What Is Good Environmentalism About Today?

Has environmentalism been weaponized and or politicized as some people claim?

Is the pure form of environmentalism that many of us learned to practice no longer acceptable in the face of politics and money?

If so, then why do we still have processes involving EA, EIS, NEPA and in California CEQA? Just to control and assert authority over the little people, the average American citizen?

What about the rights of the voting American public, do they even matter anymore? 78% of the voters in Siskiyou County said ‘No’ to dam removal. Why was that ignored?

Has America arrived at a place in our history where self-interested collective collaboratives representing a minuscule percentage of American voters, driven by paid activists, organize a cabal favoring a select few NGOs and people to make massive fortunes off environmental management of publicly-owned, American natural resources, and now, doing so by leveraging the selective use and color of indigenous tribal culture?

It seems there are now serious inequities in how law is applied. And especially when a lot of people are making a lot of money, the law doesn’t seem to apply to them.

On Wednesday, August 28th, a ceremony was held at the remnants of the Iron Gate Dam. Activists and pro-dam removal NGOs, people and reporters seemingly sympathetic to the arguments for dam removal gathered in the morning. It was the equivalent of a ground-breaking for a new building project where some important person takes in-hand the silver bladed shovel and removes the first scoop of dirt. In this case with the final destruction of the once mighty and powerful Iron Gate Dam, a Caterpillar Excavator was to remove a scoop of sediment in what was the final act of the dam removal process.

California Governor Gavin Newsom authorized a public press release of the event, making a highly questionable claim: “Fish are swimming freely in the Klamath River”

Here is the image of Newsom’s press release:

But wait, CA Governor Newsom has been caught red-handed before overstating and making misrepresentations, as was outed by an investigative reporter at The Guardian:

From a cursory review of the news and media reports, it’s clear that for political and possibly other reasons, Newsom is desperate to paint the Klamath River dam removal project as a success. After all, many people claim it’s one of his ‘pet projects’.

But is the Klamath Dam removal project a success? And what are the true metrics of ‘success’?

Passing around plates of cooked salmon caught at the mouth of the Klamath River just a day or two before the August 28, parking lot celebration is surely no metric of success. Yet, the mainstream media made it seem as if the Klamath River was already teaming with salmon as a result of the dams being gone with talks of a bounty of salmon in the River.

Yet, nothing could be farther from the truth! In fact, those salmon were just returning from being at sea for the past 4-years, and had come down the Klamath River during the time of the dams being in place!

Anyone sensing the smoke and mirrors yet?

It’s doesn’t take environmentalist engineers to knock down some dams. The United States Military could do that in 60-minutes from a room in Washington D.C. with a drone strike.

And quite frankly, given the amount of polluted clay sediment that has been washed into and remains in the main-stem of the Klamath River, I am not so sure that the sediment release from the drone strike would be much different on an ecological level.

As someone living at the scene of the Klamath Dam removal operations, and specifically, Iron Gate Lake and dam, I have witnessed and documented many highly questionable events that have resulted in several avoidable and unnecessary incidents of ecological damage, as have numerous other parties, including Siskiyou County officials.

From the onset of the application of the ‘planned’ project, contractors under KRRC and RES under license from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (aka: ‘FERC’) have arguably gone ‘off the plan that was approved’, which has yielded numerous serious financial and ecological impacts that were completely avoidable and unnecessary.

The latest incident involves what seems to be a planned cover-up dumping of polluted clay sediment into the River to save money and time.

After the salmon feed, the photos of the ‘last scoop’ of the dam, the cheers and the glad-handing, people and media left the scene feeling fulfilled. And when the ‘coast was clear’ the shenanigans resumed as tons of polluted lake bottom clay sediments began being dumped into the River, yet again.

Just looking at the location of the sediment being dumped and the proximity of the intake for the diversion tunnel, it sure seems like there were options to send the River down the tunnel and then clean up and properly remove as much polluted sediment as possible. Of course, it was cheaper and faster to just toss it into the River, as we see in the photos and Video linked farther below.

Looking at the initial minutes of the YouTube video linked below, we see the close-up of the diversion tunnel with the clay-laden Klamath River to the right of the photo.

The photo above shows there is no water flowing out of the diversion tunnel (left side of photo), which was designed to divert the Klamath River around construction (in this case, deconstruction) of the dam.

In this images below we see the iron bars and concrete box (aka: the grizzly, center of third photo below) that is the intake to the Diversion Tunnel on the upriver side.

The River might have been diverted using massive concrete barriers to form a new secondary coffer dam sending the River into the existing Tunnel (green line) placed up-river from the old clay coffer dam, so that that clay sediment in the old coffer dam could then be isolated and removed without excessively massive amounts of even more clay entering into the River. I suppose money was more important than doing everything to the best of our ability for the sake of ‘best-ecological-practices’.

We also see the large bulldozer that is merely pushing polluted clay sediments from the old coffer dam into the River where it is being eroded by the River just a short distance from where the excavator is dumping sediments for access by the bull dozer.

There are many other arguable claims of KRRC & RES going off their approved Plan, resulting in avoidable and unnecessary serious ecological damage and financial hardship to the residents of the disadvantaged communities of the area around the Klamath Dams project.

The entire video of the foregoing series of events was filmed and can be viewed here: