Demolition of dams on US river allows free passage of salmon

Crews on Wednesday opened the last dams on a key stretch of the Klamath River, clearing the way for salmon to swim freely in a vital waterway near the California-Oregon border for the first time in more than a century.

Crews used excavators to remove rock structures that were diverting flow upstream of two dams, Iron Gate and Copco No. 1, which have been nearly completely demolished. As the excavators moved forward, more and more water was able to flow down the historic river. The work provided salmon with access to key habitat areas just in time for Chinook salmon spawning season.

On Wednesday morning in Iron Gate, Amy Bowers Cordalis, a member of the Yurok tribe and a lawyer for the tribe, cried as she watched the water overflow the old dam and slowly flow back into the river.

Bowers Cordalis has been fighting to remove the Klamath River dams since 2002, when she watched tens of thousands of salmon die in the river due to a bacterial outbreak caused by low water and high temperatures. She said watching the river return to its natural course felt like she was witnessing its rebirth.

““It was amazing. It was very exciting. I felt very hopeful and satisfied that we had restored this river,” Cordalis said. “And when I looked at the river I could almost hear him saying, ‘I am free, I am free.’”

The demolition is part of a nationwide movement to allow rivers to return to their natural flow and restore ecosystems for fish and other wildlife.

As of February of this year, more than 2,000 dams in the United States had been demolished, most in the past 25 years, according to the American Rivers organization. These include the dams on the Elwha River in Washington State, which flows from Olympic National Park into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and the Condit Dam on the White Salmon River, a tributary of the Columbia River.

““I am excited to begin the restoration phase of the Klamath River,” said Russell “Buster” Attebery, chairman of the Karuk Tribe, in a statement. “Restoring hundreds of miles of spawning grounds and improving water quality will contribute to the return of our salmon, a healthy and sustainable food source for several Tribal Nations.”

The Klamath was once known as the third-largest salmon-producing river on the U.S. West Coast. But after the power company PacifiCorp built the dams to generate electricity between 1918 and 1962, the structures disrupted the river’s natural flow and altered the life cycle of the region’s salmon, which spend most of their lives in the Pacific Ocean but return to their natal rivers to spawn. The fish population declined dramatically, setting off decades of activism by tribes and environmental groups that culminated in 2022, when federal regulators approved a plan to remove the dams.