Dams' Fate on Line
By John Driscoll, Eureka Times-Standard
September 20, 2006

The Klamath River is the guinea pig for a new provision of the Energy Act that allows dam owners to protest conditions imposed by fish and wildlife agencies.

A ruling expected this week will be the first glimpse of how that provision may work.

An administrative law judge oversaw a trial in Sacramento that may have profound effects on how the federal government proceeds with relicensing several dams on the Klamath River. Judge Parlen McKenna will decide issues like how much salmon spawning habitat is available above the dams and whether fish use fish ladders to get above the dams might spread disease to trout.

The hearing came after dam owner Pacificorp was issued draft conditions for procuring another 50-year license. Those included installing fish ladders, and fish screens to prevent young fish from getting sucked into turbines. It's possible that would cost $200 million or more.

Pacificorp argued that conditions are so poor in the reservoirs behind its dams that salmon wouldn't stand a chance. It advocated trapping adult fish below lowermost Iron Gate Dam and trucking them to clean tributaries above Upper Klamath Lake. Young fish would then be trapped and trucked downstream of the hydro project.

McKenna's ruling will determine the facts that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission uses in deciding the fate of the project. A parallel settlement process could also find a solution, but that could also be affected by McKenna's ruling.

”If you're going to be asked to spend $250 million, you should be able to expect that it's effective,” said Pacificorp spokesman Dave Kvamme in a recent interview.

The full trial-type hearing is a first, but others have gotten under way only to be settled.

This one involves a host of interests on the U.S. Interior and Commerce departments' side, including tribes, fishermen and environmentalists not often aligned with the government. Many of those interests want to see the dams come out.

The ruling also will come at the end of one of the worst salmon seasons on record, one considered a failure by the Commerce Department even before it ended. Fishermen up and down the West Coast saw the season slashed, and for hundreds of miles around the mouth of the Klamath there was no commercial fishing allowed. That was to protect an expected poor run of salmon, which have been struggling in poor water quality, with disease, and low flows in the river for years.

Yurok Tribe biologist Mike Belchik said that Pacificorp's argument that there is no fish habitat between the dams -- and so no reason to build fish ladders to those areas -- is cynical.

”They're saying that the mortality would be so high that they couldn't link to suitable habitat -- because of their dams,” Belchik said.

Despite the fact that Pacificorp has dropped several issues it had contested, McKenna has been weighing a mountain of information. The added complication of having to defend draft conditions has added a measure of uncertainty to the relicensing process, said Earthjustice attorney Jan Hasselman, and has forced the agencies to have to spend lots of money.

”I think in the future it's going to make the resource agencies that much more reluctant to stand up for scientifically sound conditions that protect wildlife and rivers,” Hasselman said.

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