Advocates Urge Removal of Klamath Dams
By Winston Ross, Eugene Register-Guard
December 1, 2006

About 60 people turned out at a hearing in Newport on Thursday night to weigh in on a government hearing that could affect West Coast fishermen for the next half-century.

Problems on the Klamath River resulted in a drastic reduction of this year's commercial salmon season, a disaster declaration from the U.S. Secretary of Commerce and $1 million in emergency state aid for the Oregon fleet. Economists called it the second-worst salmon season since 1971.

Now the government is deciding whether to relicense dams in the Klamath Hydropower Project, a license that lasts for 50 years.

Last month, the energy commission released a draft of an environmental impact statement that considers the pros and cons of relicensing the PacifiCorps-owned dams, including alternatives.

What the draft doesn't consider - at least not as an official alternative - is what most of the speakers who took the lectern Thursday night asked for: removing all four major dams.

"The scientists, the American people are telling you they want these salmon back. They're a product that can't be replaced. You can't go to China and get these salmon," said Henry DeRonden-Pos, a commercial salmon fisherman. "These dams are old, antiquated antiques that need to go away. Hopefully you people will do your job and get the Klamath River back on its feet again."

Attendees of the hearing told the federal agency's representatives to change the draft to include a look at the dam removal option, echoing the recommendation of two other major entities: the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Pacific Fishery Management Council.

"The issues involved with the Klamath dams have long-term, far-reaching implications, not only for the basin but the entire West Coast," said Michael Becker, a Newport troller. "If we get this wrong and lose the salmon, there's no way back."

Onno Husing, director of the Oregon Coastal Zone Management Association, argued that the collateral damage of a closed salmon season outweighs the economic benefits of keeping dams.

This year, Husing said, "what had been a $10 million fishery went down to $2.5 million, and that's just the ex-vessel value. Our economists estimate if you start talking about the ripple effects, the money could be somewhere between $20 (million) and $30 million."

That the dam relicensing would come up during the same time period as the fishery failure "was almost an act of God," Husing said.

"Finally, the Klamath River salmon caught a break," Husing said. "If these dams were never built, would you permit them to be there? I would submit the answer is no."

PacifiCorps spokesman Dave Kvamme said in a telephone interview earlier in the day that the federal government has never ordered a dam removal, and that his company was eager to reach a settlement that would satisfy its Northern California customers' power needs and those who rely on a healthy salmon run.

"We have reached settlement outcomes in six other drainages successfully," Kvamme said.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission staff's recommendation was to haul young salmon by truck to healthier watersheds and raise them elsewhere, an idea derided by many of the speakers Thursday night.

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