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Posted on 09/30/2009 7:54:18 AM PDT by SmithL
In what is being touted as the world's biggest dam-removal project, an agreement was reached Tuesday to remove four dams on the Klamath River and restore a 300-mile migratory route for California's beleaguered salmon.
The tentative agreement was reached after a decade of negotiations among 28 parties, including American Indian tribes, farmers, fishermen and the hydroelectric company that operates the dams and distributes the water. The plan would set in motion one of the most ambitious efforts in U.S. history to restore the habitat of a federally protected species if it receives final approval by the parties in December, as expected.
The dams - Iron Gate, Copco 1, Copco 2 and J.C. Boyle - have blocked salmon migration for a century along the California-Oregon border and have been blamed for much of the historic decline of chinook and coho salmon and steelhead trout in the Klamath. Under the plan, the dams operated by the utility, PacificCorp, would be dismantled beginning in 2020.
The ultimate goal of the so-called Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement is to restore what has historically been the third-largest source of salmon in the lower 48 states, behind the Columbia and Sacramento rivers. Chinook once swam all the way up to Upper Klamath Lake in Oregon, providing crucial sustenance to American Indians, including the Yurok, Karuk, Klamath and Hoopa Valley tribes.
"This is the deal that we have all been working on for 10 years," said Steve Rothert, the California director of American Rivers, a national nonprofit river conservation group. "There were a lot of people who didn't think we could do this, and some groups that worked actively to prevent it. It's fantastic that we've reached this spot."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Marsh2 and her fellow board memebers elected by the people of Siskayou County are either going to be trampled by this thundering herd of swine, or will have to find a judge with the wisdom of Solomon to keep them from being overrun in my opinion!!!
Organizations such as "Friends of the River" and a multitude of other NGO's and supposed non-profit corporations being used by profit making rafting corporations have virtually thrown almost everyone except individual kayakers off the rivers of the western slope of the equally unwise Schwartzenegger Sierra-Nevada CONservancy.
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I remember when Roger Fredinberg was among the leaders against the Feds way back when. How will this affect the Farmers?
“Do fish ladders not work?
No, they have lost feet, hands and opposable thumbs through evolution...
LOL
Last year, the Chinese fishing fleet took more than 17 MILLION TONS OF FISH from the Pacific. I suppose they had nothing to do with this “decline”..............
EX ACT LEEEEEE
Friends of the River is a player in the background and I believe is influencing the Karuk tribe. However, the removal of the dams will actually destroy one of the best summer white water rafting experiences in the nation. They currently use release of stored water at one of the dams in Oregon to create a Class IV rapids.
The upper basin farmers are above the dams. They have provisions that affect them in the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement. The dams don’t really affect them, but once removed, the tribes and environmentalists hope the salmon will come up into the upper basin. The “irrigators” actually sold Siskiyou County out by supporting dam removal so they could get a break on energy and some other concessions.
The folks most affected are those who live around Copco and Iron Gate reservoirs. They will be living on a mud flat once the dams are removed. It will affect my downriver folks who will have sediment, dioxin and cyanide coming down their river. It also will affect the City of Yreka’s water supply, the Pacific Power rate payors and the people of California who will have to carry the bond to pay for at least $250 million of the costs. (The CDM report estimates that could be as high as a $billion.)
“since nobody wants to be thought goofy, loony, crazy, or against protecting creeks, birds, turtles, frogs etc; they learn to stay quiet (or they’ll have no friends and a forever empty dance card)! You have to be a good cow.”
That doesn’t fit me, I don’t give a damn what anyone thinks of or calls me!
Did not know that. Pisser...
“That doesn’t fit me, I don’t give a damn what anyone thinks of or calls me!”
That makes you and I the minority in Green Guilt ridden Californiacator land. If we don’t believe in Global Warming and feel that every critter from a microbe to whales have more rights than us, we are evil.
“1. That all science utilized in this process must meet President Obama’s Standards for Scientific Integrity and peer review.”
0bamadinejad of Global Warming has set standards for Scientific Integrity and peer review?
Yeah sure! Just like 0bamadinejad Health Care will good for us.
Thank you so much for clarifying that question and the situation for me.
Here are some local news reports:
BTW, I have not read the final negotiated agreements. They would change almost daily. We also have not met as a Board with our negotiator and counsel to discuss the provisions. I can’t comment on what is in there. They keep poimting out that we get $20 miilion. That is nothing when you consider we get about $1 million/yr in taxes from the facilities currently plus we would lose valuation on impacted provate properties. They also say we will get jobs and money into the county from removal. We don’t have a local engineering firm large enough to do the job. Most of the money will go out of the county.
Judge Hogan in the US District Court in Eugene (of all places) is the best fed judge to have on cases involving rivers & salmon. He knows the jig, the difference between "native" and hatchery bred fish (none), the TRUE reason the "preservation" movement exists, and all the rest of the game.
The effort to blow up these dams (plus many more) is almost as old as the dams themselves and we all know it has nothing to do with fish or who happens to be President. Those are, respectively, the excuses and scapegoats of today (said without intent to defend the Present Occupant in any way), but the effort predates the predicament. Pacific Power (now known as the former Enron subsidiary PacifiCorp) has been a target of progressives for decades, and the goal is to turn the company's property into a series of PUDs.
I have been around here a long time and I hail from an old salmon fishing town and yes, the fish runs have had historic ups & downs in recent (to me) years and it is NOT because of the dams or overfishing.
The facts as I believe them to be (acknowledging the possibility I'm all wet) are thus:
The phenomenon of poorly performing fish runs immediately followed the advent of the large scale salmon farming industry (and yes there were a couple giant corporations involved), and it relates to where and how (with the blessing of government) those ventures obtained their initial egg stock - by putting electrodes in the water and stealing, at spawning time, all surviving headwaters fish from all the major systems in Oregon, for three years in a row.
That'll do it, and I knew it would and said it would while it was happening. We have a couple of old (Republican) US Senators from Oregon, long since retired, to thank for it.
Now, don't take my mention of giant corporations or Republicans the wrong way. The entities had worked together for a long time and were very successful in their day keeping the area's economy strong, but facts are facts and the opportunists have taken full advantage of the unintended consequences of this glorious blunder.</rant>
I’ve been through the Bonneville Dam and the fish passage is something to see (as an aside, so is the sturgeon hatchery). But it’s a whole different scale of project & I don’t know how something like that would work in faster water. But the classic fish ladder certainly does work, and all the smaller dams have them, far as I know.
Well, lemme tell ya... They'd like to do the same to PG&E. They've finally turned the management into GANG-GREEN members in a most malicious mischeif manner!!!
The Sacramento Municipal Utilities District, which is also home to a GANG-GREEN mob of "Progressives," has installed more hydro-electric dams on the abreviated length of the American River than most longer rivers in CA. The commercial whitewater rafting corporations benefit fabulously because there is still stored water to raft on Labor Day. Floods happen really fast on a river whose final break is only Folsom Dam!!!
They also shut down a muclear reactor at Rancho Seco just south of our CA Crapitol after Jane Fonda's "China Syndrome" movie which she evidently convinced the voters/ratepayers of SMUD was a likely reality!!!
The commercial whitewater rafting corporations benefit fabulously because there is still stored water to raft on Labor Day.
Yet they, the "Progressives" and EnvironMentalists fought and have killed a multi-purpose dam above Folsom Reservoir from being completed in 1977 that was 2/3rds completed at a sunk cost of multi millions of squandered taxpayers resources!!!
Again I beg to differ. While greenies certainly lobbied against the Auburn project, the project collapsed because of financial considerations. Specifically:
While the feds were obviously willing to stand the cost of flood control, no agreement could be reached regarding the substantial, additional cost of water storage and power generation. The only local consensus was that both the water stored and the power generated would not be voluntarily ceded to existing water or utility districts. The promoters could not reach a consensus on who would distribute the water or the power. Without a consensus, the feds were left holding the whole bag. Because of the conflicting local opinions, the feds could not clearly identify a method to recover the substantial, additional expense. More than quadruple the cost of 100 year flood control .
I wonder if whitewater rafting companies and Zsierra Club had much to do with ‘conflicting’ opinions?
Robert Matsui and his family probably have lifetime passes to whatever rafting co. is on the river. Doris sounds very stupid and wet- all wet, really.
Well, again, I don't care if you differ because you ignore the politics both here and in D.C. The money was not re-authorized and had it been, the locals would have had time to work out distributive matters.
The Dem controlled CONgress and the Carter Whitehouse were both pist at CA for electing Gerald R. Ford, a rotten Repellican!!!
Jerry Brown was governor and his ties to the rafting crowd are well known and he had to teach his constituents to "lower their expectations!" The rafters were still pist from being "mitigated" from the Stanislaus to the American river due to the New Melones reservoir being created on their playland thrill ride and they refused to grow up and were determined to stop any further dams upon the rivers... especially one that was only 2/3rds finished!!!
You can blame the local governmental agencies all you want, but everything imaginable was thrown at Auburn Dam, most of which was more stupid, senseless EnvironMental crappola!
i.e. an ancient earthquake fault (Bear Mtn. Fault) ran under the site and would create too much risk for Sacramento. Hell, every reservior in CA is built on faults more recently active than that old thing!!!
They even got the local oldsters living in Auburn Lake Trails to worrying about "The Lake Effect" and how the added humidity would cripple them with arthritus. Now it sits up there on that ridgeline as a dried up target for the next wildfire that belches up out of that canyon!!!
Now I can't remember where you told me you got that point of view of yours on this subject, but it sounds a lot like you simply compiled it in your memory out of all the Sacramento Bee's negativity at the prodding of the rafters, "Progressives" Pagans and enviros!!!
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