Oregon Will Fund Removal Of Four Klamath River Dams - But No Demolition Until 2020

[hatrack]

GRANTS PASS, Ore. — A utility surcharge in Oregon will finance most of the cost of removing four Klamath River dams to help salmon under a bill signed by Gov. Ted Kulongoski on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, federal officials met in Klamath Falls with representatives of PacifiCorp and the states of California and Oregon. The parties must have a binding agreement by September to restore 300 miles of spawning habitat on what was once the third-biggest salmon producer on the West Coast.

A preliminary agreement that serves as a framework for the negotiations both guarantees and limits the amount of irrigation water that will be available to farmers in the Klamath Basin, and offers hundreds of millions of dollars for salmon restoration work and research. In recent decades, the needs of farms and fish in the area have been pitted against each other while declining salmon runs have triggered cutbacks in commercial and recreational fishing.

EDIT

A drought in 2001 forced a shut-off of irrigation water to sustain threatened and endangered fish, and when the irrigation was restored the next year, tens of thousands of salmon died trying to spawn in the Klamath River, which was too low and too warm to sustain them. Besides blocking salmon from the upper basin, the dams raise water temperatures to levels unhealthy for fish. Their reservoirs produce toxic algae. The fish are beset by parasites.

EDIT

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/outdoors/2009472063_klamathdams15.html