PORTLAND, Ore. — U.S. regulators approved a plan Thursday to demolish four dams on a California river and open up hundreds of miles of salmon habitat. It would be the largest dam removal and river restoration project in the world.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s unanimous vote on the lower Klamath River dams is the last regulatory hurdle and the biggest milestone for a $500 million demolition proposal championed by Native American tribes and environmentalists. The project would return the lower half of California’s second-largest river to a free-flowing state for the first time in over a century. Native tribes that rely on the Klamath River and its salmon have been a driving force behind bringing the dams down in a remote area that spans the California and Oregon border. Barring any unforeseen complications, Oregon, California and the entity formed to oversee the project will accept the license transfer and could begin dam removal this summer, proponents said.
“The Klamath salmon are coming home,” Yurok Chairman Joseph James said after the vote. “The people have earned this victory and with it, we carry on our sacred duty to the fish that have sustained our people since the beginning of time.”
The dams produce less than 2% of PacifiCorp’s power generation — enough to power about 70,000 homes — when running at full capacity, said Bob Gravely, spokesperson for the utility. But they often run far lower because of low water in the river and other issues, and the agreement that paved the way for Thursday’s vote was ultimately a business decision, he said.
PacifiCorp would have had to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in fish ladders, fish screens and other conservation upgrades under environmental regulations that were not in place when the dams were first built. But the utility’s cost is capped at $200 million, with another $250 million from a California voter-approved water bond.
“We’re closing coal plants and building wind farms and it all just has to add up. It’s not a one-to-one,” he said of the demolition. “You can make up that power by the way you operate the rest of your facilities or having energy efficiency savings so your customers are using less.”
The project is also the most ambitious salmon restoration plan — measured by the number of dams and the amount of river habitat that would reopen to salmon — making it the largest of its kind in the world, said Amy Souers Kober, spokesperson for American Rivers.
More than 300 miles (483 kilometers) of salmon habitat in the Klamath River and its tributaries would benefit, she said.