Posted: Friday, February 12, 2010 12:00 AM
Good faith from the government
Editorial
It's refreshing to know the federal government is moving rapidly to answer big questions about removing dams from the Klamath River. It would have been a shame, given the three years of tough negotiations that went into last month's final version of the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement and the Klamath River Hydroelectric Settlement, if the feds had set it aside until Congress took up the key legislation needed for implementation.
But that's not what's happening. Last week's Klamath Science Conference in Medford, Ore., served up a vision of the federal work going forward right now. Even as regional stakeholders debate signing the two agreements, a team of 45 scientists and managers from three federal departments is gathering information that will effectively be the green light or the brake light to pulling out those hydroelectric dams.
Project leader Dennis Lynch, of the U.S. Geological Survey's Portland office, promised a fast track for the environmental and economic review. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has asked Lynch to deliver the completed package, including both federal and California-required environmental impact determinations, by November 2011.
Water has been flowing to farmers in the 200,000-acre U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Klamath Project since 1907. The hydroelectric dams, one in Oregon and three in California, began blocking the upper Klamath to migrating salmon less than a decade later. Boosters of the pact hope tearing down the concrete barriers will restore fish runs that have flirted with collapse in recent decades.
But will dam removal restore the fish? That's the key question Lynch's team will try to answer, along with a host of related impacts, from downstream sediment release to economic loss for the Siskiyou County government, where three of the power facilities are located.
We applaud this good faith effort by the Obama administration to go forward with the studies, and follow later with the implementing legislation if dam removal is found to be a sound decision.
It's also timely to remind those stakeholders reluctant to sign onto the deal that a lot of their questions will be asked by those making the federal review for Salazar.
Comments made about this article
Posted By: Danny Hull On: 2/15/2010
Title:
Pacific Power—per PacifiCorp and before--has been negligent about upgrading its hydropower facilities for riverway multiple use. Together the Klamath River hydroelectric dams have amply paid for each other, however upgrading of three of the dams for fish passage is long overdue. That upgrading may include new, modernly efficient turbines, and slightly reduced turbine water flow, to accommodate adequate constant fishway river flow. PacifiCorp has had three different owners in the past ten years, and is managed excessively for profit harvesting, without accomplishing sufficient financial investment in both initiating and upgrading clean renewable energy-powered electricity production, and in abandoning fossil fuel combustion-powered electricity production. Recently the U.S.A. Federal Government initiated a “fast track” study of the Klamath River hydroelectric dams, that will be due 11/2011, and that in my opinion should be for the purpose of determining, and reporting, the adequacy of the Klamath River hydroelectric dams for 50 years of recertification per the U.S.A. Federal Court fishway mandate for those dams; however Capital Press reports that “The federal government is on a fast track to decide if removing four Klamath River hydroelectric dams is the right idea.” The U.S.A. Secretary of the Interior has until spring 2012 for determining ". . . whether removal of PacifiCorp hydroelectric dams is in the public interest. A "yes" by Interior, and actions by Congress, would launch the dam removal in 2020. ”(Capital Press, February 14, 2010) Thus more taxpayer study expense in consequence of PacifiCorp negligence. Perhaps U.S.A. Federal Government ownership of the Klamath River dams, would provide better multiple river-use management of the dams, for the public welfare. May Pacific Power ratepayers afford a long term small rate increase to upgrade PacifiCorp hydroelectric dams? Pacific Power ratepayers are declared to on the average usually pay some of the lowest monthly electricity use rates of all U.S.A. electricity grid electricity users (e.g.: My Klamath Falls 01/2010 Pacific Power rate was 8.9¢/KWh, compared to California's 10/2009 average electricity use rate of 14.08¢/KWh), so I estimate that they certainly may. Klamath Lake has excellent irrigation water, because Klamath Lake water is naturally high in phosphorous. I estimate that without the Klamath River hydroelectric dams, very, very likely the Klamath River will often rapidly run too dry to accommodate maximum annual “A” Canal irrigation flow. (Link River blew dry on July 18, 1918, while “A” Canal was operational and three of the Klamath River hydroelectric dams didn't exist.) After only a few years of reduced or no “A” Canal irrigation flow, much Klamath Basin farmland, will as farmland, probably only be commercially viable for dry land agriculture at most, due to deficient harvests financial loss. Klamath Basin farmers shouldn't trust on Government subsidies being necessarily forthcoming adequate compensation, for any Klamath River low water-caused irrigation reduction years. Klamath River should be managed as a multiple-use river, and PacifiCorp is substantially failing to accomplish its responsibility in that way.