California’s two primary salmon species, Coho and Chinook, have
experienced significant declines from historical populations.
Of particular importance is the Chinook salmon because the
species supports commercial fishing and related jobs and economic
activities at fish hatcheries.
The decline in salmon numbers is attributed to a variety of
manmade and natural factors including drought, habitat
destruction, water diversions, migratory obstacles created by
local, state and federal water projects, over-fishing,
unfavorable ocean conditions, pollution and introduced predator
species. Wetlands have also been drained and diked; dams have
blocked salmon from reaching historic spawning grounds.
Years of declining populations represent a significant economic
loss and have led to federally mandated salmon restoration plans
that complicate water diversions and conveyance for agriculture
and other uses.
For the second year in a row, a record-breaking number of
Chinook Salmon have returned to the Mokelumne River —
the 95-mile waterway that runs through Northern
California — to spawn, signaling hope for the species’
restoration and the return of salmon fishing
season in 2025. The East Bay Municipal Utility District
announced more than 30,000 fish had been recorded since
September due to conservation efforts to limit commercial
and recreational fishing, boost hatchery production and restore
habitat along the river.
Last week, an unexpected discovery washed up on the shoreline
of Oakland’s Lake Merritt: several dead Chinook salmon.
They had likely swum hundreds of miles in the Pacific
Ocean before making their way inland, past the Golden Gate
Bridge and into the tidal lagoon, where they attempted to spawn
and lay eggs. While the image of multiple fish carcasses
might strike some as bleak after recent algal
blooms killed off thousands of animals in
the nation’s oldest designated wildlife refuge back
in 2022, the presence of the threatened species shocked and
thrilled Bay Area researchers.
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.
The California Department of Water Resources and Bureau of
Reclamation [on Nov. 13] broke ground on a habitat
restoration project in the Delta that, when completed, will
help endangered species such as Delta smelt and Chinook salmon
while supporting the long-term operation of the Central Valley
Project and State Water Project. Led by DWR, the $69.4
million Prospect Island Tidal Habitat Restoration Project
is located on 1,600 acres in Solano County. … The work
happening at the site will enhance aquatic food web
productivity, create and enhance habitats for many
Delta-dependent fish and wildlife species, provide long-term
resiliency with climate change, and provide other ecosystem
benefits such as water quality and carbon
sequestration.
UC Santa Cruz has received nearly $7.5 million from the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) to vault
scientific research on imperiled Pacific salmon populations
into one of the nation’s most powerful collaborations between
the agency and academia to save the vital species. The
transformational funding will support and expand a longstanding
joint effort between UC Santa Cruz and NOAA’s Southwest
Fisheries Science Center—a partnership that the agency sees as
one of the most robust of its 16 collaborative research
institutes, which spans 80 universities across the country.
… 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.
Chinook salmon are spawning in streams above four former dam
sites on the Klamath River in numbers that are astounding
biologists. Now, a network of tribes, agencies, university
researchers, and conservation groups is working together to
track the fish as they explore the newly opened habitat.
Reservoirs behind three of the Klamath River dams were drawn
down starting last January; by October 2, the barriers were
fully removed. Just days later, the first Chinook was
discovered in Jenny Creek in California’s Siskiyou County. On
October 16, biologists from Oregon Department of Fish and
Wildlife and the Klamath Tribes spotted the first Chinook in a
key tributary in Oregon, above all four of the former dams.
Standing knee-deep in one of California’s famed Gold Rush
rivers, a scientist gingerly held up a cheesecloth sack
carrying 5,000 pink salmon eggs, each slightly smaller than a
marble, with a big eye incubating within. A series of
dams have long arrested the natural flow of water on the North
Yuba River in the Tahoe National Forest, blocking the salmon
from these spawning grounds for more than 80 years. State
officials are trying to bring the threatened spring-run chinook
salmon back, starting this week with 300,000 eggs planted in
the streambed. “Bye bye, little guys,” said Aimee Braddock, an
environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish
and Wildlife, as she poured the eggs into a wide tube leading
down to a hole she’d dug in the gravelly streambed.
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.
Farmers can estimate the size of a harvest months in advance by
counting the blossoms on their trees. Similarly, salmon fishers
can cast an eye into the future by counting spawning fish in a
river. Fishery managers are doing that now in the Sacramento
River and its tributaries, and what they’re seeing could be a
bad sign for next year. … Overall, the unwelcome numbers,
mirroring similar figures from last year, are alarming to
people who fish, for they portend the possible continuation of
the two-year-and-counting statewide ban on salmon fishing,
imposed in 2023 following a weak spawning season.
… 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
When the Trump administration presented a new plan exporting
more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta five years
ago, state officials and environmentalists objected that the
new rules would increase the chances that salmon, smelt and
steelhead would go extinct. Now, state and federal agencies are
nearing the finish line on a replacement plan that could boost
water supplies for cities and some growers but, according to a
federal analysis, could be even more harmful to the estuary and
its fish. The Trump administration rules, critics say,
fail to adequately protect endangered fish, while
increasing Delta water exports to some Central Valley farms and
Southern California cities. But the new proposal from the Biden
and Newsom administrations — developed mostly by the U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation and California Department of Water
Resources — does not fix what environmentalists considered
deal-breaking flaws in the Trump rules. Rather, they say, it
worsens them, and could lead to lower survival and accelerated
declines in fish listed as threatened or endangered.
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.
After ten years of rapidly intensifying drought and extreme
weather, California Governor Gavin Newsom has launched the
state’s first strategy to restore and protect populations of
salmon for generations to come. Salmon are described as being
central to religions, creation stories, the health and
subsistence of California’s Native Tribes, plus a
multi-million-dollar fishing industry. However, historic
crashing salmon populations led to the Newsom Administration
requesting a Federal Fishery Disaster to support impacted
communities at the end of 2023, with Tribes having to cancel
their religious and cultural harvests for the first time ever.
Chinook salmon are facing unprecedented challenges as their
once-thriving populations struggle to survive. A new study
published in the journal Ecosphere suggests that decades of
human activities, including ocean harvest, artificial
propagation and reservoir construction, have not only reduced
the size of these fish, but also disrupted their ability to
spawn successfully. Joe Merz, lead author of the paper and a
research affiliate with the UC Davis Department of Wildlife,
Fish and Conservation Biology, said Chinook salmon play a
crucial role in their ecosystems, and that fisheries management
and habitat changes have weakened their natural reproductive
potential.
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 California Department of Fish and Wildlife recommended
Alternative 3 – Salmon Closure during the final days of the
Pacific Fisheries Management Council (PFMC) meeting mirroring
the opinions of commercial and recreational charter boat
anglers. The department’s position is a significant change from
early March. The PFMC meetings are being held in Seattle from
April 6 to 11, and the final recommendations of the council
will be forwarded to the California Fish and Game Commission in
May.
Partners have pulled together to support the recovery of
endangered Sacramento winter-run Chinook salmon in the last few
years. However, the species still faces threats from climate
change and other factors. That is the conclusion of an
Endangered Species Act review that NOAA Fisheries completed for
the native California species. It once returned in great
numbers to the tributaries of the Sacramento River and
supported local tribes. The review concluded that the species
remains endangered, and identified key recovery actions to help
the species survive climate change. While partners have taken
steps to protect winter-run Chinook salmon, blocked habitat,
altered flows, and higher temperatures continue to threaten
their survival.
…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.
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries through a scenic landscape while learning about the issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
Water Education Foundation
2151 River Plaza Drive, Suite 205
Sacramento, CA 95833
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.
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries through a scenic landscape while learning about the issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
Water Education Foundation
2151 River Plaza Drive, Suite 205
Sacramento, CA 95833
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries
through a scenic landscape while learning about the issues
associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of
California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State
Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
Water Education Foundation
2151 River Plaza Drive, Suite 205
Sacramento, CA 95833
This tour ventured through California’s Central Valley, known as the nation’s breadbasket thanks to an imported supply of surface water and local groundwater. Covering about 20,000 square miles through the heart of the state, the valley provides 25 percent of the nation’s food, including 40 percent of all fruits, nuts and vegetables consumed throughout the country.
Land and waterway managers labored
hard over the course of a century to control California’s unruly
rivers by building dams and levees to slow and contain their
water. Now, farmers, environmentalists and agencies are undoing
some of that work as part of an accelerating campaign to restore
the state’s major floodplains.
Biologists have designed a variety
of unique experiments in the past decade to demonstrate the
benefits that floodplains provide for small fish. Tracking
studies have used acoustic tags to show that chinook salmon
smolts with access to inundated fields are more likely than their
river-bound cohorts to reach the Pacific Ocean. This is because
the richness of floodplains offers a vital buffet of nourishment
on which young salmon can capitalize, supercharging their growth
and leading to bigger, stronger smolts.
This tour guided participants on a virtual exploration of the Sacramento River and its tributaries and learn about the issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
One of California Gov. Gavin
Newsom’s first actions after taking office was to appoint Wade
Crowfoot as Natural Resources Agency secretary. Then, within
weeks, the governor laid out an ambitious water agenda that
Crowfoot, 45, is now charged with executing.
That agenda includes the governor’s desire for a “fresh approach”
on water, scaling back the conveyance plan in the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta and calling for more water recycling, expanded
floodplains in the Central Valley and more groundwater recharge.
The growing leadership of women in water. The Colorado River’s persistent drought and efforts to sign off on a plan to avert worse shortfalls of water from the river. And in California’s Central Valley, promising solutions to vexing water resource challenges.
These were among the topics that Western Water news explored in 2018.
We’re already planning a full slate of stories for 2019. You can sign up here to be alerted when new stories are published. In the meantime, take a look at what we dove into in 2018:
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.
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries
through a scenic landscape as participants learned about the
issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of
California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State
Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project. Tour
participants got an on-site update of Oroville Dam spillway
repairs.
An hour’s drive north of Sacramento sits a picture-perfect valley hugging the eastern foothills of Northern California’s Coast Range, with golden hills framing grasslands mostly used for cattle grazing.
Back in the late 1800s, pioneer John Sites built his ranch there and a small township, now gone, bore his name. Today, the community of a handful of families and ranchers still maintains a proud heritage.
Farmers in the Central Valley are broiling about California’s plan to increase flows in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river systems to help struggling salmon runs avoid extinction. But in one corner of the fertile breadbasket, River Garden Farms is taking part in some extraordinary efforts to provide the embattled fish with refuge from predators and enough food to eat.
And while there is no direct benefit to one farm’s voluntary actions, the belief is what’s good for the fish is good for the farmers.
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries
through a scenic landscape as participants learned about the
issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of
California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State
Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project. Tour
participants got an on-site update of repair efforts on the
Oroville Dam spillway.
Before dams were built on the upper
Sacramento River, flood water regularly carried woody debris that
was an important part of the aquatic habitat.
Deprived of this refuge, salmon in the lower parts of the upper
Sacramento River have had a difficult time surviving and making
it down the river and out to the ocean. Seeing this, a group of
people, including water users, decided to lend a hand with an
unprecedented pilot project that saw massive walnut tree trunks
affixed to 12,000-pound boulders and deposited into the deepest
part of the Sacramento River near Redding to provide shelter for
young salmon and steelhead migrating downstream.
Protecting and restoring California’s populations of threatened
and endangered Chinook salmon and steelhead trout have been a big
part of the state’s water management picture for more than 20
years. Significant resources have been dedicated to helping the
various runs of the iconic fish, with successes and setbacks. In
a landscape dramatically altered from its natural setting,
finding a balance between the competing demands for water is
challenging.
Butte Creek, a tributary of the
Sacramento River, begins less than 50 miles northeast of Chico,
California and is named after nearby volcanic plateaus or
“buttes.” The cold, clear waters of the 93-mile creek sustain the
largest naturally spawning wild population of spring-run chinook salmon in the Central Valley.
Several other native fish species are found in Butte Creek,
including Pacific lamprey and Sacramento pikeminnow.
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 30-minute documentary-style DVD on the history and current
state of the San Joaquin River Restoration Program includes an
overview of the geography and history of the river, historical
and current water delivery and uses, the genesis and timeline of
the 1988 lawsuit, how the settlement was reached and what was
agreed to.
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, features
a map of the San Joaquin River. The map text focuses on the San
Joaquin River Restoration Program, which aims to restore flows
and populations of Chinook salmon to the river below Friant Dam
to its confluence with the Merced River. The text discusses the
history of the program, its goals and ongoing challenges with
implementation.
This beautiful 24×36-inch poster, suitable for framing, displays
the rivers, lakes and reservoirs, irrigated farmland, urban areas
and Indian reservations within the Truckee River Basin, including
the Newlands Project, Pyramid Lake and Lake Tahoe. Map text
explains the issues surrounding the use of the Truckee-Carson
rivers, Lake Tahoe water quality improvement efforts, fishery
restoration and the effort to reach compromise solutions to many
of these issues.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the State Water Project provides
an overview of the California-funded and constructed State Water
Project.
The State Water Project is best known for the 444-mile-long
aqueduct that provides water from the Delta to San Joaquin Valley
agriculture and southern California cities. The guide contains
information about the project’s history and facilities.
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.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to Flood Management explains the
physical flood control system, including levees; discusses
previous flood events (including the 1997 flooding); explores
issues of floodplain management and development; provides an
overview of flood forecasting; and outlines ongoing flood control
projects.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to California Water provides an
excellent overview of the history of water development and use in
California. It includes sections on flood management; the state,
federal and Colorado River delivery systems; Delta issues; water
rights; environmental issues; water quality; and options for
stretching the water supply such as water marketing and
conjunctive use. New in this 10th edition of the guide is a
section on the human need for water.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the Central Valley Project
explores the history and development of the federal Central
Valley Project (CVP), California’s largest surface water delivery
system. In addition to the project’s history, the guide describes
the various CVP facilities, CVP operations, the benefits the CVP
brought to the state and the CVP Improvement Act (CVPIA).
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the Delta explores the competing
uses and demands on California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Included in the guide are sections on the history of the Delta,
its role in the state’s water system, and its many complex issues
with sections on water quality, levees, salinity and agricultural
drainage, fish and wildlife, and water distribution.
The Red Bluff Diversion Dam, its gates raised since 2011 to allow
fish passage, spans the Sacramento River two miles
southeast of Red Bluff on the Sacramento River in Tehama County.
It is owned by the Bureau of Reclamation and operated and
maintained by the Tehama-Colusa Canal Authority.
Pelagic fish are those that live near the water’s surface rather
than on the bottom. In California, pelagic fish species include
the Delta smelt, longfin
smelt, striped bass and salmon.
In California, the fate of pelagic fish has been closely tied to
the use of the water that supports them.
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.”
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.
Battle Creek, a tributary of the
Sacramento River in Shasta and Tehama counties, is considered one
of the most important anadromous fish spawning streams in the
Sacramento Valley.
At present, barriers make it difficult for anadromous fish,
including chinook salmon and Central Valley steelhead trout, to
migrate. Battle Creek has several hydroelectric dams, diversions
and a complex canal system between its north and south forks that
impede migration.
This issue of Western Water looks at the BDCP and the
Coalition to Support Delta Projects, issues that are aimed at
improving the health and safety of the Delta while solidifying
California’s long-term water supply reliability.
This printed issue of Western Water features a
roundtable discussion with Anthony Saracino, a water resources
consultant; Martha Davis, executive manager of policy development
with the Inland Empire Utilities Agency and senior policy advisor
to the Delta Stewardship Council; Stuart Leavenworth, editorial
page editor of The Sacramento Bee and Ellen Hanak, co-director of
research and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of
California.
This printed issue of Western Water examines the issues
associated with the State Water Board’s proposed revision of the
water quality Bay-Delta Plan, most notably the question of
whether additional flows are needed for the system, and how they
might be provided.
This printed issue of Western Water examines science –
the answers it can provide to help guide management decisions in
the Delta and the inherent uncertainty it holds that can make
moving forward such a tenuous task.
This printed issue of Western Water examines the Russian and
Santa Ana rivers – areas with ongoing issues not dissimilar to
the rest of the state – managing supplies within a lingering
drought, improving water quality and revitalizing and restoring
the vestiges of the native past.
This printed issue of Western Water provides an overview of the
idea of a dual conveyance facility, including questions
surrounding its cost, operation and governance
This printed copy of Western Water examines the native salmon and
trout dilemma – the extent of the crisis, its potential impact on
water deliveries and the lengths to which combined efforts can
help restore threatened and endangered species.
This printed copy of Western Water examines the Delta through the
many ongoing activities focusing on it, most notably the Delta
Vision process. Many hours of testimony, research, legal
proceedings, public hearings and discussion have occurred and
will continue as the state seeks the ultimate solution to the
problems tied to the Delta.
This issue of Western Water explores the implications for the San
Joaquin River following the decision in the Natural Resources
Defense Council lawsuit against the Bureau of Reclamation and
Friant Water Users Authority that Friant Dam is required to
comply with a state law that requires enough water be released to
sustain downstream fish populations.
Fresh from the ocean, adult salmon struggle to swim hundreds of
miles upstream to spawn — and then die — in the same stream in
which they were born. For the salmon, the river-to-ocean,
ocean-to-river life cycle is nothing more than instinct. For
humans, it invites wonder. The cycle has prevailed for centuries,
yet as salmon populations have declined, the cycle has become a
source of conflict. Water users have seen their supplies reduced.
Fishermen have had their catch curtailed. Environmentalists have
pushed for more instream flows for fish.
