Klamath dam removal project kills 830,000 juvenile salmon

Harm to wildlife, worse-than-expected water quality jolt the $450 million project

The Klamath River dam removal project is supposed to help salmon, but earlier this month it killed 830,000 juvenile Chinook salmon.

Over eight hundred thousand juvenile Chinook salmon died recently after passing through a tunnel beneath a doomed dam, as crews carry out a $450 million ratepayer and taxpayer-funded project to demolish four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River in Oregon and California, which had previously provided enough inexpensive, carbon-free electricity to power 70,000 homes.

Backers have long promised the Klamath River Restoration Project, the largest dam removal project in U.S. history, would allow salmon to swim farther inland and do something other than die.

The little Chinook were the first released from a brand new $35 million ratepayer and taxpayer-funded fish hatchery on Fall Creek, a tributary of the Klamath River located upstream from Iron Gate Dam, the last of the Klamath dams slated to be removed. In preparation for its removal, the Klamath River Restoration Corporation, the nonprofit corporation that is responsible for dam removal, diverted the river through a tunnel under Iron Gate Dam. California Department of Fish and Wildlife officials believe the baby salmon contracted “gas bubble disease” from dramatic water pressure changes experienced as they passed through the diversion tunnel.

The salmon fry-massacring tunnel beneath Iron Gate Dam on the Klamath River in California’s Siskiyou County, used to divert water during the destruction of the dam. (Photo by Carlos Avila Gonzalez/San Francisco Chronicle).

The fish hatchery is managed by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which presumably decided to release such a large number of baby salmon into an untested system. In a press release, CDFW did not elaborate on its decision to release the salmon to travel through the demolition-modified dam, instead blaming the dam.

The problems associated with the Iron Gate Dam tunnel are temporary and yet another sad reminder of how the Klamath River dams have harmed salmon runs for generations. CDFW will plan all future salmon releases below Iron Gate Dam until this infrastructure is removed. Poor habitat conditions caused by the dams and other circumstances such as this are reasons why CDFW conducts releases of hatchery fish at various life stages.

Dam managers are using the tunnel temporarily to allow increased water passage in preparation for breaching the dam later this year, according to plans.

The salmon kill follows the January mercy killing by CDFW of eight deer sinking in mud exposed by the drawdown of Copco Lake due to the breaching of the dam that created the reservoir. The Rogue Valley Times reported on the grisly incident:

The deer were drowning in mud, it was getting dark, and the decision was made to end their suffering before they wouldn’t be visible, according to district social media posts. The deer were stuck hundreds of feet from solid ground, well beyond the near-shore area.

The wildlife deaths have drawn attention to the novel and expensive Klamath River Restoration Project. That project, cheered by Oregon’s then-governor Kate Brown in 2020, as “an incredibly important step forward on the path toward restorative justice for the people of the Klamath Basin,” was promoted by environmentalists as the means to improve wildlife habitat in the Klamath Basin, especially for salmon.

The Klamath River, with the four doomed dams in red.

In 2010, voters in Siskiyou County, California, where all but one of the dams slated for removal are located, opposed dam removal 79-21 in an advisory vote.

This month’s fish kill may be a harbinger of more problems to come for the project, according to Moss Driscoll, Director of Water Policy for the Klamath Water Users Association, which represents irrigators in the Klamath Basin and has been critical of dam removal.

Driscoll says he’s worried about the short and long-term effects of increased sediment in the river resulting from dam removal. Since dam removal began in earnest, officials have measured far more sediment downstream than expected.

“Fine sediment of the type we see in the river far downstream is an ideal habitat for the worm that carries C. Shasta, or gut rot disease, which is one of the main threats to salmon populations,” Driscoll said in an interview. “This is going to be a tremendous barrier to salmon in the Basin, and we may be dealing with it for decades.”

Another threat is blockage of the tunnel blamed for killing the young salmon. The need to flush sediment through the river, along with potential flood conditions due to healthy snowpack in parts of the basin, may cause dam managers to substantially increase river flows by spilling water from Upper Klamath Lake.

The resulting higher river levels could interfere with dam managers’ efforts to prevent blockage of the Iron Gate tunnel. If the tunnel, which has frequently become partially blocked during the dam removal process, becomes entirely obstructed, Iron Gate could be compromised, delaying and complicating removal efforts.

Oregon and California taxpayers will be on the hook for cost overruns beyond the project’s current $450 million budget, according to Driscoll.

Environmentalists, and federal and state officials view the Klamath project as a model for removing more dams in the future. Long on environmentalists’ target list are the much larger dams on the Snake River in Idaho.

The Biden Administration in December announced it was working toward removing the hydroelectric Snake River Dams “to Restore Wild Salmon, Expand Clean Energy Production, Increase Resilience, and Provide Energy Stability in the Columbia River Basin.”

The struggles on the Klamath suggest the actual results of dam removal may not match those claims.