A Fighting Chance for the Klamath
By Glen Martin, San Francisco Chronicle
April 2, 2006

These are times of both deep despair and unprecedented hope for California's $100 million salmon industry. Despair, because a federal agency is expected this week to recommend either canceling or severely curtailing the 2006 commercial and sport fishing seasons because of collapsing stocks on the Klamath River. Hope, because for the first time in years, genuine progress is being made on a long-term solution to the problem.

Though the situation is mired in competing scientific theories, lawsuits and political skirmishing, the bottom line is fairly simple: There are plenty of Chinook salmon in the ocean now, but most of them originated in the Sacramento River. Salmon from the Klamath River, once a producer of millions of fish, are at all-time lows, compelling federal protections. Fewer than 30,000 Klamath Chinook salmon are expected to return to the river this year, well below the 35,000 fish biologists say are needed to sustain the runs.

And because both populations mingle in the open sea, fishing for Sacramento River Chinook could imperil the Klamath salmon that remain. Though some biologists say part of the decline is due to poor marine conditions, most researchers say the main problem with the Klamath's salmon is the river itself. Over the years, it has become inhospitable to fish. Much of its water is diverted for agriculture,reducing flows critical to salmon.

The water that remains is excessively warm, heated by reservoirs in the river's upper reaches. It is also contaminated with both natural and agricultural nutrients, as well as a toxic blue-green algae that thrives in the tepid reservoirs. "There are a whole host of challenges," said Steve Thompson, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's operations director for California and Nevada. "The simple fact is that more demands have been put on the river than it can support."

Poor river conditions have beleaguered the river's salmon for decades, but things came to an ugly head in September 2002, when warm water and infestations of a small aquatic parasite, Ceratomyxa shasta, killed about 70,000 mature Chinook and an unknown number of Coho salmon. The next spring, low water and parasites wiped out thousands of young salmon.

Though the two incidents are not directly related, the fish kills came on the heels of a farmer rebellion. After a court decision in 2000 that deprived them of water, basin irrigators staged protests. The next year, the Bush administration turned the spigot back on to the fields, again reducing water availability for fish. And now, with the Pacific Fishery Management Council poised this week to recommend to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce to close all or most of the 2006 season, commercial, tribal and sport fisheries face oblivion.

Restaurants and consumers also will feel the pinch. Nor are farmers secure. A federal court last week directed immediate implementation of a plan to increase flows to the river to protect Coho salmon, a Pacific Coast species smaller than the Chinook, which is listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

Further demands could be made on agricultural water to sustain the Klamath's Chinook runs and provide more water to the Klamath and Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuges, two important reserves for migratory waterfowl. Though stakeholders have fought in the past, the current situation has drained much of the bile from the dialogue. If there is a silver lining to the cloud threatening the salmon season, it is this: Everyone is desperate for a solution, and compromise seems possible as never before.

Two things have made an agreement possible. First, in April, the major hydropower dams on the river are scheduled for a 50-year reauthorization by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. If the dams are to be improved for fish passage -- or removed entirely – it has to happen now, under new guidelines issued by the commission.

The dams are owned by PacifiCorp, which has applied to the commission for their relicensing. Ultimately, FERC could approve relicensing the dams, which would allow them to operate for the next five decades. Or it could require such expensive fish passage mitigation that PacifiCorp might negotiate for dam removal.

Just as significant as dam relicensing are discussions among farmers, fishermen, native tribes, environmentalists, federal and state regulatory agencies, and local governments. "For the first time, people in the watershed are having a tough, respectful dialogue about solutions," Thompson said.

The weather is still cold and blustery in the river's upper basin, and irrigation is weeks off. But water is foremost in the farmers' thoughts. "I think it's becoming clear that government isn't going to be able to find a solution for this," said Mike Byrne, a cattle rancher from Malin, a minuscule town just north of the Oregon/California border. "I think the people are going to have to do it."

Byrne, whose family has been ranching in Malin since the late 19th century, said the only way to devise a settlement is "to make sure everyone is taken care of, that no one group bears the entire burden." For fisheries advocates, dam removal tops the "must do" list.

"There's every good reason to take Iron Gate and Copco (dams) out," said Glen Spain, the president of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, referring to the two largest reservoirs on the river. "They heat the river to lethal levels, and they're breeding grounds for toxic algae and C. shasta, the parasite that kills the salmon."

Environmentalists were cheered last week when the U.S. Department of the Interior and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration called for fish passage around the dams. The positions of the agencies bolster the cause for dam removal, because fish ladders are widely viewed as an inadequate remedy to the Klamath's problems.

PacifiCorp hasn't yet indicated its position. David Kvamme, a spokesman for PacifiCorp, said the company has been involved in dam relicensing on six northwestern rivers, and has agreed to dam removal on three of them. "We are involved in confidential talks with Klamath stakeholders right now, so we can't discuss details," Kvamme said. "But we're open to anything that is practical and in the interests of our customers, shareholders and the state commissions that work with us."

The dams deliver electricity to the basin. But that doesn't mean the agricultural community would necessarily oppose dam removal, said Greg Addington, executive director of the Klamath Water Users Association.

"We need to know we have guarantees on water, and, if the dams come out, on power from other sources,'' Addington said. "And if (federally endangered or threatened fish) return to the basin, we may need protection from endangered species regulation. But if we can be sure we have a safe harbor, nothing is off the table."

Water releases also are a point of contention. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation says it diverts up to 300,000 acre feet of water from the Klamath system for farmers. The Oregon Water Resources Department has assessed the amount at about 400,000 acre feet. In any event, Reclamation notes, that's only about 5 percent of the river's average annual flow.

But Paul Heikkila, a biologist with Oregon State University, said the figures are deceptive. "They basically incorporate all the water that goes down the watershed, including the huge runoffs from winter storm events," Heikkila said.

The real issue, Heikkila said, is the timing of releases. Currently, he said, the bureau holds back water during the late winter and early spring, when young salmon need higher flows. "And they also provide insufficient summer flows, allowing the river to heat up and encourage C. shasta infestation in returning adult fish," he said.

Perhaps no group feels the paucity of Klamath fish more acutely than the three Indian tribes -- the Karuk, Hupa and Yurok -- which live on ancestral lands below Iron Gate Reservoir.

For the Yurok, the Klamath's fish -- not just salmon, but sturgeon, steelhead trout, suckers and lamprey eels -- have been a source of both physical and spiritual sustenance. The tribe -- which is a key participant in the current stakeholder negotiations -- has enforced conservation fishing closures on its own members. But despair among the Yuroks runs deep as stocks continue to dwindle. "I go on my back deck and look at the river, and all I feel is horror," said Ray Mattz, a tribal councilman.

Salmon was once the essential staple for the Yuroks, said tribal member Tommy Willson -- but now, he said, there aren't even enough fish to use as sacraments during religious ceremonies "I've fished on this river all my life," said Willson, who started a program to provide Yurok elders with smoked salmon.

"The elders were so happy when they started getting fish from us," he said. "But in the last few years, the salmon numbers have been so low that we can't take care of all the old people who need our help. For us, that's a terrible thing."

On any given day, several tribal members can be found working the mouth of the Klamath River. Right now, they're setting gill nets for steelhead and snagging eel-like lampreys with handmade gaffs that have handles carved to represent the lamprey's distinctive head -- tubular, with circular gill openings and a sucker-like mouth.

On the beach near the Klamath's mouth recently, Mattz chatted with Glenn and Dennis Scott, Yuroks who were trying to catch a few lamprey and steelhead. "No luck so far," said Glenn Scott, who remained sunny and optimistic despite the poor fishing. "When I was younger, you could come out here and fill four or five gunnysacks with eels," Scott said. "Now, you're lucky to catch one for supper."

His nephew, Dennis, pulled a gill net, hoping a steelhead or two might be entwined among the mesh. The only thing he caught was a large log. "See more and more of those," he said, "and fewer and fewer fish."

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, and as defined under the provisions of "fair use", any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment for non-profit research and for educational use by our membership.

Will There be Salmon?
By Hedi Walters, Northcoast Journal
March 30, 2006

The Pacific Ocean may be closed to salmon fishing this year, and fisherman are demanding that the federal government finally attend to the behemoths they say have led their industry to the brink of disaster -- the fish-blocking, water-mucking old dams on the Klamath River (although the dams operators may beg to differ on some of these points).

Ocean commercial and sport fishermen, along with commercial and subsistence tribal river fishermen from the Hupa, Yurok, Karuk and Klamath tribes and others, rallied in Oregon and at the state capitol in Sacramento earlier this month. And on Tuesday, they rallied outside the Pacific Fisheries Management Council's meeting in Santa Rosa.

A ban on ocean salmon fishing along the Oregon and California coast is one of three fishing season options being weighed by the PFMC, which meets April 2-7 to hash out a final decision. The other two options, only slightly more palatable, offer variations of severe restrictions. All are aimed at protecting the Klamath River Chinook, whose number of returning fall spawners have dropped in the past few years. The PFMC's March 28 meeting was one of a couple of public sessions before it entered its week-long deliberations. After that, it will make recommendations to the National Marine Fisheries Service, which makes the final call.

Mike Hudson, president of the Small Boat Commercial Salmon Fishing Association, said prior to the rally that the feds need to embrace a long-term solution -- namely, removing four Klamath River dams that for decades have blocked spawning salmon from upper reaches and tributaries as well as contributed to poor water quality downriver.

"We would like to be able to fish this season, but that is not what this rally is about," Hudson said. "This is about bringing all the diverse interests together to make a unified statement to the federal government that we need to fix that river. We need to have enough water for the fish -- clean water, and cool water. It makes no sense to curtail fishing in the ocean if the surviving fish from the ocean return to the river where they die, where they cannot spawn."

He and many others blame the dams for encouraging toxic algae growth in a chief upstream reservoir as well as in the river. And, regulation of the water flows through Iron Gate Dam has often led to insufficient flows for a healthy downstream fishery. Major fish die offs in the river in 2002 and 2003 have been blamed on low flows, overly warm water and a parasite that already stressed fish fell victim to.

Short term, some fishermen are seeking federal disaster relief to allay the costs to the fishing and support industries incurred by a depressed or closed season. Others are pushing for an emergency rule to allow them to fish even just a little this year. Eureka salmon and crab fisherman Dave Bitts said that if he were offered a choice between no fishing coupled with disaster relief, or a little fishing and no disaster relief, he'd choose a little fishing.

"It gives fishermen and support businesses a chance to survive," he said. "If there's no fishing, they're belly up." He said disaster relief might not be enough to encourage all the support industries to stick around for better times. And he said the effects of fishing a few thousand Klamath Chinook wouldn't "make that big a difference biologically to justify terminating a fishery." He said there've been seven smaller runs of fall spawners in the past. "There's been at least three years of significantly fewer spawners than what we're proposing this year that produced very well for the next cycle."

Hudson, however, doesn't have much hope even in the reduced-fishing scenario. "Even if we get an emergency regulation passed so we can gofishing, we would be so restricted that we would be operating at 25 percent of our income. That's the commercial fishermen. " The sports fishermen -- party boats, guides -- would likewise suffer. "And the tribal fishermen -- they all live off the fish." By law, tribal fishermen are allotted 50 percent of the fishable Klamath stock, if there is any. "In previous years, we all had a pie to fight over, over who gets the biggest slice. This year, there's only one piece. We'd all go hungry."

That's why at Tuesday's rally he was pushing for serious attention to a long-term solution -- removing the dams. "The dams ... were put in with the promise that they would have fish passage," Hudson said. "That never happened. They provide minimal electricity, they're antiquated, and there's no fish passage."

Bitts, who served 25 years on the Klamath Task Force -- formed ostensibly to fix the river's problems, but falling short of the goal -- agrees that some dams have to be dealt with. "As long as the two Copcos [I and II] and Iron Gate are there, we're gonna have the serious water quality problems on the river," Bitts said. But, he said, he doesn't want to put out of business any upstream farmers "who do it just to breathe -- cuz that's how I feel about fishing."

He praised a recent joint declaration by three former Klamath River system adversaries -- the Yurok and Karuk tribes in the lower basin, and the Klamath Water Users Association (upper basin irrigators) -- to work together, civilly, toward a solution amenable to all.

The dams have held center stage especially over the past year, as they undergo re-licensing by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The dams are operated by PacifiCorp, owned by Scottish Power up until last week when new owner, MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company, took over. In tandem with that formal re-licensing process, Klamath River stakeholders -- from upper basin irrigators to downstream fishermen -- have been meeting in independent, less-formal sessions.

What MidAmerican management -- some members of which have been freshly installed at its new subsidiary, PacifiCorp -- has to say about dam removal remains vague. Such inquiries are referred to PacifiCorp's old guard, for now. PacifiCorp's David Kvamme said re-licensing negotiations between stakeholders are confidential.

"We're aware that many parties would like to remove our dams," he said. "And we haven't said no in the settlement process. We want to keep our options open." He said PacifiCorp has agreed to remove three dams -- in Washington state, Oregon and Utah -- but that they were smaller than the dams on the Klamath. "At 151 megawatts, the Klamath Project is the third-largest hydroelectric project we operate, and it supports 70,000 residential customers a year. Some people say that's insignificant, but it's not to those 70,000 customers."

While the dams issue promises a protracted debate, a related issue -- fishermen's, tribes' and conservationists' demands for increased flows in the river below Iron Gate -- met with victory on Monday when a federal judge ruled that enough water must be released in drought years or years of average rainfall -- even if it means Klamath Basin farmers get no water -- to support the coho salmon fishery.

The coho is federally listed as a threatened species. That ruling, in turn, could benefit the Chinook and other fish species. Earthjustice, a legal advocacy group, filed the suit on behalf of fishing and conservation groups and tribes.

But while that's good news for future seasons, at least as far as water quantity is concerned, it doesn't much help matters for fishermen this year -- on the ocean, or in the river. Dave Hillemeier, a fisheries biologist with the Yurok tribe, said the tribe faces a second year of no commercial fishing, as well as drastically reduced subsistence fishing.

"The one thing we are certain of is that the season is going to be so limited we won't meet their subsistence needs," Hillemeier said. "We also know there will be hardship with the spring Chinook fishery."

While federal agencies don't manage for spring Chinook the way they do for fall Chinook, the Yurok tribe does self-impose restrictions when the runs are low. This year, the tribe will close the river fishery for three days a week to protect the spring Chinook as well as green sturgeon.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, and as defined under the provisions of "fair use", any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment for non-profit research and for educational use by our membership.

River May Flow Again, Full of Salmon
By Blaine Harden, Washington Post
April 2, 2006

SEATTLE -- Big rivers in the West are reliable sources of bad news. Dammed for electricity and drained for irrigation, they have pushed salmon into extinction, fishermen into bankruptcy and Indians into despair.

This dismal pattern, though, may be ending on the Klamath, which straddles the Oregon- California border and has long been one of the nation's most thoroughly fouled-up rivers. Its woes include massive fish kills, blooms of poisonous algae, diabetic Indians, fuming irrigators, litigious environmentalists and aging dams that produce little power while squatting stolidly in the way of reviving the river.

Two decisions last week -- one by a federal court in California, the other by the Bush administration -- raise the surprising possibility that the Klamath may overcome many of these troubles. For the first time in the nearly eight decades since the river was dammed, Indians and commercial fishermen, environmentalists and federal fish scientists agree that there are sound reasons to believe in the comeback of a river that once supported the third largest salmon runs on the West Coast.

"After a lot of grim years, this was a big week for us," said Craig Tucker, a spokesman for the Karuk, a tribe whose salmon-centered existence collapsed when the river was dammed. Tribal members have since skidded into an epidemic of obesity, heart disease and early-onset diabetes.

"People may look back on this past week and say that is when things really turned around for fish in the Klamath," said Brian Gorman, a spokesman for National Marine Fisheries Services, the federal agency charged with protecting endangered fish.

"It feels hopeful, and it feels different," said Kristen L. Boyles, a staff lawyer for Earthjustice, which has often sued the Bush administration to protect West Coast salmon. "Credit is due the government scientists who are finally saying the right thing and the politicians who are allowing them to say it."

For generations, the Klamath has had two overarching problems: low flows of water as a result of irrigation diversions and dams that block migrating salmon, and also make the river an unnaturally warm breeding ground for fish-killing bacteria and algae.

Salmon runs have plummeted from historic highs of a million fish a year in the early 1900s to a prediction this year of fewer than 30,000. Three consecutive years of such near-record low returns of adult salmon are forcing the likely closure this year of commercial and sport fishing in all areas where Klamath chinook salmon might be caught. A decision is expected this week. If it occurs, it would be one of the largest and most costly fishery closures in West Coast history, affecting 700 miles of the Oregon-California coastline.

A federal court ruling last week, however, may go a long way toward solving the problem of lethal low flows in future years.

In Oakland, U.S. District Court Judge Saundra B. Armstrong ordered that the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which operates one of the nation's oldest irrigation projects on the Klamath, must limit the quantity of water sucked out of the river for farmers in dry years. There are scientifically set minimum flows needed to protect migrating salmon, the judge ordered, and the federal government cannot fiddle with them.

This was a repudiation of Bush administration policy. During a severe drought in 2002, the administration -- with Karl Rove, the president's senior adviser, personally championing the cause of farmers -- gave the Klamath federal irrigation project its normal allotment of water. Salmon were left to bear the brunt of the drought. That fall, in a fish kill that made national headlines, more than 30,000 adult salmon died. The state of California blamed it on low river flows, warm water, crowding of fish and an outbreak of bacterial disease.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit last fall found the Bush administration's plan for operating the Klamath to be in conflict with the "underlying science" of salmon biology. Implementing that finding last week, Armstrong ordered the federal government to come up with a "new biological opinion based on the current scientific evidence."

Environmental groups and Indian tribes said the fish have won what they need to survive, while irrigators said that they have been pushed into a new era of uncertainty. Dry years, said Greg Addington of the Klamath Water Users Association, "are going to be very tough."

As for the four large dams that block salmon passage, it was the Bush administration's own fisheries experts who demanded last week that the privately owned dams either be removed or rebuilt in a hugely expensive way that allows fish passage.

The decision surprised environmentalists because the Bush administration in recent years has insisted that hydroelectric dams on some Western rivers are part of the "environmental baseline." During visits to federal dams on the Snake River in Washington state, Bush has personally vowed that they would never be removed -- despite environmentalists' assertions that they are marginal power producers and responsible for the extinction of salmon.

But the Klamath, as of last week, seems to be different, as far as the federal government is concerned.

"Dam decommissioning and dam removal," the Department of Interior and the National Marine Fisheries Service declared last week, "would go a long way toward resolving decades of degradation where Klamath River salmon stocks are concerned."

In its prescription for relicensing Klamath dams, whose license expired in March, the federal government is pushing the dam owner into what may be a financially untenable position: Get started on what would be the largest dam demolition project in U.S. history, or spend about $200 million on fish ladders and other fish-passage equipment. The annual value of electricity produced by the four dams is only about $27 million, according to the California Energy Commission.

The dams' owner is PacifiCorp, a Portland, Ore., company that was recently acquired by MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., a company owned by Warren E. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

As of now, PacifiCorp wants to keep the dams in the river producing electricity, and it does not believe that spending $200 million for fish ladders will help revive salmon runs, said Dave Kvamme, a company spokesman.

PacifiCorp, though, has a record for flexibility when it comes to the labyrinthine process of renewing a federal license to operate a dam. It has recently agreed to remove three dams in the Pacific Northwest. For the past two years, it has been in private settlement talks with other stakeholders on the Klamath.

Federal biologists believe that those settlement talks -- in the aftermath of the court ruling and administration demand last week -- may soon produce a breakthrough for the Klamath.

"We have an historic doorway that is opening here," said Steve Thompson, California-Nevada operations manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "It is potentially very good for everybody who lives on the river."

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, and as defined under the provisions of "fair use", any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment for non-profit research and for educational use by our membership.