Explosions roared through the canyons lining the Klamath River earlier this year, signaling a new chapter for the region that hugs the Oregon-California border.
In October, the removal of four hydroelectric dams built on the river was completed – the largest project of its kind in US history.
The blast of the final dam was just the beginning. The work to restore the river, which winds 263 miles (423km) from the volcanic Cascade mountain range in Oregon to the Pacific coast in northern California, is now under way.
Already it’s been among the most hopeful environmental stories of past years. “It has been more successful than we ever imagined,” said Ren Brownell, the spokesperson for the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, a non-profit created to oversee and implement the removal, adding: “There’s an incredible amount of joy.”
A drastic alteration
The Klamath River was once an ecological powerhouse – the third-largest salmon-producing river in the American west. Its basin covered more than 9.4m acres (3.8m hectares) and its network of wetlands was the largest in the region. The ecosystem was home to millions of migrating birds. Tribes, including the Hoopa, Karuk, Klamath, Modoc and Yurok, thrived in this bountiful and beautiful watershed for thousands of years, with the river providing both sustenance and ritual.
Over the last hundred years, these landscapes have been drastically altered.
After the first dam began operating in 1918 – one of four that would eventually be forged in the lower Klamath to provide hydroelectric power to communities nearby – the course of the river was changed. The dams obstructed the migration of salmon and other native species, which help carry nutrients into the systems from the ocean, to cascading effects.
They also held on to huge stores of sediment that would otherwise have flowed downriver, and created shallow reservoirs that quickly heated when the weather warmed. Increased water temperatures in the river allowed toxic algal blooms to thrive.
In recent decades, the climate crisis has turned up the dial, deepening droughts and fueling a rise in catastrophic fire as the region grows ever hotter. The impacts only increased as more water was diverted to support the farming and ranching in the region, and more habitat was altered by mining and logging.
Twenty-eight types of salmon and steelhead trout, seen as indicator species that represent the health of the ecosystems they live in, have been listed as threatened or endangered.
As the Klamath ecosystem deteriorated, there was growing recognition that removing the dams would be a crucial first step in helping the region recover and build resilience in a warming world.
But, faced with a strong resistance to change in local communities tucked around the reservoirs and a long history of difficult battles over water in the parched landscapes in the west, dam removal seemed all but impossible. The land for the dams was taken from tribes during the throes of colonization and development and more recently supported energy corporations that had shareholders to answer to.
Then, in 2002, disaster struck. Algae flourished in the shallow warming waters that year, exacerbated by the dams and decisions from the US Bureau of Reclamation to divert vital flows to farms, leaving little for fish. The event killed 70,000 salmon and thousands of other species, resulting in one of the worst die-offs ever to occur in the US.
The layers of fish floating belly-up sent an important signal of the horrors that could continue into the future if the dams remained. Forming a coalition, tribes up and down the Klamath launched a fierce campaign to educate the public, inform the shareholders of the companies that owned and operated the dams, and petition their boards. They protested and attended public hearings, and engaged with state and federal officials.
‘A tremendous rollercoaster’
It took decades of advocacy to convince PacifiCorp, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Energy, to let go of the ageing infrastructure straddling the Oregon-California border. But in the mid-aughts, assured by shifts in public opinion and incentivized by the steep costs to relicense the dams, the company agreed it was time to see them go.
In November 2020, nearly 20 years after the die-off, an agreement was forged between a long list of stakeholders that included tribal and state governments and federal agencies. The Klamath River Renewal Corporation was created to oversee and implement the removal.
The organization had to help bring residents near the reservoirs onboard, navigate dozens of species-management plans, and model how outdoor-recreation enthusiasts could continue to enjoy the river. Ranchers and fishers, environmentalists and farmers, and locals and visitors all had connections to the basin, and were eager to weigh in.
“It has been a tremendous rollercoaster,” said Brownell. “Having the river’s health in your hands is an incredible burden to carry.”
Brownell, who grew up along the riverbanks, was standing in the canyon as the blast of the first dam released flows and the river that had been held over the last hundred years found its way back to itself.
“I got to watch the water come down through the canyon and reconnect with the river below. I watched the river re-establish itself there forevermore,” she said. It was the most exciting moment of the year.
Moments of trauma
There were moments of trauma along the way. Over the 100 years the dams were standing, they had held back 15m cubic yards of sediment. When the dams were removed, the heavy dead organic matter had to run downriver, soaking up oxygen in the water. Extensive modeling had predicted a severe impact on aquatic life, but no one knew how bad it would get or how long it would take for the river to regain its health. Some models predicted the suffocating conditions could linger for up to a month.
“I was braced and prepared but it was still tremendously hard,” said Brownell, recalling how the water, rid of oxygen, looked like oil as it cascaded through its banks.
“You can easily compare a river’s health to an individual’s health,” she said. “Often when someone is sick, they are going to get worse before they get better. We essentially performed a quadruple bypass on the river this last year – we knew there would be short-term impacts.
“The whole time everyone was so excited because it felt like the start of something – I just felt sick,” she said.
Leaf Hillman, a Karuk tribal ceremonial leader who has dedicated decades to seeing this project come to fruition, helped keep hopes high with assurances that these were signs of healing.
“For me it was beautiful,” he said, recalling how he felt even when the rushing waters became clouded by silt. “I could envision what it was going to look like – a restored river.”
In the end, the river lacked oxygen for only two 24-hour periods, a far shorter time than scientists had feared.
The real work begins
As 2025 begins, so does the real work.
“It is a new era for us – there are good things to come,” Hillman said.
He is looking forward to the work ahead, especially the work to ensure fish can reach “pristine habitat” in tributaries above the Upper Klamath Lake.
With 400 miles (644km) of habitat for salmon and other native species restored, and 2,200 acres made available after spending a century submerged, stakeholders are envisioning a future for these lands and those who rely on them. Already, native seeds have been strewn along the banks and in the areas once vibrant with vegetation.
There have already been strong signs of their success.
In late November, threatened coho salmon were seen in the upper Klamath River basin for the first time in more than 60 years, according to the California department of fish and wildlife. Other animals are benefiting, too, including north-western pond turtles, freshwater mussels, beavers and river otters.
Strong winter rains have also helped the rebound. “The river is doing what rivers do – redistributing sediments,” Hillman said, calling the gift of wet weather the “icing on the cake”.
“We have a lot more work to do,” he added, “but it’s a good omen.”
The roughly 2,800 acres of land sacred to the Shasta Indian Nation that had been drowned and buried under a reservoir created by one of the dams has been returned to them. The Kikacéki and Kutarawaxu bands who once called the area home were decimated by colonists in the 1800s, after the lure of gold, mining, logging and ranching drew throngs of people to the region. The small tribe that remained was then pushed from their homes through eminent domain to make way for construction of the dams to begin.
The Guardian was unable to speak to representatives of Shasta Indian Nation on record, but they have recounted the painful history endured by their ancestors and what the next chapter means to them.
“Today is a turning point in the history of the Shasta people,” Janice Crowe, the Shasta Indian Nation chair, told AZCentral, . “Now we can return home, return to culture, return to ceremony and begin to weave a new story for the next generation of Shasta, who will get to call our ancestral lands home once again.”
With successes, though, there may still be setbacks. The water is still turbid as the river continues to cleanse itself of sediment. There’s a lot of data to wade through and challenges to overcome. The effects of the climate crisis will continue to unfold.
In the farther parts of the river, Klamath tribal leaders are still waiting to see the salmon that were lost to their homelands more than 100 years ago. Dams still stand in the northern stretches of the river.
‘It’s a river again’
But for advocates, the dams’ removal on its own serves as a strong reminder that change is possible.
Toz Soto, a fish biologist and manager of the Karuk Tribe fisheries program, said with a laugh that he was skeptical right up until the moment they blasted through the concrete. But, by convincing the public that removing the dams made sense, “not just as a social justice issue for tribal health but also from an economic standpoint”, he said, the wheels of change started to turn.
As the work continues, Soto is looking upon it with a smile.
“There were moments, and those are behind me,” he said. He’s hopeful for the future, and excited to start the reintroduction of spring-run chinook salmon that otherwise would never have had a chance. Water conditions will continue to improve with time, and they are already far better than they were a year ago.
“It is quite impressive,” he added. “I am so programmed going up there to look at a funky nasty reservoir. Now it’s just like – wow. It’s a river again.”
