Healing water: The Klamath River restoration

A river in the Pacific Northwest flows freely for the first time in over a century, thanks in part to a diplomatic Rotarian

By Bryan Smith

In that dismal December of 2015, it was hard to say who was more bereft. Was it the Native American tribes whose members had watched their sacred waterway suffer another, perhaps fatal blow? Was it the scores of people who had worked alongside them: the environmentalists and scientists, the community organizers and activists, the civil servants at the government parks and the natural resource agencies? The concerned business leaders who, like all the others, had dreamed of seeing the 263-mile-long Klamath River again flow pristine and unimpeded across Oregon and California as it made its way toward the Pacific Ocean?

Or perhaps it was impossible to calibrate the differing degrees of despair and regret. And did it even matter? Because after years of work dedicated to the removal of the four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River — the dams that had scarred the land, nearly destroyed the native salmon population, and ignited bitter fights — all that work had come to naught just as victory was in sight. The failure of the U.S. Congress to pass legislation to implement a set of Klamath Basin restoration agreements sank all hope that the impossible dream of removing the dams would finally be realized. The agreements, so assiduously crafted, were dead in the water, an apt metaphor given what was at stake.

“When we started this struggle 25 years ago, there were a number of us tribal folks who understood that this was a battle that we couldn’t afford to lose,” says Leaf Hillman. “We knew that if the dams were relicensed for another 50 years, it was all over. The salmon and the Klamath were doomed, and that meant that the tribes on the Klamath were doomed.”

A former vice chairman of the Karuk Tribal Council and a former director of the Karuk Department of Natural Resources, Hillman played a significant role in attempting to develop agreements to remove the four Klamath dams: the J.C. Boyle, Copco No. 1, Copco No. 2, and Iron Gate. Born and raised in the traditional Karuk homeland, he knows as well as anyone the catastrophic impact the dams had on the people who had lived along the river for centuries. Members of one tribe, Hillman says, “were forcibly removed from their lands, which were then covered up [by water] for 100 years. These were ceremonial places, village places. Their people, their language, their customs, their culture, their religion were basically decimated.”

Jim Root, another crucial player in forging the agreements, also had a visceral reaction in the aftermath of their collapse. “There was a period of hopelessness,” he says. “So much hard work had gone into getting agreement among what was some 45 different entities. It was devastating.”

I first met Root almost a decade ago when, on assignment for this magazine, I visited him in Oregon. A member of the Rotary Club of Medford (Rogue), Root was the owner of a prosperous fruit processing business when he and his wife bought a ranch near Chiloquin in 1992. He was unaware at the time that the region sat smack in the middle of what became known as the Klamath Water Wars, but he was introduced to the highly charged conflict soon enough. And as it happened, he was uniquely positioned to help.

Wearing jeans, cowboy boots, and wire-rimmed glasses, Root comes across as slow-spoken, gentle, and reserved with a preternatural knack for putting people at their ease. While attending his first Rotary International Convention — in Birmingham, England, in 1984 — he had seen firsthand the effectiveness of gathering opposing sides in small groups out of the prying eyes of the media to help resolve difficult disputes, in this case, the stalemate between the United Kingdom and Argentina over the Falkland Islands.

Back in Oregon, Root brought that knowledge to bear on the Klamath Water Wars. As the magazine’s December 2016 cover story related, he organized low-key, off-the-radar meetings among the scores of constituencies battling fiercely over the river’s water rights. That article, brimming with possibility and showcasing the power of Rotary’s conflict-resolution strategies, concluded abruptly with the collapse of the long-desired agreements.

But the story wasn’t over. For beneath the mule skinner cowboy hat of mild-mannered Jim Root there still burned an ember of hope.

A nonprofit forms

As the shock from the agreements’ collapse dissipated, the people devoted to the restoration of the Klamath slowly reassembled. They began to wonder if there might be a way to remove the dams that didn’t rely on the federal government. That led to the creation of a private nonprofit that could manage the process: the Klamath River Renewal Corp. Its board of directors included members appointed by tribal leaders, by the governors of California and Oregon, and by conservation and fishing groups. Root would eventually serve as president of the organization known by its initials KRRC, and today he continues to sit on the board.

With the KRRC taking responsibility for the removal of the dams, a new agreement was forged in 2016 by the cooperating parties, including the states of California and Oregon and the dams’ owner, the energy company PacifiCorp. As the earlier agreements had stipulated, the cost for dam removal, roughly estimated at $450 million, would be funded by nonfederal sources. Some $200 million came from a monthly surcharge on PacifiCorp customers’ power bills, primarily in Oregon. About $250 million was drawn from a California state fund set aside as part of a ballot measure that authorized water projects.

PacifiCorp, a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, had long been predisposed toward taking the dams down. The amount of power generated by the dams had become relatively miniscule; more important, the company was facing a licensing renewal process that would require it to make upgrades, including costly fish ladders for salmon to swim past the dams to spawn.

“To bring these dams up to modern standards would cost PacifiCorp [any financial gains from] the entire 50-year license to pay off those upgrades,” says Ren Brownell, a KRRC spokesperson. “Fitting the dams with fish ladders alone would have cost way more than the cost of their removal.”

When PacifiCorp signed on to the dam removal plans, the company wanted to be indemnified against any and all damage that might occur, or any lawsuits that might arise, as a result of what would be a massive demolition project. In 2018, Root says, PacifiCorp sued to ensure total protection from any possibility of liability, including what he calls “microliability issues.” By doing so, Root says, “PacifiCorp managed to delay the start of the project for two years. We kept working, but we had this kind of Sword of Damocles hanging over our heads.” Then, in 2020, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved a partial transfer of the dams to the KRRC but required that PacifiCorp remain a co-licensee, which meant it could still be liable.

To resolve the impasse, Root hearkened to the methods he had learned at the 1984 Rotary Convention in England. He again initiated small group discussions that included representatives from California and Oregon, PacifiCorp, the KRRC, and the tribes on the Klamath. “Everybody could freely express their opinions,” says Root, “and there was no reporting back and no media.” And once again, the process worked. Oregon and California agreed to share the dam license with the KRRC, fully relieving PacifiCorp of any ongoing liability. The group’s solution included an extra $15 million in funding from each state, and $15 million more from PacifiCorp, as a backstop for unforeseen expenses. The revisions satisfied the federal agency, which had final say in the matter, and in 2021, the agency approved the full transfer of the dams.

Elsewhere, protests against removing the dams had intensified. In one instance, residents of a community that had sprung up around an artificial lake created by the Copco No. 1 Dam rebelled against losing their recreational opportunities. They had created areas for picnicking and hiking, and the lake had become a mecca for kayaking, fishing, swimming, and boating.

There was a downside: During the summer, the lake sometimes slicked over with toxic blue-green algae that made the water unsafe.

Ultimately, arguments about the negative environmental effects of the dams won the day. After generations of effort and heartbreaking near-misses, the path had been cleared. The dams would come down. “The mood had gotten very pessimistic, but now that pessimism lifted and [the mood] changed to very optimistic,” recalls Root. “We tried to tamp down any premature celebration. We had a lot of hard work to go.”

The removal logistics posed a challenge

Even before the KRRC took ownership of the dams, it had to hire engineering firms with the capacity to handle the massive scope of the project — by some estimations, the world’s largest dam removal and river restoration project ever attempted. After all, pulling down the four dams was by an order of magnitude far more complicated than sticking some dynamite at their bases and blasting away. “They had to install a bridge, had to start building a fish hatchery, improving roads, and so on,” Root says.

The logistics of how and by what volume to drain the reservoirs behind three of the dams posed another challenge. Releasing too much water all at once could cause flooding; too little would not provide sufficient force to drain the 15 million cubic yards of sediment, 90 percent of which was dead algae. Once the reservoirs were drained, the dams themselves had to be dismantled with a combination of dynamite blasts and earthmovers clawing apart the remaining cement and rebar and clearing as much rubble as possible.

All that dead algae, which had accumulated over the course of more than 100 years, was a major complication all on its own. “The dams not only block fish passage, but they capture water that sits out under the hot summer sun,” explains Brownell. “In this kind of high desert area, that promotes huge toxic algae blooms. In the fall, the algae dies and sinks to the bottom’’ where it’s unable to decompose because it’s not exposed to oxygen.

Removing the dams and releasing that dead algae posed a potentially fatal threat to the river’s fish. “As these dead organic materials get stirred up as they are sent downstream during drawdown, that material’s getting exposed to the oxygen as it’s tumbling over rocks and things,” Brownell says. “This material will suck all the oxygen out of the water and crash the dissolved oxygen levels. That was the risk that we were concerned with regarding fish health — that we were going to crash the dissolved oxygen with the introduction of all this dead, organic, deoxygenated sediment.”

It was understood from the outset that there would be short-term negative effects of releasing the sediment. To ensure that native salmon and trout were protected as much as possible, engineers and scientists designated specific time periods when fewer fish would be in the main stem of the river. But there was no way to protect non-native fish species, and experts knew there would likely be a massive fish kill immediately after the dams fell. In addition, the banks of the river would, for a time, become a stark, muddy landscape crisscrossed with tracks left by heavy machinery and with virtually no verdant growth. Armies of planters would descend on the affected areas, spreading seeds that would quickly green up the vast patches of mud, but project planners knew they would have to brace themselves for a rough stretch of anger and alarm from residents.

That is why, Brownell explains, the KRRC organized and worked closely with a group “composed of every fish-focused agency that you can think of,” including Oregon’s and California’s departments of Fish and Wildlife, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and the tribes’ fisheries departments. “They directed us to implement drawdown when the fall run had already come up and spawned out, the juveniles were not yet out migrating, and you just didn’t have a ton of salmon in the river.”

And, the group concluded, the ideal time for the drawdown to occur was the first or second month of 2024.

Demolishing a dam

On 23 January 2024, an explosives specialist with the project’s blast team loaded a raft with dynamite and took to the Klamath River just north of the Copco No. 1 Dam in Northern California. To safely draw down the water halted by the dam, engineers had drilled a 90-foot-long, 10-foot-wide tunnel through the base of the dam, left the upstream end of the tunnel plugged with concrete, and inserted a steel pipe into the downstream end. The specialist paddled down to the tunnel’s upstream end, mounted the explosives, and then glided away. The detonation that followed unleashed a frothy geyser that, fittingly, resembled the spume erupting from a celebratory bottle of Champagne.

“Watching the reservoirs drain was one of the most magical things I’ve ever seen,” recalls Brownell. “These were landscapes that hadn’t seen the light of day in a century. I got to watch the river come back to life and carve its new path. It was like watching 1,000 years of geology happen over the course of two weeks.”

“It’s unbelievably hard to describe what it meant,” Hillman says. “Seeing friends from the Klamath and Modoc tribes, men my age who are part of this struggle and have never in their lifetime seen a salmon spawning in the river, seeing them take their grandkids to watch salmon spawning …” His words trail off in wonder.

The demolition and removal of the dams was completed a few months later and was followed by the restoration of the river basin, efforts led by Resource Environmental Solutions. “The first round of vegetation, all native species, was to hold the sediments in place and stabilize things,” says Brownell. “The initial round of seeding actually ended up being even more successful than we imagined. We didn’t know how well these native species would grow in all of this dead algae.”

Resource Environmental Solutions contracted with the Yurok Tribe as the primary revegetation group. “We also contracted with the Karuk Tribe with water quality monitoring and on relocating endangered coho salmon,” says company spokesperson Dave Meurer, and other tribes are participating in different facets of the river renewal. “When you’re on the ground looking at who’s doing a lot of the physical work, you’re definitely going to see tribal members front and center,” Meurer says.

As expected, there were difficult moments after the dams fell. The areas around the demolished dams looked like lunar landscapes, and the sight of yellow excavating machinery gouging into the banks was jarring. As predicted, the casualty rate among non-native fish species was distressing — in the millions, says Brownell — as the dissolved oxygen level in the water crashed following the release of so much sediment.

“I knew it was coming, but it was hard nonetheless,” Brownell says. “I saw dead trout and sucker fish wash up in front of where I took my dog for walks. It was not an easy thing to see, but it was nothing compared to what we were bracing ourselves for.”

Salving those wounds was an extraordinary sight that appeared within weeks of the dams coming down: salmon and steelhead trout back in the upper reaches of the river and its tributaries. “Nothing compares to the feeling of the first time I saw fish up above the dam sites,” Brownell says.

After the Iron Gate Dam came down, the conservation group California Trout installed a sonar device at the site. It allowed scientists to watch real-time images of fish as they swam past. Researchers carefully tallied those images and the results were astonishing: more than 6,000 fish, mostly Chinook salmon and steelhead trout, over two weeks in October. Soon, endangered coho salmon and Pacific lamprey were also spotted migrating beyond the now-demolished dam site.

“When I visited those sites up in Oregon, it looked like something out of Alaska,” says Damon Goodman, regional director with California Trout and one of the scientists charged with tracking the return of the fish. “It’s amazing what happens when you take down a wall that fish have been banging their heads against for a hundred years. We pulled that out of the way, and they were just ready to go.”

‘This is a miracle’

On a cloudless late afternoon last October, as the Pacific Northwest sun flooded the landscape with light, groups of people arrived at a clearing in Yreka, California, near the Shasta River, one of the largest tributaries of the Klamath River. Large open-air tents had been mounted on the lot, under which sat rows of chairs and a stage set with microphones. Indigenous music serenaded the growing crowd, with many people hugging, smiling, laughing. They were members of the regional tribes, from infants to elders, as well as activists, members of nonprofit organizations, and residents who lived along the Klamath or its tributaries. They had all joined hands with the tribes to bring about this moment when, for the first time in more than a century, the Klamath River coursed unencumbered between southern Oregon and the Pacific Ocean.

Over the next several hours, the gathering wept, sang, and cheered speeches celebrating a day many were certain would never come. “This is kind of a dream come true to see the dams out and the salmon coming home,” Toz Soto, fisheries manager and lead biologist for the Karuk Tribe, told a videographer recording the moment. “I’ve been involved in dam removal pretty much my whole career, more than 23 years. This is a miracle. I can’t describe it in any other way. ... It just goes to show that if people come together, work hard and never give up, and have faith that something that we all know is right can happen, it will. And it did, and now we have ... a river that’s connected and a river that’s going to heal itself.”

And then, in a moment filled with symbolism, Wendy “Poppy” Ferris, a member of the KRRC appointed by the Karuk Tribe, took to the stage bearing a gift for Mark Bransom, the KRRC CEO, whom Jim Root had found and recruited. “I think I have a gift that will mean a lot,” Ferris said, her voice trembling with emotion. “It signifies what you did for our children. ... Long after we’re all gone, the babies and children will still be able to live their culture like I did when I was young. So we want to give you this.”

Ferris handed the KRRC CEO an authentic tribal handwoven baby basket. Bransom bowed his head, hugged Ferris and, shedding tears, humbly accepted the symbol of life and renewal.

Read “Water Wars,” the magazine’s 2016 cover story about Rotarian Jim Root and the Klamath River.

This story originally appeared in the May 2025 issue of Rotary magazine.

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