Free Republic

A well-funded environmentalist group played a key role in the push to remove dams in the Pacific Northwest’s Klamath River ahead of premature deaths of thousands of salmon. American Rivers — an organization that has received millions of dollars from left-of-center environmentalist grantmaking organizations in recent years — was “the orchestrator of the Klamath dams removal project,” according to Siskiyou News, a local outlet in Northern California. The drawdowns of several reservoirs pursuant to the scheduled removal of four dams in the river preceded the deaths of “hundreds of thousands” of young salmon in the waterway, according to Oregon Public...

...A large number of young hatchery-raised salmon that were released into the Klamath River recently were killed when they passed through a tunnel near the base of the Iron Gate Dam on the river...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom backed the controversial proposal to remove four Klamath River hydroelectric dams along the California-Oregon border. Now, the same fish he swore to protect could be killed in the process. The dams had been breached on claims that it would help salmon migrate, but the Klamath River is now full of destroyed spawning salmon beds and pollution including decomposed algae, organic deposition, chemicals, and fine silt which is killing its ecosystem, according to a report from the California Globe. Additionally, dead endangered steelhead trout and other species have been rising to the surface of the Klamath River,...

If 10 million cubic yards of sediment were to settle in the river, we’d see the equivalent of six lanes of freeway piled eight feet deep for nearly 100 miles. There are 192 river miles below the lowest dam, Iron Gate. In total, the river is approximately 250 miles long. For most of February, turbidity levels in the Klamath River hovered around 500 to 1,000 units over a stretch of at least 100 miles, according to U.S. Geological Survey measurements.2 These turbidity levels are 10 to 20 times what juvenile salmon can survive, according to a 2001 research report by...

Let’s face facts; some people are getting richer off the removal of the Klamath River dams. Glen Spain member [formerly] of Klamath River Renewal Corp. ‘KRRC’ board and fisherman’s advocate said “Economics Not Salmon Is the Reason PacifiCorp is Removing the Dams” It is now estimated by some experts that the total direct cost for the Klamath River dam removal project, will reach $800-million dollars, not the $450-million cost estimate projected over tens years ago. And then we have the costs related to the liabilities that are already arising from what is seen by many as an ill-fated project. According...

For over 100-years after the first dam was installed (Copco 1 Dam) and over 60-years after Iron Gate Dam was installed, there was nevertheless a decent run of Salmon and steelhead in the Klamath River, even with all of the changing ocean conditions, climate change, and OVERFISHING by both indigenous people and others. Any fishing guide on the Klamath River below Iron Gate Dam would attest to the fact that fishing was great. Therefore, this is the ONLY relevant Question: Is the deaths of millions of wildlife (mammals, birds, fish, etc.) and the collapse of an entire ecosystem, on top...

Before the 1950s, an estimated 5.5 million coho salmon, Chinook salmon and steelhead returned to California rivers as part of their natural life cycle. In 2022, only 93,000 of the iconic fish spawned in the state’s rivers, a number so low it prompted closure of the commercial fishing season. A report released by CalTrout in 2017 in partnership with the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences found that 74% of California’s native salmon, steelhead, and trout species are likely to be extinct within a century or less if present trends continue

The Colombian government has announced a raft of measures to control its growing population of invasive hippos—descendants of animals introduced to the country by the notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar. Hippos are native to Africa, but in the 1980s, Escobar smuggled four of the animals into Colombia, keeping them at his luxurious country estate, Hacienda Nápoles, in the municipality of Puerto Triunfo—located east of Medellin—which featured a private zoo. As well as the hippos, the zoo housed numerous exotic creatures, including elephants, ostriches, rhinos, giraffes and zebras. Following the death of Escobar, who was killed by Colombian police during a...

Massive debris flow in Whitewater Canyon, California.

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s administration responded Wednesday to “flat-out wrong” claims from the Mexican government that faulted the river buoy barrier for the recent deaths of two migrants attempting to cross the border. The Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs was the first to inform the public of the deaths and linked them to a buoy barrier in the Rio Grande River that Texas installed in early July to deter illegal migrant crossings. Andrew Mahaleris, a spokesperson for Abbott, responded in a statement on Wednesday claiming that the barrier had nothing to do with the tragic deaths. “The Mexican government...

Two bodies believed to be migrants trying to illegally cross into the US were found in the Rio Grande River in Texas on Wednesday — one caught in the recently installed floating border barrier. The gruesome discovery of the body caught in the buoy barrier in the middle of the river was made by the Texas Department of Public Safety around 2:30 p.m. Wednesday near Eagle Pass, Texas.

Police officers allegedly stood by and watched for 15 minutes as a man who relapsed on heroin drowned in the Tennessee River after fleeing from them, according to a newly filed lawsuit. Kimberly Williams-Clabo claims her son, Mika Wheeler Clabo, would still be alive if it weren’t for the alleged negligence of the Knoxville Police Department, which encountered him “acting erratically” on the morning of July 25, 2022. Police said that when they approached Clabo, 30, who struggled with a heroin addiction, he ran from them and jumped into the river, where he got caught on vines and drowned.

The Justice Department on Monday sued Texas Gov. Greg Abbott over a newly installed floating barrier on the Rio Grande that is the Republican’s latest aggressive tactic to try to stop migrants from crossing into the U.S. from Mexico. The lawsuit asks a federal judge in Austin to force Texas to remove a roughly 1,000-foot (305-meter) line of bright orange, wrecking ball-sized buoys that the Biden administration says raises humanitarian and environmental concerns. The suit claims that Texas unlawfully installed the barrier without permission between the border cities of Eagle Pass and Piedras Negras, Mexico. The buoys are the latest...

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott bluntly told President Biden in a letter Monday he's not backing away from his aggressive border security efforts despite the U.S. Justice Department's threat last week to sue on grounds that the state is usurping federal authority. "You must fully enforce the laws of the United States that prohibit illegal immigration between ports of entry," the Republican governor told the Democratic president. "In the meantime, Texas will fully utilize its constitutional authority to deal with the crisis you have caused. Texas will see you in court, Mr. President.”

Mexican officials lodged a complaint with the United States government over the floating barriers Texas installed in the Rio Grande River to deter migrants from crossing into the state illegally. If the orange buoys impede the flow of the river, they could be in violation of 1944 and 1970 treaties between Mexico and the US that govern the boundaries and water that separate the two nations, Mexico’s Foreign Relations Secretary Alicia Bárcena wrote in a diplomatic note. “We are sending a mission, a territorial inspection to see where the buoys are located … to carry out this topographical survey to...

Workers in Texas have begun installing a floating barrier along the Rio Grande in an effort to deter migrants from crossing the dangerous river to enter the US illegally. “The buoys have arrived and the installation of the marine barrier on the Rio Grande begins today,” read a tweet posted by the Texas Department of Public Safety on Friday. The first 1,000-foot section of interconnected 4-foot-wide sphere buoys – that spin when grabbed – is being installed near Eagle Pass, Texas, a hot spot for illegal border crossings. The floating barrier is designed to be moved and extended to cover...

The first 1,000 feet of floating barrier, consisting of large rotating buoys strung tightly together on thick steel cable, will be rolled out on a highly trafficked stretch of the Rio Grande between Piedras Negras, Mexico, and Eagle Pass, Texas, where a rising torrent of immigrant family groups have been crossing to turn themselves in since the end of Title 42 pandemic instant expulsions May 12, the sources said. Immigrants would have difficulty crossing over the buoys because they would rotate backward toward immigrants attempting to climb over them.

Residents in Philadelphia are flocking to local supermarket stores such as Target and Walmart to buy water after a major chemical spill occurred in the Delaware River. On Friday night over 8,000 gallons of latex-based solution spilled into the Delaware River from a chemical plant in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The massive spill caused Philadelphia city officials to send residents an emergency phone alert urging residents to buy bottled water and to not drink their tap water. ------- The emergency alert sent residents of Philadelphia in a frenzy and caused them to flock to local supermarket stores in the area to...

Maritime archaeologists in northern Germany have discovered the wreckage of a 400-year-old cargo ship that "sank almost standing," escaped decay from ravenous shipworms and still has the barrels of lime it was carrying for the stone-building industry centuries ago. The ship, a rare discovery, is from the Hanseatic period, when a group of northern European trade guilds dominated the Baltic and North seas from the 13th to 17th centuries, Live Science previously reported. Wood quickly rots away underwater in this region, and few shipwrecks of this age have ever been found. But maritime archaeologists think the wreck survived beneath the...

A Boston subway train caught fire on a bridge Thursday morning, causing chaos as commuters escaped through windows and one straphanger resorted to jumping into the river below. Wild video taken from inside the train showed passengers climbing through windows of the train and fleeing onto the tracks. Footage from the tracks also shows passengers-turned-good Samaritans catching one another as they jumped out the windows with smoke billowing around them. --snip-- The Orange Line train on Boston’s MBTA system was traveling over the Mystic River when it burst into flames just before 7 a.m., the Globe reported. Local authorities said...