Dams, Sand Supply Reduction + Habitat Recovery
November 12, 2024
The Other Side of the World’s Largest Dam Removal – Hakai
Excerpt:
Removing dams from the Klamath River in Northern California seems like a clear win for fish and rivers. Why do some locals hate it?
It’s a blustery day in the autumn of 2023, and I’m standing in a roadside pullout in Northern California, looking at the past and future of the Klamath River.
Immediately upstream I see Iron Gate Dam—17 stories tall, nearly four times as wide— completely blocking its red-rock canyon. There are four such dams, with Iron Gate as the first and largest, in 60 kilometers of river rising to the northeast. It’s a stretch sometimes called Reservoir Reach, and it has shut salmon out of hundreds of kilometers of potential habitat in the Upper Klamath Basin for more than a century.
The dams are the river’s past.
Looking downstream, I see the free-running Klamath River beginning a 300-kilometer undammed westward journey through California’s coastal mountains to the Pacific Ocean south of Crescent City.
The river makes a fine companion this morning, a tumbling, green-eyed waterway that you can throw a stone across if you have a reasonable arm for it.
Salmon and trout fishers launch colorful dories into the riffles and go a-rocking and a-bobbing downstream.
That’s the future.
By October of 2024, the four dams in Reservoir Reach will be gone.
The river will be finding its old channel, while restoration crews bring the once blocked and flooded land back to life…
Additional Reading:
the San Francisco Chronicle:
First salmon swims all the way to Oregon after historic California dam removal
The massive dam-removal project on the Klamath River began living up to its lofty goal of improving fish passage this week when at least one salmon was observed swimming upriver past the sites of four former dams that had long blocked fish.
the Guardian:
Klamath River dam removal: before and after images show dramatic change
Dam removal concluded a decades long fight on 2 October, which also saw Chinook salmon return to the waters…
the New York Times:
With Dams Removed, Salmon Will Have the Run of a Western River
The nation’s largest dam removal project is nearly complete after a lengthy campaign by Native tribes to restore the river at the California-Oregon border…
More on Dams and Sand Supply Reduction + Habitat Recovery
First salmon swims all the way to Oregon after historic California dam removal – San Francisco Chronicle
The massive dam-removal project on the Klamath River began living up to its lofty goal of improving fish passage this week when at least one salmon was observed swimming upriver past the sites of four former dams that had long blocked fish….
A Radical Approach to Flooding in England: Give Land Back to the Sea – the New York Times
When a huge tract of land on the Somerset coast was deliberately flooded, the project was slammed as “ridiculous” by a local lawmaker. But the results have been transformative…
When dams come down, what happens to the ocean? – High Country News | Hakai Magazine
A long-term study of the Elwha River Delta reveals lasting change — and a healthier ecosystem.
California will help return tribal lands as part of the historic Klamath River restoration – the Los Angeles Times
More than a century has passed since members of the Shasta Indian Nation saw the last piece of their ancestral home — a landscape along the Klamath River where villages once stood — flooded by a massive hydroelectric project.
Now more than 2,800 acres of land that encompassed the settlement, known as Kikacéki, will be returned to the tribe. The reclamation is part of the largest river restoration effort in U.S. history, the removal of four dams and reservoirs that had cut off the tribe from the spiritual center of their world…
Dammed but Not Doomed – Hakai Magazine
As dams come down on the Skutik River, the once-demonized alewife—a fish beloved by the Passamaquoddy—gets a second chance at life…
No turning back: The largest dam removal in U.S. history begins – NPR
The largest dam removal in U.S. history entered a critical phase this week, with the lowering of dammed reservoirs on the Klamath River…
‘Take It Down and They’ll Return’: The Stunning Revival of the Penobscot River – reasons to be cheerful
A historic project in Maine shows that when dams are removed, a river and its fish can recover with surprising speed…
China’s Mekong dams turn Thai fishing villages into ‘ghost towns’- Context
From February to April each year, Kam Thon spends most of her days knee-deep in the waters of the Mekong River by her village in northern Thailand, gathering river weed to sell and cook at home. Kam Thon and other women who live by the Mekong have been collecting river weed, or khai, for decades, but their harvest has fallen since China built nearly a dozen dams upstream. The dams have altered the flow of water and block much of the sediment that is vital for khai and rice cultivation, researchers say…
Why are Tunisia’s beaches disappearing and what does it mean for the country? – Reuters
Rising sea levels are causing Tunisia’s beaches to gradually disappear. This is making life hard for the country’s tourism and fishing industries.
The Maghreb – made up of Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya – is more affected by coastal erosion than any region outside South Asia, the World Bank found in a 2021 study. Among these countries, Tunisia has had the highest erosion rates in the last three decades, averaging almost 70cm a year, it found…