A Chance Meeting That Changed the Klamath: A Biologist’s Dam Story

By Carl Reese

Hi folks, I am going to share the events of a day back in June 1999 that changed the Klamath River forever and changed many of your lives. It changed mine for sure, but before I get to 1999 I am going to tell y’all that everybody is qualified to share their thoughts even if their ideas are wrong. That includes me.

In 1992 I graduated from Arizona State University in Biology and I was turned down for medical school because I got B’s in organic chemistry. A week before graduation, my wife got offered a job in northern California so we moved. I found a job as scientific aide at CDFW (then called CDFG) doing stream surveys in the upper Eel River watershed. Every day I walked about five miles of stream and took photos and notes. Later I wrote a four page synopsis for the newly formed GIS section. GIS was brand new to me and mostly brand new to the world. It was a seasonal job so I worked construction as well. The Scientific Aide job was fun and I learned a lot but the pay sucked so I went to grad school at Humboldt State, now called Cal Poly Humboldt. I have a Master’s degree in Fisheries Biology. In 1998 I got a job as a Fisheries Biologist for the Bureau of Land Management in Klamath Falls. My wife started working as a timber cruiser on a project in Jenny Creek drainage. It’s along 66 just west of Keno. I was working for the BLM on that day in 1999.

My boss called me into his office and asked, “What do you know about the FERC and what do you know about PacifiCorp?” Larry told me that PacifiCorp owned a dam on BLM land just west of Klamath Falls, that he wanted me to go to a training Colorado about the FERC relicense process, and that there was a guy from PacifiCorp who wanted to meet with representatives from the various agencies that were needed to sign off on a new license that was expiring in a few years. The guy was an engineer with an honest to God pocket protector. I liked him and I wish I remembered his name. I was asked to represent the BLM in the nascent stages of relicensing or as it turned out, not relicensing.

Pocket Protector thought it nice to meet on the Klamath River, not in a boardroom. He arrived in a cowboy hat that he bought for just for this meeting. There were biologists from ODFW, CDFW, and USFWS. No tribes were invited. We looked at the JC Boyle Dam and floated the Klamath River in a raft rowed by a commercial company which allowed us to talk during the quieter sections of river and this conversation changed many things for the Klamath River.

Pocket Protector asked, “What upgrades do your agencies want for the next thirty year license?” I said I was new on the job and I wasn’t prepared to comment this early. Pocket Protector said that was fine because it was very early in the process. The ODFW biologist said ODFW wanted a study on the ramping rates at JC Boyle Powerhouse and that the Klamath Tribes wanted fish passage for salmon. The other agencies said the same. This seemed normal to me. We were going to write a new license that was a little more trout friendly but not that much different. Then Pocket Protector said something huge.

Pocket Protector said that if they had to provide fish passage they were not going to pursue a license. The project wasn’t profitable enough to swing it. This was huge because this comment preceded all the dam removals in the United States and possibly the world. At that point in time, I had no mental concept that dam removal could ever be proposed by the dam operators. Sure, Edward Abbey wrote about stuff like that. Here was a guy stating that they would walk away from a billion dollar investment rather than deal with fish passage.

I went on to attend FERC licensing training but soon got a job back in Humboldt County working on the Klamath River Project. My part was co-operated by Hoopa Tribal Fisheries. I never told the Hoopas what PacifiCorp said. I ran a weir on the Trinity River and did spawner surveys on the Salmon, Scott, and Trinity Rivers. I also got the dubious task of counting all the dead chinook salmon in the fish kill in 2002. At this point I was disgusted with the Klamath River and all the infighting. The river itself can recover if the people can quit fighting. There’s a ton of racism tied up in these arguments. You would think racism doesn’t affect fish populations but I think it can.

I moved to Alaska in 2004 to work in fisheries research in Southeast Alaska for the University of Alaska in Juneau. Google the Taku Inlet. It’s stunning. In 2013 I sat in an interview to for the Hydroelectric Coordinator for the state of Alaska, Dept of Natural Resources. They asked the same question that Larry asked me in 1999. What do you know about the FERC? I knew a lot more by then. I had been following the Klamath dam saga for more than a decade. I got the job.

I am not anti dam for most dams. Over the next decade I signed off on water rights for twelve dams. I reviewed project designs and hydrology for more projects than I can count. I never rejected an application for a hydroelectric project. Last year I was promoted to a hydrology position, still at the Alaska Dept of Natural Resources. I don’t have to sign water rights and that’s fine with me. Water rights are a blood bath between otherwise sane people, even in Alaska, though less so.

That day in 1999 was a big deal because it set my career on a path but it also set the river on a path toward dam removal. PacifiCorp sold the dams as a sliver of all their holdings and then Warren Buffet decided the upgrades on the dams weren’t worth it.

My wife and I are thinking of retirement these days and one option is to buy less than an acre of land in Klamath County and build a house. I liked living in Keno but other places are nice too. I like the weather and the backcountry skiing is grand. I have had no professional contact with Humboldt Cal Poly since I graduated years ago. I don’t have plans to work on anything in Klamath County except my house should we choose to move there. I plan to ski, ride my bicycle, and play my guitar.