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United States

Largest Dam Removal In US History Is Complete (bbc.com) 104

Posted by BeauHD from the celebratory-moments dept.
The largest dam removal project in U.S. history has been completed with the demolition of four dams on the Klamath River, marking a significant victory for tribal nations on the Oregon-California border who have long fought to restore the river to its natural state. However, as CNN's Rachel Ramirez and the BBC's Lucy Sherriff both highlight, the restoration of salmon populations and surrounding ecosystems is "only just beginning." From the report: The removal of the four hydroelectric dams -- Iron Gate Dam, Copco Dams 1 and 2, and JC Boyle Dam -- allows the region's iconic salmon population to swim freely along the Klamath River and its tributaries, which the species have not been able to do for over a century since the dams were built. Mark Bransom, chief executive officer of the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, the nonprofit group created to oversee the project, said it was a "celebratory moment," as his staff members, conservationists, government officials and tribal members gathered and cheered on the bank of the river near where the largest of the dams, Iron Gate, once stood. [...] The Yurok Tribe in Northern California are known as the "salmon people." To them, the salmon are sacred species that are central to their culture, diet and ceremonies. As the story goes, the spirit that created the salmon also created humans and without the fish, they would cease to exist. Amy Bowers-Cordalis, a member of and general counsel for the Yurok Tribe, said seeing those dams come down meant "freedom" and the start of the river's "healing process." [...]

The utility company PacifiCorps -- a subsidiary of Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway Energy -- built the dams in the early to mid-1900s, without tribal consent, to generate electricity for parts of the growing West. But the dams severely disrupted the lifecycle of the salmon, blocking the fish from accessing their historic spawning grounds. Then there's the climate crisis: Warm water and drought-fueled water shortages in the Klamath River killed salmon eggs and young fish due to low oxygen and lack of food and allowed the spread of viruses. [...] As for the reason the dams were constructed in the first place -- electricity -- removing them won't hurt the power supply much, experts say. Even at full capacity, all four dams produced less than 2% of PacifiCorp's energy, according to the Klamath River Renewal Corporation. Up next is ramping up restoration work. Bransom said they plan to put down nearly 16 billion seeds of almost 100 native species across 2,200-acres of land in the Klamath River Basin. And after more than a century, the fish can now swim freely. Yurok's Bowers-Cordalis said seeing the river reconnected is a form of giving their land back, which is really the "ultimate reward."
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Largest Dam Removal In US History Is Complete More

Largest Dam Removal In US History Is Complete

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  • /. on time (Score:4, Funny)

    by mrthoughtful ( 466814 ) on Friday September 06, 2024 @05:39AM (#64767464) Journal
    So fast! I think I heard this from every news agency other than /. about a week ago. Even my grandma was faster. No doubt we will see dupes of this news on slashdot for a good month yet.
    • it took time - that salmon nearly killed itself swimming up stream waiting the damn to be demolished spawning and then filing it's copy.
  • By my understanding river salmon migrate every year; to the ocean and then back upstream. Unless the dams were built entirely when the populations were out, one could expect some fish remained upstream of each dam. Did they survive without migration?

    I ask this from a population genetics perspective, not from any kind of defend-the-dam perspective. If non-migratory populations were established, it would be interesting to compare their genetics to regular migrating salmon. 100 years is a really long time to salmon - a quick look at wikipedia suggests a lifespan between 3 and 8 years for Pacific salmon species - which may exert enough evolutionary pressure on any non-migrating fish to make them into genetically distinct populations.

    • Re:Did the dams make any non-migratory populations (Score:5, Informative)

      by Gavagai80 ( 1275204 ) on Friday September 06, 2024 @06:22AM (#64767500) Homepage

      Near the dams on major rivers, you find a fish hatchery. People build a fish ladder to capture the fish on their attempted migration, cut them open, artificially spawn them, and raise the fish until they're ready to be released downstream. Usually the public can view this and feed the baby fish, so I'd suggest going if you're near a hatchery -- personally I've been to the Nimbus fish hatchery on the American River many times.

      I'd assume there was a hatchery on the Klamath. Now, that constant human intervention will no longer be required there.

      • Re:Did the dams make any non-migratory populations (Score:5, Informative)

        by Gavagai80 ( 1275204 ) on Friday September 06, 2024 @06:28AM (#64767510) Homepage

        And no, none of them remained upstream -- they can't live there, they can only spawn and die there. Young salmon have to go downstream and live most of their lives in the ocean and only return to the mountains to spawn and die.

        • So...after a century or more....will any fish "remember" this old spawning route and use it?

          • Tell us you didn't understand the comment above the comment to which you replied without telling us.

          • So...after a century or more....will any fish "remember" this old spawning route and use it?

            No, but some of them get lost and those will repopulate the old route. I discussed that here [slashdot.org]

          • No, because clearly there haven't been any salmon teachers in salmon elementary school to educate the young salmon spawn on how to read the highway signs.

            Animal instinct is a thing, and doesn't require learned traits. Kind of like how a dog that has never seen a large body of water still knows how to swim in it.

            • Animal instinct is a thing, and doesn't require learned traits. Kind of like how a dog that has never seen a large body of water still knows how to swim in it.

              Define "knows"?

              I contend when you throw a dog in a large body of water it didn't already 'know' how to swim, it benefitted from its natural buoyancy and starts flaring every available appendage in every manner possible, slowly figuring out how to propel themself through the water once it is over the shock of being thrown into a large body of water.

              The salmon in the region were born somewhere, and science tells us they return to where they came from to spawn - they don't go searching out new, more scenic pla

        • No, they don't, we have landlocked Kokanee/ coho salmon all over in Idaho. They swim to the res and live there.

        • They only die if the have bad luck, catch s disease or get caught by an animal or human.
          That salmons die after breeding, is a myth.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        but the jobs!

      • Re:Did the dams make any non-migratory populations (Score:5, Informative)

        by rickb928 ( 945187 ) on Friday September 06, 2024 @09:37AM (#64767868) Homepage Journal

        No hatchery/harvesting operation I have ever been aware of cut open fish to 'spawn them'. The male salmon are 'milked' for their 'milt', the female salmon have their eggs 'expressed', and these are mixed together to fertilize the eggs which are then held in fresh water pools, to hatch some 5 months later, grow through the stages of alevin, fry, parr after a year or more, who live in the river or stream for another 1-4 years, then as smolt , and then migrate out to the Atlantic Ocean to grow into adults. Most marine biologists claim as few as 5% of salmon who have spawned (they are known as kelts) are able to reach the ocean again to live, regain their strength, and return to spawn again. I'm sure they are right, but most fishermen suspect this number was once much higher, as a Grilse, a first-migration fish, is often 8-12 pounds, while there was a time not that long ago when 25-45 pound salmon were somewhat commonly caught, and I've seen a few.

        Again, no hatchery/harvesting operation I have ever been aware of cut open fish to 'spawn them'. Such a waste that would be, those fish are returned to the river to hopefully survive and spawn again.

        • BTW, Pacific Salmon most likely cannot remain landlocked, they die after spawning.

        • so few people have ever been to a fish hatchery, it doesn't surprise me that they don't actually know how this works. Of course, this being /., there are also so many people that come up with truly ludicrous ideas of how things work, then operate as if that were the true way. Or should I say, seeing how people talk about anything online this seems to be the case. People with actual knowledge are shouted down by opinionated Know-Nothings.

          I had the great benefit of going to a fish hatchery in Maine when I w

    • Did they survive without migration?

      No. That's not how salmon work.

      Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.

      Obviously not, since you got your idea there.

      • Did they survive without migration?

        No. That's not how salmon work.

        I am not an expert on salmon. I do not play one on TV either. I asked a question.

        Interestingly we got conflicting answers from people here. Which ones are most credible, I'm not sure.

        There was a time when people mostly discussed factual information here. Now some people discuss facts, some spout their beliefs, some spout lies, and some make stuff up on the spot for their own amusement. The collection of responses to my question match that full spectrum of comments.

        I guess while commenting is

        • I am not an expert on salmon. I do not play one on TV either. I asked a question.

          Try asking Wikipedia when you have such a basic knowledge question. It makes about a million times more sense than asking it here.

          Now why you felt the need to attack me is not the least bit clear.

          You're now complaining about the level of discourse on Slashdot, where people used to look things up before asking questions, while bringing it down.

          • I am not an expert on salmon. I do not play one on TV either. I asked a question.

            Try asking Wikipedia when you have such a basic knowledge question.

            I'm sorry that you put so little effort into reading my question that you see it as "basic knowledge". I specifically asked if new populations developed that did not migrate. There are salmon species in other areas that don't migrate; these dams interrupted migration for a species that does. If any survived they would be non-migrating populations.

            Wikipedia does not have any information on whether any salmon were still found upstream of the dams after their construction. That suggests that none were

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hasaf ( 3744357 )
      I lived along the Klamath for several years and I still have friends, some of whom I visited in Happy Camp this past summer, who still live along the Klamath. There is very little local support for this.

      To answer your question, yes, there were several other non-migratory species that lived in the Klamath. The toxins released when the dams were breached killed pretty much everything in the river. There is also the very real concern that, without the dams, the Klamath will likely run dry as some of the re

      • Re:Did the dams make any non-migratory populations (Score:5, Insightful)

        by The-Ixian ( 168184 ) on Friday September 06, 2024 @07:36AM (#64767602)

        How much would you like to wager that the locals at the time of building were against the construction of the dams?

        Also, how much would you like to wager that 100 years from now, people would fight tooth and nail to keep them from being built again?

        My point is that finding people who don't like being affected by change isn't hard.

        My guess is that these same people will learn to enjoy the benefits of a connected river and more natural space given a bit of time.

      • I lived along the Klamath for several years and I still have friends, some of whom I visited in Happy Camp this past summer, who still live along the Klamath. There is very little local support for this.

        Sure, if you pretend the natives don't exist, and you only hang out with conservatives.

        There is also the very real concern that, without the dams, the Klamath will likely run dry as some of the recent weather patterns seem to be becoming the norm.

        The Klamath is not in as much danger of running dry as the Eel, which is only in danger because they are stealing its water.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Temkin ( 112574 )

          The Klamath is not in as much danger of running dry as the Eel, which is only in danger because they are stealing its water.

          No kidding... Damn pot growers have been wrecking the Eel River for decades. But this is actually changing. For the little mile long section of a tributary to the Eel my family has owned for a century or so... Property ownership is back to being all families. With legalization, it's cheaper to go hydroponic in town than grow remote out in the sticks. So the water theft is back in the hands of the cattle ranches, which are easy to police.

          • With legalization, it's cheaper to go hydroponic in town than grow remote out in the sticks.

            Yes, in fact I walk past one of these grows (next to the solar place) approximately twice per week. They have extremely inadequate filters. The smell doesn't offend me ofc, but it does make me chuckle. Like, they think they're being sneaky? It's like half a block away from social services, the whole town knows.

            So the water theft is back in the hands of the cattle ranches, which are easy to police.

            Illegal grows still dominate because it's so much more profitable. They really screwed the pooch here with their licensing fees. They also seem to have a land theft scheme going, if you buy a property

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Temkin ( 112574 )

              Illegal grows still dominate because it's so much more profitable. They really screwed the pooch here with their licensing fees. They also seem to have a land theft scheme going, if you buy a property that USED to be licensed as a grow they WILL come and inspect it. Humboldt could have been the mecca of cannabis tourism but they tried to wring every last nickel out of it and fucked it up as usual.

              We're on the south fork, but same story in Mendocino. But the unlicensed grows seem to be more pop up types than the sort that will put down roots and run water trucks and steal water. We had one of those entrepreneurial types running a beat up old water truck up and down our dirt road a couple times a day. Asshole couldn't even wait for the automatic gate to open, just drove thru it. Shot the game camera mounted to catch him etc... His truck eventually wound up in the county impound. We're still patch

    • From What Are Landlocked Salmon? [strikeandcatch.com]
      "The genuine landlocked salmon refers to two varieties of the Atlantic salmon type: Salmo salar Sebago (landlocked lake salmon) and Salmo salar Ouananiche (landlocked river salmon).

      These types of Atlantic salmon, which are genetically identical to the common Atlantic salmon, but sometimes still referred to as subspecies, are fish that do not have access to the ocean and are considered entirely landlocked.

      Landlocked salmon will spawn directly in their native river systems or t

    • Re:Did the dams make any non-migratory populations (Score:5, Interesting)

      by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Friday September 06, 2024 @09:25AM (#64767826) Journal

      Unless the dams were built entirely when the populations were out, one could expect some fish remained upstream of each dam. Did they survive without migration?

      AFAIK, they cannot survive without migration. Smolts and adults cannot survive in freshwater, only in saltwater. The adults undergo a change when they become spawners which allows them to survive in freshwater for a limited amount of time.

      A related issue is that salmon don't just swim up any freshwater stream to spawn, they return to their hatching beds. There are obviously no salmon alive who hatched upstream of the dams and then migrated to the ocean, so there are none to return to those locations. An article I read a while back says that this homing instinct is imperfect, though, and that some salmon get "lost" and end up spawning somewhere other than where they hatched. This seems like an important adaptation, actually, because otherwise when natural events cause rivers to change course salmon could lose access to their spawning grounds, or when events create new rivers and potential spawning grounds, they would go unused.

      So, we can expect a few "lost" salmon to find their way up past where the dams were and spawn there. Their hatchlings will nearly all return to those "new" spawning grounds, and over the course of a few generations there should be plenty of salmon using the area again.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by doug141 ( 863552 )

      I have read that the reason the dams, even with fish ladders, decimate the salmon population is the offspring (salmon minnows) have to face a migration downriver through a totally changed environment that shift the balance to their predators. Before, they were camoflaged by the turbulent shallow waters, but now there is deep still water before each dam, where the predator fish have no trouble finding and eating the salmon minnows.

  • no text.

    • no text.

      Dam right.

  • they can restore the river to look pristine, but the salmon that once swam that river is long gone, they will have to import salmon eggs and place them in the river & tributaries and hope they do what the originals did

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

      You mean like they have already done months ago [opb.org]? Thanks for being only four months behind

    • The imported salmon will do fine. They don't all end up in the same river they started out in. If that were true then the would be no salmon in Washington or British Colombia as those rivers were covered by ice sheets not that long ago. Then there were the various floods from Lake Missoula that extirpated everything in the Columbia River multiple times.

      And yet there are salmon in those rivers now, so some fish obviously get lost and go up the wrong river.

    • the salmon that once swam that river is long gone, they will have to import salmon eggs and place them in the river & tributaries and hope they do what the originals did

      They don't have to, though they probably will to accelerate the process. Not all salmon return to their hatching beds, some of them get lost and end up spawning in different locations. If you think about it, this is an obviously necessary adaptation, because the rivers and streams are not static even without human intervention. If some salmon didn't get lost and thereby become explorers finding new spawning grounds, available spawning grounds would end up unused.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        This.

        The propaganda that salmon must return to their natal streams is bullshit[1]. Salmon are stupid and will gladly swim up some farmer's freshly dug drainage ditch to spawn[2][3]. We had a dam torn down on the Elwah River. PBS did a nice half hour show on it, including televising the fish returning to spawn up through the still ongoing demolition site, through muddy water. To streams that they obviously had been patiently waiting for 100 years to spawn. Yeah, right[4].

        At any rate, don't eat river caught

    • Do you think they make little maps, or unquestionably follow turn-by-turn GPS navigation?

      You know rivers change course over time with various geological events, right? And that at some point in the hundreds of thousands of years that salmon have been doing this, that they've had to find new spawning ground because of river changes due to volcanos, landslides, earthquakes, construction of river dams, etc.?

      They swim upriver on instinct. Sometimes they get "lost" and find somewhere else that is "good enough"

  • What next , flatten Manhatten and return it back to a forested river island?

    I can't see how demolishing a dam producing hydro energy (and a water supply?) just to molify some natives who weren't even born when the dam was built is a good idea at any level. Apart from setting a precedent that power generation now needs to be replaced and with that part of the world in drought do you really want to get rid of a large reservoir?

  • It's amazing that Warren Buffett was out buying companies way back in 1910 when PacifiCorp (not PacifiCorps) was founded.

    And then there is the fact that Berkshire Hathaway has wholly owned PacifiCorp since 2006.

    Yet TFS claims the dams were built in the mid-1900s and tangentially implies Buffett owned PacifiCorp when those events took place.

    I guess /. truly isn't News For Nerds but 3rd-hand twisted & distorted history for the Click & Like Generation that hates on BIG CORPs because they can whine loud

  • Hydro is environmentally destructive. If we want to minimize the impact we have on the world we need to build new nuclear energy.

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