by Dave White
Salmon Protection Device
Salmonprotectiondevice.com
Our comments to correct this article are in bold.
Executive Summary
A crew of out-of-state pseudo-scientists is now busily making final preparations for the removal of the last of 4 dams on the Klamath River, the Iron Gate dam. That’s according to a January 5, 2024 article in OPB First Look newsletter. With dam removal only weeks away, it appears that only a last-minute…
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7 Comments
All of your comments became moot when the Dams owner didn’t find it viable to invest the money into the infrastructure for FERC recertification.
Thank you for countering all of the lies. I really hope that the dams can be saved and these lieing wanna be oco terrorists get prosecuted for the damage they have done. Who knows a good law firm that will take this case?
What a load of B. S. Just a whole diatribe of ad hominum attacks based on opinion not science! It totally disregards the evidence based studies and the well considered decision to remove these ridiculous monstrosities of an ancient mind set and their accompanying large stagnant pools of marginal water quality. The Klamath used to support the third largest chinook population in the PNW. All that destroyed by the dam system that destroyed the salmonid habitat and restricted passage to historic spawning grounds in the upper tributaries. These stagnant bodies of water poisoned the river system with high temperatures, algae blooms, introduced non-native species, parasites and bacteria that negatively impacted the anadromous species that were historically present.
Just a bunch of belligerent complaining and failure to graciously accept the will of the educated majority. Things change when it is recognized that our decisions made in the past were made without full knowledge and caused sometimes, irreplaceable harm.
It’s true, because of the falls between Iron gate and Copco the salmon never spawned .
Tragically poor journalism.
Tracy has it right. Also the fact that the current owners of the dams did not apply to FERC for a 50 year license period just seems to have eluded these people. Also i will say that this is a state project meaning that plenty of time was provided for any group to make comments PRIOR to the project getting started rather than AFTER ItWasSTARTED.
Replying to Tracy Cohen: There is NO historical evidence that salmon ever migrated beyond the mid river to spawn. The reservoirs were built over drops in the river of over 25 feet, which is too high for salmon to jump. There is even plans currently to dynamite these sections to create fish channels, created by lava flows around 20 million years ago, once the reservoirs are completely drained. You are also ignoring the fact that most water from the upper Klamath never flowed into the middle and lower river. It would flood into the Tule Basin upstream. The water is phosphate rich because of the soil geology and it’s not healthy for that water to flow downstream. The dams did not harm salmon populations because the salmon never spawned upstream of the dams. Any harm the dams caused was usually due to ill-timed releases of water, typically to increase river flow in the summer when historically the river would dry up and the parasites that attack salmon would die. The environmentalists got almost everything wrong back then, and they’re doing it again now. The ecosystem on the Klamath River is complex and you have only heard one side of the story.