The Klamath River flows 253 miles
from Southern Oregon to the California coast, draining a basin of
more than 15,000 square miles. The watershed and its fisheries
have been the subject of negotiation since the 1860s negotiations
that have intensified and continue to this day.
The river has provided irrigation to ag lands since the late 19th
century. Agricultural development drained vast areas of
wetlands on the periphery of Upper Klamath Lake and in
upstream watersheds. Some of this drained acreage has been
restored and is now managed primarily for wetland benefits.
The watershed is divided geographically into two basins, upper
and lower, divided by Iron Gate Dam, the lower most dam on the
river. The Upper Basin is dry, with annual precipitation of about
13 inches at the river’s origin near Klamath Falls, Ore.
Downstream, the climate grows wetter.
Native Americans have a significant presence in the Klamath
Basin. Four major tribes have been influential in water
negotiations: the Klamath Tribes, the Karuk Tribe, the Hoopa
Valley Tribe and the Yurok Tribe.
… The speed of the salmon’s return has astonished even the
most seasoned biologists. … News of the salmon’s return
prompted a flurry of texts and excited phone calls among fish
advocates. Their return is especially poignant to members of
the Klamath Tribes, whose ancestral lands include the upper
Klamath Basin above the dam sites. With the construction of the
dams, salmon, or c’iyaals, had been absent from the Upper
Basin for over 100 years. Now attention is shifting from the
massive dam-removal project to the equally enormous task ahead:
restoring the Klamath watershed. Biologists will look to the
fish themselves for guidance.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) today
announced the award of $17 million in grants for 18 restoration
and protection projects throughout the state, including
projects to benefit disadvantaged communities, salmon and
steelhead in the Klamath-Trinity watershed, wetlands and
meadows and watersheds impacted by cannabis cultivation.
Today’s awards continue the ongoing efforts to support critical
restoration projects with funding made available in late 2022
through the Nature Based Solutions (NBS) Initiative and
Greenhouse Gas Reduction Funds, funding through CDFW’s Cannabis
Program, as well as funding dedicated to habitat restoration
through Proposition 68.
Four Klamath River hydroelectric dams have been removed. For
many, the question is: What’s the future of the Keno Dam? The
Keno Dam is a non-power generating dam that was built in 1967
after a flood washed out the wooden Needle Dam. It was owned by
PacifiCorp until ownership was recently transferred to the U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation. Located about a mile south of Keno, it
impounds water from Keno about 22 miles upstream to Lake Ewauna
in Klamath Falls. It also provides for about a third othe water
for Klamath Reclamation Project irrigators. Because of its
importance to agriculture, the dam will remain in place.
… The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is
exploring fish passage options at Keno Dam with a recent $1.9
million NOAA award.
… When Copco, the company, first started damming the Klamath,
bringing hydroelectric power to a remote corner of California
was a higher priority for government and industry than the
passage of fish up and down from the river’s headwaters in
southern Oregon to the sea. Today, scientists count damming
alongside overfishing, hatcheries, degraded habitat, and
climate change as the biggest blows to what were once the
third-largest salmon runs in the lower 48 states. Dam
proponents also ignored Native American rights and interests.
Their projects’ reservoirs flooded homelands of the Shasta
people, so utterly dispossessing them that they are not
currently a federally recognized tribe. … Two small towns are
most directly affected: Hornbrook, just downstream from Iron
Gate Dam, has a population of 650 if you include the
surrounding district; the cottage community of Copco Lake, on
the Copco reservoir, has 120 residents, not all of them
full-time. … There’s perennial conflict over how much
Klamath water should go to agriculture and other uses and how
much to fish. But that battle is centered upstream, in Klamath
Falls, Oregon, where a pair of dams will remain standing.
– Written by J.B. MacKinnon, journalist and author of
The Day the World Stops Shopping.
In this episode of the Explore Oregon Podcast, host Zach Urness
talks with a Klamath River outfitter about how the largest dam
removal project in United States history has transformed the
river by returning salmon and opening stretches hidden for a
century. Will Volpert, owner of southern Oregon’s Indigo Creek
Outfitters, has been rafting every stretch of what he’s dubbed
the “New Klamath” after dam removal to document, map and
prepare for commercial trips and recreation on a stream that
looks a lot different after four dams and reservoirs were
removed near the Oregon and California state line. Volpert
talks about being surprised by a salmon in a class IV rapid,
exploring the river as it carves through old dam sites and
reservoirs, and running major rapids only recently discovered.
Salmon have officially returned to Oregon’s Klamath Basin for
the first time in more than a century, months after the largest
dam removal project in U.S. history freed hundreds of miles of
the Klamath River near the California-Oregon border. The Oregon
Department of Fish and Wildlife confirmed the news on Oct. 17,
a day after its fish biologists identified a fall run of
Chinook salmon in a tributary to the Klamath River above the
former J.C. Boyle Dam, the department said. The fish
likely traveled 230 miles from the Pacific Ocean, officials
said, after four dams were removed to ensure their safe
passage. It’s the first confirmed salmon to return to the
Klamath Basin since 1912, when the first of four hydroelectric
dams was constructed along the river, the department said.
Just a month after completing work to remove four dams on the
Klamath River, fish and wildlife officials in California and
Oregon said they have already spotted a salmon upstream of the
locations where the dams once blocked the fish from migrating.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife said a fall-run
chinook salmon was found in a tributary stream west of Klamath
Falls, Oregon, on Oct. 16. That fish reached Spencer Creek
after migrating some 230 miles upstream from the Pacific Ocean.
State and federal fisheries officials, along with
representatives from Native American tribes, have begun
extensive monitoring along the Klamath River to see how the
fish have reacted after the dams were destroyed, and whether
they are migrating upstream past where the four dams were once
located.
The Interior Department will put $46 million toward wetland and
habitat restoration in the Klamath River Basin, part of an
ongoing bid to balance environmental and agricultural water
demands in the region after the removal of four dams. The
agency announced Wednesday that it will fund two dozen projects
to restore wetlands, shorelines and native habitats in southern
Oregon and Northern California. The nonprofit Klamath River
Renewal Corp. recently completed the removal of four dams — the
Iron Gate, Copco 1, Copco 2 and J.C. Boyle structures —
restoring more than 400 miles of free-flowing waterway for
salmon and other fish species.
CalTrout, alongside our state, federal, Tribal, and NGO
partners, launched a comprehensive monitoring program on the
river to track how fish will respond to dam removal and record
fish migration through the former dam sites, informing the
success of dam removal and long-term restoration efforts.
“It’s been over one hundred years since a wild salmon last swam
through this reach of the Klamath River” said Damon Goodman,
Mt. Shasta/Klamath Regional Director for California Trout. “I
am incredibly humbled to witness this moment and share this
news, standing on the shoulders of decades of work by our
Tribal partners, as the salmon return home. While dam removal
is complete, recovery will be a long process. This individual
represents the beginning of the next chapter of recovery for
Klamath River fish and for the communities that depend on the
watershed.”
… We need to take action to protect the largest estuary on
the West Coast, as well as those who suffer as the environment
declines, including Delta communities, Tribes, and salmon
fishermen. … The Central Valley Flood Protection Board has
adopted a new Central Valley Flood Protection Plan to respond
to this growing risk. A cornerstone strategy is to restore tens
of thousands of acres of floodplains along Central Valley
rivers. That will allow floodwaters to spread out and sink into
groundwater aquifers – rather than threaten communities like
Stockton. … When existing agricultural land is restored
as native floodplain habitat, it no longer needs irrigation.
Restored habitat consumes some water – provided through natural
precipitation and river flows. But even so, restoring
floodplains reduces net water use. That saved water can be
dedicated to restoring rivers. —Written by Rick Frank, professor of environmental
practice at U.C. Davis School of Law and Julie Rentner,
president of River Partners
The largest dam removal project in U.S. history was completed
Oct. 2 on the Klamath River in Southern Oregon and Northern
California. Four dams were taken out, allowing adult salmon to
swim all the way up the Klamath River from the Pacific Ocean
and into more than 400 miles of newly reopened habitat. OPB
cinematographer Brandon Swanson collected video footage of the
dam sites before and after the removal operation. The video
above includes before and after shots of all four dams.
… The video also includes before-and-after shots of a
site along Iron Gate reservoir, where an algae bloom had turned
the stagnant lake green in 2022, and a site along Northern
California’s Copco Lake reservoir, where a community of about
100 people lives.
Less than two months after the removal of dams restored a
free-flowing Klamath River, salmon have made their way upstream
to begin spawning and have been spotted in Oregon for the first
time in more than a century. Biologists with the Oregon
Department of Fish and Wildlife announced that they found a
single fall-run Chinook on Oct. 16 in a tributary of the
Klamath River upstream of the spot where J.C. Boyle Dam was
recently dismantled. State biologists in California have also
been seeing salmon in creeks that had been inaccessible since
dams were built decades ago and blocked fish from reaching
their spawning areas.
One of the first banners used by a coalition of tribes,
environmentalists and other allies in a 20-year struggle to
remove four dams from the Klamath River along the
California-Oregon state line was lovingly hung by some longtime
fish protectors. The vinyl decals, featuring salmon crying to
get beyond the first of the dams, were wrinkled, the banner
itself battle-scarred in places. But the message was still
clear: “Un-dam the Klamath now!” That message became fact at
the end of September, when the final hunks of concrete were
trucked away from the last of the four dams that had impeded
fish migration for nearly a century. The world’s largest dam
removal project to date was complete, and about 500 people came
to a meadow about 10 miles south of the Klamath on Oct. 5 to
celebrate and to look forward to the next phase of restoring an
entire basin the size of West Virginia.
The dam removal projects- aimed at sustaining the salmon
population, are underway, with the latest drawdown being three
reservoirs on the Klamath River. The removal process has
already dramatically changed the landscape in Southern Oregon
and far Northern California, along the course of the river. The
lowest of the three remaining dams- Iron Gate, was initially
breached on January 9, followed by the J.C. Boyle reservoir on
January 16. A concrete plug in the tunnel at the base of Copco
1 was blasted away on January 23, with the reservoirs draining
quickly, leaving vast expanses of fissured mud that was the
consistency and color of chocolate cake batter. Shaping its new
course, the Klamath River is winding through the bare
landscape, but the transformation has had some unintended
consequences and saddened some residents.
…Tuesday, the State Water Resources Control Board took
action to protect the salmon,
unanimously extending the region’s
expired emergency drought measures. Ground and surface
water for farms will be restricted for another year if flows in
the Shasta and Scott rivers dip below minimum thresholds. State
officials say these measures are likely to kick in next
year. Water board chair Joaquin Esquivel said action
is needed because “a fish emergency” remains on the rivers.
“Time isn’t our friend,” he said at a previous meeting in
August. “There is an urgency.” The water board also
is investigating the possibility of permanent requirements to
keep more water in the rivers, after the Karuk Tribe and the
fishing industry petitioned the state for stronger protections.
That decision, however, could take years.
The Klamath River Basin was once one
of the world’s most ecologically magnificent regions, a watershed
teeming with salmon, migratory birds and wildlife that thrived
alongside Native American communities. The river flowed rapidly
from its headwaters in southern Oregon’s high deserts into Upper
Klamath Lake, collected snowmelt along a narrow gorge through the
Cascades, then raced downhill to the California coast in a misty,
redwood-lined finish.
California is chock full of rivers and creeks, yet the state’s network of stream gauges has significant gaps that limit real-time tracking of how much water is flowing downstream, information that is vital for flood protection, forecasting water supplies and knowing what the future might bring.
That network of stream gauges got a big boost Sept. 30 with the signing of SB 19. Authored by Sen. Bill Dodd (D-Napa), the law requires the state to develop a stream gauge deployment plan, focusing on reactivating existing gauges that have been offline for lack of funding and other reasons. Nearly half of California’s stream gauges are dormant.
In 1983, a landmark California Supreme Court ruling extended the public trust doctrine to tributary creeks that feed Mono Lake, which is a navigable water body even though the creeks themselves were not. The ruling marked a dramatic shift in water law and forced Los Angeles to cut back its take of water from those creeks in the Eastern Sierra to preserve the lake.
Now, a state appellate court has for the first time extended that same public trust doctrine to groundwater that feeds a navigable river, in this case the Scott River flowing through a picturesque valley of farms and alfalfa in Siskiyou County in the northern reaches of California.
Headwaters are the source of a
stream or river. They are located at the furthest point from
where the water body empties or merges with
another. Two-thirds of California’s surface water supply
originates in these mountainous and typically forested regions.
Mired in drought, expectations are high that new storage funded
by Prop. 1 will be constructed to help California weather the
adverse conditions and keep water flowing to homes and farms.
At the same time, there are some dams in the state eyed for
removal because they are obsolete – choked by accumulated
sediment, seismically vulnerable and out of compliance with
federal regulations that require environmental balance.
20-minute version of the 2012 documentary The Klamath Basin: A
Restoration for the Ages. This DVD is ideal for showing at
community forums and speaking engagements to help the public
understand the complex issues related to complex water management
disputes in the Klamath River Basin. Narrated by actress Frances
Fisher.
For over a century, the Klamath River Basin along the Oregon and
California border has faced complex water management disputes. As
relayed in this 2012, 60-minute public television documentary
narrated by actress Frances Fisher, the water interests range
from the Tribes near the river, to energy producer PacifiCorp,
farmers, municipalities, commercial fishermen, environmentalists
– all bearing legitimate arguments for how to manage the water.
After years of fighting, a groundbreaking compromise may soon
settle the battles with two epic agreements that hold the promise
of peace and fish for the watershed. View an excerpt from the
documentary here.
This 25-minute documentary-style DVD, developed in partnership
with the California Department of Water Resources, provides an
excellent overview of climate change and how it is already
affecting California. The DVD also explains what scientists
anticipate in the future related to sea level rise and
precipitation/runoff changes and explores the efforts that are
underway to plan and adapt to climate.
This beautiful 24×36-inch poster, suitable for framing, displays
the rivers, lakes and reservoirs, irrigated farmland, urban areas
and Indian reservations within the Klamath River Watershed. The
map text explains the many issues facing this vast,
15,000-square-mile watershed, including fish restoration;
agricultural water use; and wetlands. Also included are
descriptions of the separate, but linked, Klamath Basin
Restoration Agreement and the Klamath Hydroelectric Agreement,
and the next steps associated with those agreements. Development
of the map was funded by a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service.
The Water Education Foundation’s second edition of
the Layperson’s Guide to The Klamath River Basin is
hot off the press and available for purchase.
Updated and redesigned, the easy-to-read overview covers the
history of the region’s tribal, agricultural and environmental
relationships with one of the West’s largest rivers — and a
vast watershed that hosts one of the nation’s oldest and
largest reclamation projects.
A new look for our most popular product! And it’s the perfect
gift for the water wonk in your life.
Our 24×36-inch California Water Map is widely known for being the
definitive poster that shows the integral role water plays in the
state. On this updated version, it is easier to see California’s
natural waterways and man-made reservoirs and aqueducts
– including federally, state and locally funded
projects – the wild and scenic rivers system, and
natural lakes. The map features beautiful photos of
California’s natural environment, rivers, water projects,
wildlife, and urban and agricultural uses and the
text focuses on key issues: water supply, water use, water
projects, the Delta, wild and scenic rivers and the Colorado
River.
The Pacific Flyway is one of four
major North American migration routes for birds, especially
waterbirds, and stretches from Alaska in the north
to Patagonia in South America.
Each year, birds follow ancestral patterns as they travel the
flyway on their annual north-south migration. Along the way, they
need stopover sites such as wetlands with suitable habitat and
food supplies. In California, 95 percent of historic
wetlands have been lost, yet the Central Valley hosts some of the
world’s largest populations of wintering birds.
The Klamath River Basin is one of the West’s most important and
contentious watersheds.
The watershed is known for its peculiar geography straddling
California and Oregon. Unlike many western rivers, the
Klamath does not originate in snowcapped mountains but rather on
a volcanic plateau.
A broad patchwork of spring-fed streams and rivers in
south-central Oregon drains into Upper Klamath Lake and down into
Lake Ewauna in the city of Klamath Falls. The outflow from Ewauna
marks the beginning of the 263-mile Klamath River.
The Klamath courses south through the steep Cascade Range and
west along the rugged Siskiyou Mountains to a redwood-lined
estuary on the Pacific Ocean just south of Crescent City,
draining a watershed of 10 million acres.
A bounty of resources – water, salmon, timber and minerals – and
a wide range of users turned the remote region into a hotspot for
economic development and multiparty water disputes (See
Klamath River
timeline).
Though the basin has only 115,000 residents, there is seldom
enough water to go around. Droughts are common. The water
scarcity inflames tensions between agricultural,
environmental and tribal interests, namely the basin’s four major
tribes: the Klamath Tribes, the Karuk, Hoopa Valley and Yurok.
Klamath water-use conflicts routinely spill into courtrooms,
state legislatures and Congress.
In 2023, a historic removal of four powers dams on the river
began, signaling hope for restoration of the river and its fish
and easing tensions between competing water interests. In
February 2024, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland
announced a “historic” agreement between tribes and farmers
in the basin over chronic water shortages. The deal
called for a wide range of river and creek restoration work and
modernization of agricultural water supply infrastructure.
Water Development
Farmers and ranchers have drawn irrigation water from basin
rivers and lakes since the late 1900s. Vast wetlands around
Upper Klamath Lake and upstream were drained to grow crops. Some
wetlands have been restored, primarily for migratory birds.
In 1905, the federal government authorized construction of the
Klamath Project, a network of irrigation canals, storage
reservoirs and hydroelectric dams to grow an agricultural
economy in the mostly dry Upper Basin. The Project managed by the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation irrigates about 240,000 acres and
supplies the Lower Klamath Lake and Tule Lake national wildlife
refuges managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Water Management
Since 1992, federal mandates to restore populations of fish
protected by the Endangered Species
Act have led in some dry years to drastic cuts in
water deliveries to Klamath Project irrigators.
Water in Upper Klamath Lake must be kept above certain
levels for the endangered shortnose and Lost River suckers. Lake
levels and Klamath River flows below Iron Gate Dam also must be
regulated for the benefit of threatened coho salmon (See
Klamath Basin
Chinook and Coho Salmon).
Conflict
In 2001, Reclamation all but cut off irrigation water to hundreds
of basin farmers and ranchers, citing a severe drought and legal
obligations to protect imperiled fish. In response, thousands of
farmers, ranchers and residents flocked to downtown Klamath Falls
to form a “bucket brigade” protest, emptying buckets of water
into the closed irrigation canal. The demonstrations stretched
into the summer, with protestors forcing open the irrigation
headgates on multiple occasions. Reclamation later released some
water to help farmers.
In September 2002, a catastrophic
disease outbreak in the lower Klamath River killed tens of
thousands of ocean-going salmon. The Pacific Coast Federation of
Fishermen’s Associations sued Reclamation, alleging the Klamath
Project’s irrigation deliveries had violated the Endangered
Species Act. The fishing industry eventually prevailed, and
a federal court ordered an increase to minimum flows in the lower
Klamath.
Compromise
The massive salmon kill and dramatic water shut-off set in motion
a sweeping compromise between the basin’s many competing water
interests: the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement and the
Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement. The 2010 agreements
included:
Removal of four hydroelectric dams
$92.5 million over 10 years to pay farmers to use less water,
increase reservoir storage and help pay for water conservation
and groundwater management projects.
$47 million over 10 years to buy or lease water rights to
increase flows for salmon recovery.
Dam Removals
Congress never funded the two agreements, allowing the key
provisions to expire. The restoration accord dissolved in 2016.
The hydroelectric pact, however, was revived in an amended
version that did not require federal legislation.
The new deal led to the nation’s largest dam removal project ever
undertaken.
California and Oregon formed a
nonprofit organization called the Klamath River Renewal
Corporation to take control of the four essentially obsolete
power dams – J.C. Boyle, Copco No. 1, Copco No. 2 and Iron Gate –
and oversee a $450 million dam demolition and river restoration
project.
Taking out the dams will open more than 420 miles of river and
spawning streams that had been blocked for more than a century,
including cold water pools salmon and trout need to survive the
warming climate.
Demolition crews took out the smallest dam in 2023 and the others
were scheduled to come down by the end of 2024.
The images of yellow heavy machinery tearing into the dam’s
spillway gates prompted a cathartic release for many who have
been fighting for decades to open this stretch of the Klamath.
“I’m still in a little bit of shock,” said Toz Soto,
the Karuk fisheries program manager. “This is actually
happening…It’s kind of like the dog that finally caught the car,
except we’re chasing dam removal.”
On the Klamath River, the Upper Klamath Basin’s aquatic
ecosystems are naturally very productive due to its
phosphorus-rich geology.
However, this high productivity makes the Basin’s lakes
vulnerable to water quality problems.
Nutrient loads in the Upper Klamath Basin are a primary driver of
water quality problems along the length of the Klamath River,
including algal blooms in the Klamath Hydroelectric Project
reservoirs. Municipal and industrial discharges of wastewater in
the Klamath Falls area add to the nutrient load.
The Klamath Basin’s Chinook salmon and coho salmon serve a vital
role in the watershed.
Together, they are key to the region’s water management, habitat
restoration and fishing.
However, years of declining population have led to federally
mandated salmon restoration plans—plans that complicate the
diversion of Klamath water for agriculture and other uses.
This issue of Western Water examines the challenges facing state,
federal and tribal officials and other stakeholders as they work
to manage terminal lakes. It includes background information on
the formation of these lakes, and overviews of the water quality,
habitat and political issues surrounding these distinctive bodies
of water. Much of the information in this article originated at
the September 2004 StateManagement Issues at Terminal Water
Bodies/Closed Basins conference.
The story of the Klamath River is the story of two basins.
In the upper basin, farming has long been the way of life. Even
before passage of the 1902 Reclamation Act, settlers had begun
the arduous process of reclaiming vast tracts of wetlands and
transforming them into rich farmland.
