Largest Dam Removal Project in the US-Klamath (Washington Post)

Should the public pay for dam removal or the for-profit enterprise that made (hopefully) money over the decades?
 
dirty dog said:
Thank you.
When I was growing up in Medford I had dreams of fishing the Klamath River on the Oregon side.
For some reason I couldn't talk my dad into it.
After I was old enough to drive, I was told the fishing sucked re and the rattle snakes were thick.
Plus there was a long dirt road to travel.
I'm gonna bet that the rattle snakes are still thick but in a couple years the fly fishing gonna be great.
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All the old-timer stories of great fishing for salmon and steelhead seemed to in be lower reaches of the CA rivers. I know there are a few written of the interior, but it just seemed to be more in the lower systems.
 
Salmo_g said:
It looks like you're saying that the public should partially subsidize the project. I disagree. Here's one reason why.

Context matters when evaluating and analyzing a project from economic and environmental perspectives. For example, the Edwards Dam on the Kennebec River in Maine was constructed in 1906. At that time labor was very cheap, and materials weren't too expensive either, considering that the dam didn't meet safety standards from the time there were any safety standards (none in 1906). And environmental requirements were nonexistent. But even a small amount of electricity (what Edwards produced) was extremely valuable in the early 20th century. By the year 2000, when the dam was long overdue for FERC licensing, the dam was barely breaking even economically because costs and values for everything had shifted significantly. Under a new FERC license, Edwards was required to add fish passage. The dam owner couldn't add fish passage and still break even, let alone make a profit. The amount of energy produced was negligible by today's standards. From what you posted, it appears that you would have the public subsidize Edwards in perpetuity. Would you even suggest the government should give the project your tax dollars if it couldn't turn a profit at any future date? That's what it looks like. In 1996 a FERC Administrative Law judge ruled that hydropower projects (Meade Decision) must provide mitigation proportionate to impacts. So FERC is supposed to issue licenses with terms and conditions that achieve that goal. And it is not the federal government's responsibility to ensure that a project is economically viable. FERC is supposed to issue a license with appropriate terms and conditions, and it's up to the project proponent (owner) to decide if it's worth building or continuing to operate the project.

This was the case with the Elwha dams. They were 2 quite tall hydro dams with only 26 MW of capacity and producing just 12 average MW of power. They were only profitable because when they were built in 1911, that was a valuable amount of energy. Today it's a rounding error at a utility. So they weren't worth operating under the terms of a new license, and the upper dam was in a national park, so a license couldn't be issued for it anyway.

The 4 Klamath dams are victims of time. Things change. They were economically marginal without any mitigation. There was no way to issue a new license that would be profitable for Pacificorp without violating the Meade Decision. Even concrete hydro dams don't last forever. So when they reach the end of their useful life you have to either decommission them in place or remove them.

Another good example is Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River. The Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) over-estimated the water supply in the river system when Glen Canyon was constructed. Whether that was deliberate or just an inadequate data set will likely never be known. The Director of BOR was in competition with the Corps of Engineers to see who could build the most and biggest dams, so things like economic feasibility were buried well enough that Congress (who must authorize the projects) couldn't find it or just really didn't want to know anyway. The upshot is that Glen Canyon reservoir (Lake Powell) hasn't been at full pool in years and probably never will be again. It sits at something like 70 or 100 or more feet below full, and at anything near the present rate will drop to lowest point at which it can get water into the turbine intakes (penstocks) and will have to stop operating. This is critically important because the project sets just upstream from the beginning of Grand Canyon and feeds Hover Dam and Lake Meade downstream, which supplies water to Los Angeles and the California-Arizona Project (CAP). Seven states hold water rights to the Colorado River for more water than the river produces, except in above average water years. So I ask you, should the US government continue to operate a project that costs more than the energy it produces is worth? And how will they operate it when the water level doesn't reach the penstock intakes?

Sometimes removing a dam is the best course of action, both economically and environmentally.
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No, I'm just saying making a profit off public resources is not wrong. Fishing guides for example, mushrooms pickers, for another. If we decide that they are also part of society and should be allowed to use public resources for personal gain then such activities shouldn't be regulated and permitted to make the activity unprofitable.
That is all I am saying same with logging, mining or whatever else. The more we allow them to be profitable the lower the prices for their products and lower prices benefits everyone.

Now, if we don't want people using public resources for private benefit, that's a different discussion.
Like it or not there are people out there who want no dams at all and they would use government to permit ,regulate and do everything they could to make dams too expensive for private corporations to run them. There are people like that, I used to be one. Such people are simply tyrannical. They believe their ideology should be government policy regardless how it affects others. Such people are in positions of power and seeking more power and do not represent the will of the people.
Public resources used by private profit seekers can and mostly is a benefit to all of society.
 
Zak said:
Also not wrong for the public to put conditions on the private use of public land and require compliance with federal environmental laws. If the company can't make a profit without violating the law, then it can GTFO.
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Wind energy…comes to mind for me.
 
Those mushroom picker Superfund sites are really expensive to clean up...
🙄
 
Just a minor point to this discussion: PacifiCorp owned the land around and under all of the dams. I was involved in a working group during the settlement negotiations which was trying to determine how these lands would be managed post dam removal (about 7000 acres as I recall). The lands have or are in the process of being transferred to the Klamath River Renewal Corporation during the removal process. The KRRC is the non profit created for handling the dam removal and restoration activities. Following the dam removal process, the land will be transferred to state ownership. On the California side, I believe one of the local tribes (Shasta Nation) is interested reclaiming some of their ancestral homelands.
 
Actions have benefits and consequences. Rare is the action that is completely beneficial and inconsequential.

A question that comes to mind for me is the loss of water storage in an area (CA) that in a world of increasing temps and uncertain weather response desperately needs water storage. We, on this forum, are active stewards of the diminishing runs of fish that we want to be successful. Additionally, we like to drink water and eat things that are dependent upon water. So….

Last winter was an amazing gift (didn’t feel like it at the time) for California and by extension all of us. Most of the water was lost because there was no way to capture it all. The reservoirs that do exist were filled, and of course the snow pack gave up its water blessedly slowly.

The dams were built for selling hydropower as discussed in previous posts. However, in today’s world, perhaps a greater good is actually water storage.

Is it appropriate in today’s world to be eliminating water storage on behalf of native run fish? Does it matter if the reservoirs are being used for power generation or water storage for irrigation and human consumption?

Flame on.
 
Mukman said:
Is it appropriate in today’s world to be eliminating water storage on behalf of native run fish? Does it matter if the reservoirs are being used for power generation or water storage for irrigation and human consumption?

Flame on.
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Only if it can be proven that the removal of the dam(s) will result in significantly increased native fish runs. Significantly being defined as enough returning adults to be useful for the longevity of the species and to create exploitation by humans even if it's only catch and release sport angling.

I think that is a low and reasonable bar.
 
Mukman said:
Actions have benefits and consequences. Rare is the action that is completely beneficial and inconsequential.

A question that comes to mind for me is the loss of water storage in an area (CA) that in a world of increasing temps and uncertain weather response desperately needs water storage. We, on this forum, are active stewards of the diminishing runs of fish that we want to be successful. Additionally, we like to drink water and eat things that are dependent upon water. So….

Last winter was an amazing gift (didn’t feel like it at the time) for California and by extension all of us. Most of the water was lost because there was no way to capture it all. The reservoirs that do exist were filled, and of course the snow pack gave up its water blessedly slowly.

The dams were built for selling hydropower as discussed in previous posts. However, in today’s world, perhaps a greater good is actually water storage.

Is it appropriate in today’s world to be eliminating water storage on behalf of native run fish? Does it matter if the reservoirs are being used for power generation or water storage for irrigation and human consumption?

Flame on.
Click to expand...

In this particular case, the Klamath dams are an impediment to water quality and temperature... I believe their removal will be a good thing.
 
Mukman said:
Is it appropriate in today’s world to be eliminating water storage on behalf of native run fish? Does it matter if the reservoirs are being used for power generation or water storage for irrigation and human consumption?

Flame on.
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If we are going to have that discussion, we should also have a discussion on where our stored water is going. Irrigating alfalfa fields for cattle feed? Golf courses? Tap water?
 
Rob Allen said:
create exploitation by humans
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Sure...
Because what good is anything unless it can be exploited...it's almost like unless it's exploitable, it's useless.
🙄
 
Mukman said:
Is it appropriate in today’s world to be eliminating water storage on behalf of native run fish? Does it matter if the reservoirs are being used for power generation or water storage for irrigation and human consumption?
Click to expand...
That is a really good question. Good enough that each dam should be evaluated on a case by case basis. In the instant case of the Klamath dams, the lower 3 don't store much water. The upper dam that backs water into Oregon is a shallow, but large in acreage reservoir. I'd have to look up its storage if we want to go there. I've read that Klamath irrigation water is mainly used to grow hay. I'm not sure how much is used to grow crops for direct human consumption. I have no idea if it's true, but I read that the hay is exported to Japan (and maybe elsewhere) to feed race horses. Nonetheless, growing hay should rank lower than human food crops. (Raising Wagu beef is a long ways from saving humanity.)

We should note here, that in CA, a state of 40 million people, 80% of all water used, is used by agriculture. Municipal and industrial (M&I) use accounts for 20%.

Comparatively, removing the Klamath dams won't reduce the energy supply noticably or the water supply for human use at all. Water for irrigation will be reduced, but I don't know what the impact will be. A lot of the farmers use flood irrigation, the cheapest and least efficient method. Upgrades to irrigation methods would ensure that the loss of crop production would be less than the proportionate loss of water available to irrigation. And as Mr. Smith pointed out above, the Klamath dams are responsible for detrimental effects on water quality.

Moving south, we have the perimeter "ring dams" of CA's Central Valley on the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers and their tributaries. Many of these dams have reservoirs that store huge amounts of water. I feel confident that, fish or no fish, none of these major storage dams are going to be removed. Some of them produce significant amounts of energy, and they provide a huge amount of water for agriculture, M&I use, and numerous drinking water supplies beyond the M part of M&I. That water supply is critical to the survival of CA, making it worthwhile to spend ridiculous amounts of money on fish passage and features like multi-level water intakes that improve water quality where needed. Similarly, farmers will be paid to install more efficient irrigation systems so they can sell surplus water they create to M&I users. I can envision a future where CA farms use Israeli style irrigation - Israel grows food in a desert. I think it's safe to say that they know a thing or two about efficient irrigation.

Long answer to your question, but yes, it matters how much water a dam stores, and it probably matters even more where that water reservoir is located. And it will matter how efficiently that water can be used for energy production, irrigation, and M&I use. It shouldn't be a one size fits all, but rather a case by case evaluation of costs and benefits and the values we place on those benefits. Will society value Japanese race horses over native spring Chinook?
 
Salmo_g said:
That is a really good question. Good enough that each dam should be evaluated on a case by case basis. In the instant case of the Klamath dams, the lower 3 don't store much water. The upper dam that backs water into Oregon is a shallow, but large in acreage reservoir. I'd have to look up its storage if we want to go there. I've read that Klamath irrigation water is mainly used to grow hay. I'm not sure how much is used to grow crops for direct human consumption. I have no idea if it's true, but I read that the hay is exported to Japan (and maybe elsewhere) to feed race horses. Nonetheless, growing hay should rank lower than human food crops. (Raising Wagu beef is a long ways from saving humanity.)
Click to expand...

"They" want us to stop eating meat and eat bugs. I will not eat the bugs. I will not live in a pod, I will not own nothing a be happy. Looks like the WEF is coming after my racing pigeon food fuel business next.
 
Well which can be exploited for the most profits, preferably with any costs socialized to the taxpayer ?
Removing any sort of regulations/restrictions that may impact profits, and then using public resources for private profits while negatively impacting the water supply the most, and then exporting the finished product should be the goal here...after all, if not exploitable, it's useless.

So the racehorse wins...by a nose.
The fish, well not so much.
They hay contributes to quarterly profits, and habitat/fish recovery will take generations...human ones not salmon ones.

In fact, we should look at subsidizing it further, you know, to keep the price of that exported hay low so more profits can be made, and encourage further exploitation of the watershed.
🤣
 
Salmo_g said:
That is a really good question. Good enough that each dam should be evaluated on a case by case basis. In the instant case of the Klamath dams, the lower 3 don't store much water. The upper dam that backs water into Oregon is a shallow, but large in acreage reservoir. I'd have to look up its storage if we want to go there. I've read that Klamath irrigation water is mainly used to grow hay. I'm not sure how much is used to grow crops for direct human consumption. I have no idea if it's true, but I read that the hay is exported to Japan (and maybe elsewhere) to feed race horses. Nonetheless, growing hay should rank lower than human food crops. (Raising Wagu beef is a long ways from saving humanity.)

We should note here, that in CA, a state of 40 million people, 80% of all water used, is used by agriculture. Municipal and industrial (M&I) use accounts for 20%.

Comparatively, removing the Klamath dams won't reduce the energy supply noticably or the water supply for human use at all. Water for irrigation will be reduced, but I don't know what the impact will be. A lot of the farmers use flood irrigation, the cheapest and least efficient method. Upgrades to irrigation methods would ensure that the loss of crop production would be less than the proportionate loss of water available to irrigation. And as Mr. Smith pointed out above, the Klamath dams are responsible for detrimental effects on water quality.

Moving south, we have the perimeter "ring dams" of CA's Central Valley on the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers and their tributaries. Many of these dams have reservoirs that store huge amounts of water. I feel confident that, fish or no fish, none of these major storage dams are going to be removed. Some of them produce significant amounts of energy, and they provide a huge amount of water for agriculture, M&I use, and numerous drinking water supplies beyond the M part of M&I. That water supply is critical to the survival of CA, making it worthwhile to spend ridiculous amounts of money on fish passage and features like multi-level water intakes that improve water quality where needed. Similarly, farmers will be paid to install more efficient irrigation systems so they can sell surplus water they create to M&I users. I can envision a future where CA farms use Israeli style irrigation - Israel grows food in a desert. I think it's safe to say that they know a thing or two about efficient irrigation.

Long answer to your question, but yes, it matters how much water a dam stores, and it probably matters even more where that water reservoir is located. And it will matter how efficiently that water can be used for energy production, irrigation, and M&I use. It shouldn't be a one size fits all, but rather a case by case evaluation of costs and benefits and the values we place on those benefits. Will society value Japanese race horses over native spring Chinook?
Click to expand...
I heard a while back that Israel uses desalinization plants for its fresh water. California should be on board for those plants, too. Too many people to depend on river water.
 
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I'm not sure about hay being exported to Japan (it may be true) but there are lots of other things grown in the Upper Klamath Basin aside from alfalfa. The region is also big producer of potatoes, wheat and barley (my wife's cousins are spud and grain farmers in the Tulelake area). There's some miscellaneous crops grown here and there such as onions, garlic, horseradish and sugar beets. Because it's farming in a desert, the cereal grains need to be irrigated. Some of these crops (potatoes and grain) are subsidized.
 
TicTokCroc said:
"They" want us to stop eating meat and eat bugs. I will not eat the bugs. I will not live in a pod, I will not own nothing a be happy. Looks like the WEF is coming after my racing pigeon food fuel business next.
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You'll be singing a different tune when Zak's Cricket Flour is the only consistently available source of protein in the post-apocalyptic regional food supply.
 
Chapulines are good...I've had them many times.

Alex Jones' conspiracies about bugs and pods are not good. I've read them many times.

Hope this helps.
😁
 
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