is xactly what happened in 2002.

ow, as it happened, the 2002 fi h kill coincided with t

e FERC relicensing process. Bas cally, dams need to be periodic

lly relicensed by the Federal nergy Regulatory Commit

Basically, I would say that the effort the

ee in Washington DC, to remain in use. And the four dams on the

Klamath, they have some probl ms, like they don't have fish

ladders, which are required b law. So they're vulnerable

And the Lower Basin communi y senses that, and takes the o

portunity to make a mov

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.

[Distant B

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.

[Bagpipes fade away, a deep voice singing in an

opera-like fashion fades in]

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.

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 reaches a conclusion and fades out, break]

So remember that FERC relicensing process? Well,

that process catalyzed a series of discussions between . . .

very unlikely bedfellows.

[Escalating, industi

[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.

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, Ka

[Music shines through with electronic, stellar tones]

uk, Klamath tribes at the t ble, commercial fishing interest

, and sport fishing interests, h ndful of environmental gro

ps-or conservation groups-wha ever you want to call

hem, government agencies, State, Federal Bureau of Indian

ffairs, BLM, BOR, Bureau of Rec amation had a lot to say abo

t it, because they're so ent enched in how water is managed i

So that was a lot of pretty . . . diverse

the West, of course, the US Fis and Wildlife Service, they're r

ally involved in all the biolo ical opinions about what s

lmon need in rivers, and th n of course, agricultural inter

sts were at the table too so you had federal irrigatio

districts, and you had indivi ual farming and ranching inte

ests a

needs and interests.

[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.

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

enough to prevent fish kills, like the one that

happened in 2002.

[Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon] As we say, in

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.

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.

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.

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 fades out and is replaced by a river flowing over

rocks]

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.

[Weird synthy noises fade in]

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.

[Resolves with gentle gong noise, as ruminating, tonal

music backdrops]

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.

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.

After years of negotiations-almost a decade-in

2010, this large group of stakeholders come to an

agreement that they can all get behind.

[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.

Around the same time, PacifiCore decides that

taking out all the dams is in its best interest as well.

[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.

Everything is set, the agreements are made. All

that needs to happen now is congressional approval.

[Fades out]

So the agreements needed congressional

approval because some of the parties to the agreements were

federal agencies, right?

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.

[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.

So again, that was Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon

trying to convince Congress in 2010 to support the agreement,

but no dice.

Some of the major roadblocks were these very

ideological, entrenched folks in Siskiyou County...

[Ride of the Valkyires Returns]

...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.

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:

[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.

And Congress did nothing.

[The final note of the Ride of the Valkyries plays

[

before a quick fade to silence]

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.

[Quick bubbly noise]

You imagine-

[Silence]

But you're gonna have to hold that thought,

because the dams are still there.

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.

So for now, everything is hanging in the

balance.

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.

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.

[Morphed bubbles, then an upbeat, confident jam fades in

[simultaniously] Jump! [Splash]

1-2-3:

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.

In this episode, you heard: Ryan Hilperts, Erica

Terrance, Bill Tripp, and Senator Jeff Merkley via c-span.

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.

You can also follow us on Facebook,

Instagram, and iNaturalist. The handle is always Future

Ecologies.

[Music relaxes into a gentle, guitar rhythm]

Special thanks to Jose Isordia, Kirsty Johnstone

Munroe Cameron, Ilana Fonariov, and Andrjez Kozlowski.

Music in 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. You can find a full

list of musical credits, show notes, and links on our website:

FutureEcologies.net.

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.

[Guitar plays out into the jumping-into-the-water audio

from earlier, people can be heard treading water]

Oh Barnacles! Oh that was great

Yeah!

I feel so

[Laughs]

I feel so good

[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]

Did you scream during the jump?

Yes! [Unintelligible]

[All laugh]

Oh my god.

We'll have to do it again then

I could do that one more. You've already done it

once

Okay, I'll be quiet