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Klamath Dam removal
could be a calamity
Commentary by Ph.D. Dr. Menke on Dan
Walters: Warren Buffet and Oregon farmers could get a gift from
California taxpayers, Sacramento Bee.
Dan
Walters article follows Dr. Menke's commentary
11/27/11
An article by Dan Walters in the
Sacramento Bee of Friday, November 25 has prompted a reply by
John W. Menke, A.A., B.S., M.S., Ph.D., retired professor UC
Davis and UC Berkeley (1973-98). Dr. Menke has also been a
rancher in Quartz Valley near Fort Jones for 18+ years. This
area is part of the Klamath River Watershed.
The article entitled: “Dan Walters:
Warren Buffet and Oregon farmers could get a gift from
California taxpayers,” which can be read in full at
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/11/25/4078681/dan-walters-warren-buffett-and.html
makes a powerful point.
Dr. Menke makes a great many additional
points that should be read carefully by anyone who is trying to
understand the question of Klamath Dam removal, the Klamath
Basin Restoration Agreement (KBRA) and the Klamath Hydroelectric
Settlement Agreement (KHSA).
As Dr. Menke concludes, among many other
negative and unintended consequences, the removal of the four
dams could create one of the greatest man-made calamities in the
history of the West. Here is the text of Dr. Menke’s response to
Walter’s article:
“The potential increase of salmon and
steelhead trout production in the Klamath River Watershed from
dam removal has been severely compromised by the Federal
government's deal (KBRA--Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement)
with the Upper Klamath Basin Indian Tribes to send most of the
previously used Upper Klamath Basin irrigators' water down the
river year-round. The benefit of very low natural (pre-1918
dams) summertime flows will continue to be foregone because the
agreed-upon flows following dam removal will be too high to
allow the sun to kill diseases in the 'infectious zone' below
the mouth of the Shasta River where most of the
out-migrating juvenile steelhead trout, coho salmon and Chinook
salmon linger and get infected most years. The most sensitive
steelhead has essentially been eliminated in returns to Iron
Gate Fish Hatchery, and the same has occurred to coho
salmon returns to the Shasta River. Chinook salmon returns are
maintained purely due to excessive hatchery rearing, and also
production of yearling Chinook salmon juveniles as it is wholly
unnatural for this species to be in freshwater at this advanced
age.
“The multi-mile-long infectious zone
in the Klamath River has been thoroughly studied by Oregon State
University fish pathologists, and the only solution to
that death-trap is to allow Mother Nature to do what she always
did for millions of years: desiccate the mostly-dry Klamath
River streambed by sunshine each summer. This is a unique
need of this river because of the extremely high natural
phosphorus soils and parent volcanic rock materials of the Upper
Klamath Basin, and the unusually warm headwaters of the
upper Klamath River. Too-warm water, coupled with too-high a
concentration of available nutrients, maximizes
disease incidence and algaes which have their own effects.
“Before the dams were built,
low-summertime flows naturally caused a die-off of native
polychaete worm populations living in the streambed
below aquatic plants rooted on the streambed due to solarization
(intense desiccating heat and solar radiation by the sun). The polychaete
worm is the vector of disease to the fish. Since 1918 the dams
on the Klamath River have intercepted sediments from the Upper
Klamath Basin, but replacement of irrigators'
concrete irrigation diversion dams on the Shasta River by
boulder weirs or pumps to facilitate upstream migration of
juvenile coho salmon since Federal listing in 1997, has enhanced
the downstream Klamath River rooting habitat for aquatic plants
and caused the infectious zone due to sediment deposition from
the Shasta River. This unintended consequence of diversion dam
removal was not understood until the nutrient Total Maximum
Daily Load assessment was done for the Shasta River in 2006.
“Since COPCO built the dams beginning in
1918 and PacifiCorp's desire to generate power all summer long
every year has allowed this disease vector to develop
unknowingly and caused massive death of out-migrating juvenile
salmon and steelhead from Iron Gate Hatchery, Bogus Creek, and
the Shasta River--so-called 'salmon heaven' by CalTrout and the
Shasta Resource Conservation District. Had a simple condition
been required for Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)
re-licensing of PacifiCorp's hydroelectric power generation
permit--extremely low flows during a month to six-weeks each
summer--the infectious zone and depressed salmon and steelhead
production in the Klamath River Basin could have been avoided or
could be avoided without dam removal now. One Environmental
Protection Agency joint-staff person, who also happens to be a
California State Water Quality Control Board staff-appointee,
stopped the FERC re-license to bring PacifiCorp under control.
This Santa Rosa, California, Agenda 21 Transition City-based
staffer almost single-handedly assured the Klamath Hydroelectric
Settlement Agreement (KHSA) by stopping FERC re-licensing of
PacifiCorp's dams.
“The never-let-a-crisis-go-to-waste
attitude of the Federal government [has] caused it to modify
its mission mid-stream to kill off agricultural enterprises in
the Upper Klamath Basin, the Shasta and Scott Valleys, to
re-wild the whole Klamath River Watershed, and to propose the
most massive reconstruction of wetland habitat in the history of
the World. The late-1980s maturity of the 1905-initiated, now
106-year-old, Klamath Reclamation Project has succeeded in
replacing putrid wetlands and contaminated water with a fine
agricultural production system of land use and superbly
bio-remediated downstream Klamath River water below the dams;
however, now the Federal government proposes, in effect, to
reconstruct the pre-1905 condition.
“The only winner in this proposed
program is government agency employment to oversee the
regressive projects involved. Delusional on-project
agricultural producers have banked on the honesty of KBRA
stakeholders to allow them to practice agriculture. Nothing
could be further from the truthful outcome of this melodrama
of the future if the KBRA/KHSA happens.
“The remarkable willingness of the
Department of Interior agencies and California and Oregon
State agencies to flush 21-million cubic yards of sediment down
the Wild and Scenic Klamath River in the face of Clean Water Act
restrictions is a clear indication that this Klamath River
Watershed issue is not about the fish, it is about control of
private land and water rights pure and simple and taxpayer money
paid to agencies and lobbying stakeholders. In actuality, the
estimated 20.4 million cubic yards of sediment assuming that 84%
washes down the Klamath River, is the equivalent sediment to
cover a 2-lane, 24-foot-wide standard highway one-foot-deep in
sediment the equivalent of 3,651 miles which is farther than the
distance from San Francisco to New York City. As the expert
panel statement implied, it would likely kill the Klamath River
for at least 100 years. The sediment must be dredged out prior
to dam removal. The behavior of the Federal and State agencies
involved is scientific misconduct pure and simple!”
-- John W. Menke, A.A., B.S., M.S.,
Ph.D., retired professor UC Davis and UC Berkeley (1973-98) and
rancher in Quartz Valley, Fort Jones, CA, Klamath River
Watershed for 18+ years.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
The California Oregon Power Co. was founded
in 1911 to supply electricity to residents and businesses in
the southernmost Oregon counties and the northernmost
California counties. It built four hydroelectric power dams
on the Klamath
River.
The Klamath cuts across California's
northwestern corner and is incredibly remote, much of it
virtually inaccessible. Until those dams were built,
blocking spawning runs, it supported an immense salmon and
steelhead fishery that sustained Indian
tribes living
along its banks.
COPCO merged with Pacific
Power and Light Co., which serves huge swaths of several
states in the Pacific
Northwest, in
1961. PP&L eventually changed its name to PacificCorp and in
2005 was acquired by Warren
Buffett, the
second-richest man in America.
Those Klamath River dams have
become very contentious factors in a controversy over how
the river's waters should be managed, involving not only
their effect on fish, but the water
supplies of
farmers in the Klamath basin, the Southern Oregon region
where the river begins.
While Indian
tribes and
commercial fishermen demand elimination of the dams to
restore fish runs, farmers worry about irrigation water – a
concern underscored a few years ago when the feds virtually
shut down their supplies.
The factions have worked out
a deal to remove the four dams and restore fish habitat,
while – at least in theory – protecting water
supplies for
those Klamath basin farmers. California Congressman Mike
Thompson, a Democrat who represents the North Coast, and
Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, have introduced legislation to
implement it.
However, a big sticking point
is its cost, about a billion dollars. Thompson and Merkley
want the federal government to pay half, which is already
drawing opposition in a Republican-controlled Congress.
PacificCorp would pay about a quarter. The remaining $250
million?
The two legislators say it
would come from "non-federal sources."
They don't say that it would
come from California taxpayers, specifically a $250 million
chunk of the $11.1 billion state water bond that is
scheduled to go before voters next year.
And why should California
taxpayers be on the hook?
The dams' removal would have
no effect, positive or negative, on our water
supply. The
semiofficial rationale – weak at best – is that improving
fish runs on the Klamath would offset losses of habitat in
the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta.
But the bottom line is that,
with interest on the bonds, it's a half-billion- dollar gift
from California taxpayers to Oregon farmers and Buffett,
because PacificCorp would otherwise have to pay for the
dams' removal or attempt to get them relicensed, a virtual
impossibility.
Given the season, one could
say that the deal is a real turkey.
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reserved.
Call The Bee's Dan
Walters, (916) 321-1195. Back columns, www.sacbee.com/walters
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