Photo: Demolition of the Klamath River’s Copco No. 2 dam began last year. | Shane Anderson/Swiftwater Films/Klamath River Renewal
LET IT FLOW: Water is flowing unimpeded down the Klamath River to the Pacific Ocean for the first time in more than a century — and Rep. Doug LaMalfa is depressed.
“It’s our worst defeat since I’ve been a legislator,” he said in an interview ahead of PacifiCorp’s emptying of three reservoirs on the Klamath River in order to demolish the dams that stand in front of them.
It’s the largest dam removal project in the country, and it’s a harbinger of the shifting politics around rivers in the age of climate change.
The traditional fault lines that have long pitted anti-dam environmentalists and tribes against pro-dam farmers and utilities, who benefit from their water and electricity, are blurring. Dam owners are increasingly buckling under the costs of repairs, tighter environmental standards for migrating fish and the difficulties of managing more extreme storms and drought from climate change.
On the Klamath, California’s second-largest river, one of PacifiCorp’s dams is already down and the other three will be demolished by October. Next up are two Pacific Gas & Electric dams on the Eel River, just south of LaMalfa’s district, where farmers partnered with environmental and fishing groups to figure out how to parcel out water without the dams to help manage flows.
In Washington, four dams on the Snake River are the closest they’ve ever been to being taken down thanks to a Republican lawmaker’s proposal, though others in his party are fighting back.
LaMalfa knows times are changing. “I feel like just one anti-aircraft gunner with 10,000 enemy fighter planes coming at you at once,” he said.
It’s a safe position for LaMalfa, who’s coasting to his seventh […]
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