Construction crews finished what’s now the largest dam removal project in U.S. history on Wednesday, October 2. Since 2022, when the plan to demolish was approved, the four major dams along the Klamath River in California and Oregon have been torn down. This project has been long awaited by ecologists and local Native American communities, which have been pushing for action for decades. For the first time since 1918, over 420 miles of river habitat has been connected.
All four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River System were old and outdated. If they were to deteriorate, the environmental and monetary cost would have been tremendous. As the dams didn’t produce much energy anyway, there was no reason for the federal government to keep them around any longer.
According to The Los Angeles Times, the dams used to block off the ancestral spawning grounds of tens of different fish species, preventing them from sustaining their populations. Due to a century’s worth of sediment and organic matter buildup, the Klamath’s dams caused serious algae blooms, degraded the river’s water quality, and spread fish-killing disease. It’s estimated that some fish species populations have decreased by about 95% since 1918. In 2002, partly due to flaws in the old dams’ designs, a viral outbreak across the Klamath River killed over 70,000 fish. This was a turning point for the Native American tribes living in the area.
Tribes such as the Shasta and Yurok, who live in the Klamath River Basin, have a strong spiritual connection to the river’s fish, especially its chinook salmon. Since the 2002 viral outbreak on the river, indigenous groups have pushed hard for the removal of the dams. It became clear that their very existence posed a hazard to the environment and local communities.
After over twenty years of campaigning, a plan to demolish the dams was approved in 2022. On October 2, 2024, demolition on the final dam, the Iron Gate, was completed. Over a million cubic tons of rock, soil, and clay were excavated at that one dam, with old concrete tunnels and infrastructure also having to be taken down throughout the river’s length. The $500 million budget provided by the federal government was put to good use; the salmon population is estimated to recover by 81% by 2068, according to BBC News.
Salmon habitat has now tripled, paving the way for a full environmental recovery in the future. Although the Klamath River may not return to being the third-largest salmon-producing river in the U.S. during our lifetimes, it’s slowly starting to reclaim its former glory. Other aquatic plant and animal species have also started to thrive after decades of numerical degradation. This massive project has paid off in a way that can’t quite be fully expressed in monetary terms.
