Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:

Russell John Brittan Booking Photo | Humboldt County Correctional Facility

On Aug. 31, 2023, at about 7:21 p.m., Humboldt County Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to the Clam Beach northern parking lot for the report of an assault.

Deputies contacted a 56-year-old male victim who had sustained moderate injuries as a result of being pepper sprayed and physically assaulted. According to the victim, a male unknown to him, later identified as 33-year-old Russell John Brittan, approached the victim in the parking lot and attacked him unprovoked. Brittan then fled.

Deputies located Brittan walking in the area of Clam Beach Drive. He was taken into custody without incident. During a search of Brittan, deputies located the pepper spray canister.

Brittan was booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility on charges of use of tear gas (PC 22810(e)(1)), assault (PC 240) and battery (PC 242).

Anyone with information about this case or related criminal activity is encouraged to call the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at (707) 445-7251 or the Sheriff’s Office Crime Tip line at (707) 268-2539.

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PREVIOUSLY: Crowley Wind Services Vice President Jeff Andreini is Out, as Allegations of Sexual Misconduct Among Company Management Pile Up

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Following yesterday’s news that Crowley Wind Services Vice-President Jeffrey Andreini is no longer with the company, the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District shared a letter with the Outpost emphasizing the district’s commitment to working with local tribes and the broader community to uphold “the highest ethical standards” for the district and its partners.

The letter (which is copied below) states that the Harbor District “takes the allegations of sexual harassment very seriously” and underscores the district’s commitment to “fairness and protection for the most vulnerable in our community.”

The letter quotes from a recent report – “How to Protect Native Women, Girls, and People in Humboldt & Del Norte County as Offshore Wind Enters the Region: MMIP Prevention Planning and Recommendations” – and states the district’s intent to commit to the recommendations listed in the document.

However, the letter does not mention the district’s partnership with Crowley.

Reached for additional comment this morning, Larry Oetker, executive director of the Harbor District, confirmed that the district will continue its partnership with Crowley. Oetker noted that the mega grant application the district recently sent to the federal government included language that would allow the district to go through a new selection process “if the current negotiations are not successful.”

“Following a competitive proposal process conducted in 2022, the District has entered into an ‘Exclusive Right to Negotiate’ with Crowley Wind Services,” according to the statement, referencing the terminal on the Samoa Peninsula that the company hopes to build to service the offshore wind industry.

“If the current negotiations are not successful to the satisfaction of the District and the overall community, then the District will go through a new competitive process to select a new contract operator. If the current negotiations are successful to the satisfaction of the District and the overall community, then the District will enter into a lease with Crowley.”

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Letter from the Harbor District:

The Harbor District takes the allegations of sexual harassment very seriously and hold the safety and well-being of our community paramount. As a governmental organization we have a public trust responsibility to our community, employees, and visitors. The public expects that the District and all of our contractors will conduct their operations to the highest ethical standards.

The District, along with our federal, State, and local partners, have established ambitious goals to develop the offshore wind resources off our North Coast. As a result of this development, it is projected that over the next twenty plus years, our region will experience billions of dollars of investment directly offshore and to modernize our aging port infrastructure. This investment will largely be coming from multinational companies that have thousands of employees spread throughout the world. The District, County, Tribal Governments, and community have made it clear that we will not sell out our community for money!

The District is not only planning for the most technologically advanced and greenest port possible, but also is committed that it is built and operated in a way that respects and benefits all members of our community and addresses historical inequities. Any partner that we have in this endeavor must clearly demonstrate an organizational structure of fairness and protection for the most vulnerable in our community, and we will work with all members of our community to ensure that this is the case.

As stated in the June 21, 2023, report by the Yurok Tribal Court titled: How to Protect Native Women, Girls, and People in Humboldt & Del Norte County as Offshore Wind Enters the Region: MMIP Prevention Planning and Recommendations: “As offshore wind development occurs in the Northern Coast of California, concerns have grown about the safety of Native women, girls, and people in the region. Given the historical and present day crisis of sex trafficking and Missing and Murdered Indigenous people in California and the United States, special attention, prevention planning, and agreements are needed to ensure the safety of Native people in the region.”

“This memo examines how to prevent MMIP and sex trafficking during a development boom, based on research of best practices as well as discussion with key advocates in the MMIP policy space. From the research, we can conclude that there must be a strong, comprehensive community benefit agreement in place between local Tribes and the corporations profiting from development.1 The community benefit agreements must be multi-faceted, covering prevention, education, and response. This includes agreements with the community as well as agreements to adopt and implement critical corporate policies. There must be (1) agreement to hold pre-development impact assessment meetings with Native communities to hear from and share information with Native communities; (2) agreement that the company hold ongoing and regular meetings with Native Communities to share and receive information; Page 2 of 2 (3) agreement to conduct extensive background checks on all employees, to the full extent permitted under law to reduce the chances of people with sex offenses coming to the region to prey on Native women, girls and people; (4) agreement to monitor and ensure safety in employee housing; (5) agreement to ensure that Tribal people and vulnerable populations living on/near port development site have access to transportation; (6) agreement to tag company and worker vehicles so that all new cars and drivers in the region can be properly identified; (7) agreement to conduct employee training on Native people and the culture of local Tribes as well training on preventing human trafficking; (8) agreement to coordinate with and support stronger law enforcement in the region; (9) agreement to support victim services and social services programs to respond to any increase in crime and victimization; (10) agreement to source employees locally and to invest in local workforce development.

The community benefit agreement should also mandate that the company have or adopt corporate policies to prevent MMIP and trafficking. This includes adopting (1) a best practice compact from the United Nations or World Bank, (2) policies that ensure board oversight of community relations, human rights, and social performance, (3) a strong code of conduct for all employees, (4) a mandate that corporate partners and contractors are in compliance with all of the same policies and (5) strong whistleblower protections.”

The District holds our responsibility to the community very seriously and we are committed to working with the Tribes, community and industry to implement the recommendations outlined in the report.

Respectfully Submitted:

Larry Oetker

Executive Director

Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation, and Conservation District

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DOCUMENT: How to Protect Native Women, Girls, and People in Humboldt & Del Norte County as Offshore Wind Enters the Region: MMIP Prevention Planning and Recommendations

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Used to be that you could only ride the bus on Amtrak’s San Joaquins Route 7, which hits 18 stops between Cal Poly Humboldt and beautiful downtown Martinez, if you had also purchased a segment of train travel as part of your trip.

No more! 

Thanks to some state legislation (SB 742) passed in 2019 and collaboration with local stakeholders, bus-only tickets are now available between all 18 stops along Route 7.

Here’s a press release from Amtrak San Joaquins with more info:

Riders traveling on Amtrak’s San Joaquins Route 7, the Thruway Bus route extending from the Martinez Amtrak Station to Arcata (Cal Poly Humboldt) and encompassing a total of 18 stops, can now purchase bus-only tickets for all city pairs along the route. This recent expansion of service significantly broadens the scope and connectivity of the bus top pairs previously available on Route 7.

This expansion along Route 7, which was approved by the San Joaquin Joint Powers Authority (SJJPA) Board of Directors at the July 21 meeting, represents the latest step in Amtrak San Joaquins’ efforts to provide a comprehensive transportation alternative to travelers in communities throughout the state, beyond where the train can service.

Historically, travelers on all Thruway Bus routes were required to have a segment of train travel as part of their overall trip to travel on the Thruway Bus. However, state legislation, SB 742 authored by Senator Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica), was passed in 2019 to remove the requirement for intercity passenger rail/thruway bus services to sell companion rail tickets as a condition of the sale. As such, following extensive planning coordination, in 2021 after the impacts of the pandemic had eased, SJJPA opened parts of the Amtrak San Joaquins Route 7 as well as Routes 1c, 10, 18, and 19 for bus-only sales.

“We are pleased to now be at the point where we can expand connectivity along Route 7 to its fullest extent,” said Pat Hume, Chair for the SJJPA. “Fully opening Route 7 is a result of extensive collaboration with local stakeholders and regional transit providers and is a part of our ongoing effort to make Amtrak San Joaquins a comprehensive transportation solution for communities statewide.”

Making Amtrak’s Thruway bus routes available to non-rail riders brings several benefits including:

1. Improved access to transit for priority and underserved communities.
2. Reduction in greenhouse gas and air pollution emissions by diverting trips that would have previously been taken by an automobile.
3. Reduced car trips on some of the state’s most congested freeways.
4. Better utilization of current transit infrastructure.
5. Increased revenues for the state at virtually no additional cost.

The bus-only ticketing options and fares are now available in the following locations:

1. Route 7: Martinez - Napa - Santa Rosa – Humboldt State University - Arcata
2. Route 1C: Bakersfield - Van Nuys - West Los Angeles/UCLA - Santa Monica
3. Route 10: Santa Barbara - Bakersfield - Barstow - Las Vegas
4. Route 15: Merced – Yosemite & Fresno – Yosemite (seasonal)
5. Route 18: Hanford - Lemoore - San Luis Obispo - Santa Maria
6. Route 19: Bakersfield - Pasadena - Riverside - San Bernadino

NOTICE OF CORRECTION, OCT. 9:

Back on Aug. 31, 2023, the Outpost published a story about the sudden departure of Jeff Andreini, an executive with Crowley Wind Services who had led efforts to develop a port facility serving the offshore wind industry at the Port of Humboldt Bay.

We recently received a letter from a representative of Mr. Andreini. This letter expressed concern that our story might have led a reader to conclusions that the story never intended to convey.

We are happy to unambiguously assert the following:

· Jeff Andreini was not, and is not, involved in, nor was he responsible for, incidents of sex trafficking. 

· Jeff Andreini was not involved in, nor did he play a role in, the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people.

· Yurok Tribal Chairman Joe James was not referring to Jeff Andreini’s conduct when he wrote about that crisis in an Aug. 30 Times-Standard op-ed column, which called upon the Harbor District to reconsider its port development agreement with Crowley. 

We unequivocally retract anything within the Outpost’s Aug. 31, 2023, article that states or implies anything to the contrary. 

Gordon Clatworthy | Image via Facebook

We have a race in the First District. 

One week after incumbent Supervisor Rex Bohn launched his campaign for a fourth term on the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors, digital creator/film producer Gordon Clatworthy has thrown his hat in the ring. 

A political unknown here in Humboldt, Clatworthy filed his Form 501 candidate intention statement with the elections office yesterday, and early this morning he posted a lengthy statement on Facebook outlining some of his key platform positions. 

We reached Clatworthy by phone briefly this morning. He was on his way to San Francisco, he said, and the reception was a bit spotty. Before the connection started skipping out he told us that he’s been considering running for public office for a while now.

“When I moved into my house, Rex was already one of the supervisors,” Clatworthy said. “I’ve just slowly been watching kind of the madness unfurl as it goes. This time he was running unopposed so I was like, I can’t let that happen.”

He said the First District should have somebody who represents what he believes to be the majority of Humboldt County. He noted that one in five residents live below the poverty line.

“There’s just a lot of government overreach right now,” he said. “I want to kind of make the county work for people.”

At that point, the phone reception got spotty, so we agreed to connect later in the day for a longer conversation.

In the meantime, here’s the statement Clatworthy posted to Facebook at 1:39 a.m. today:

TLDR: Clean roads, clean streets, clean energy, less gentrification, more representation and be kind to each other.

For those wondering, I have filed a 501 statement to run for 1st district supervisor against Rex Bohn.

I just want to talk about the problems and solutions.

As people suffer some of the worst inflation it begins to hit the lower and middle classes hardest. Many people are suffering in this county, people able to be in compliance with grows are found needing to build roads in places the county couldn’t and this is going to cause livelihoods that are already stretched thin to quickly be at odds with law enforcement if compliance doesn’t happen. For a supervisor that has almost 13.1M sq ft of permitted grows in his district this seems odd as the county doesn’t want to give exemptions or draw back the HCRI [Humboldt Cannabis Reform Initiative]- A plan that changes fundamentally the general plan of Humboldt County instead pushing forward with limiting licenses so that eventually only the wealthy few can be allowed to grow here. I stand with the Humboldt County Growers Alliance in saying that the HCRI is terrible for the established growers that are here now, that are our neighbors, that are our family, and that are members of the community that bring tax money to our county that helps provide the roads we drive on and the building of much needed housing.

This is also exasperating [sic] the homelessness crisis of which there are as of 2022 1,309 unsheltered people including Veterans like myself, Students, and people with addiction and mental health needs. By the census there are also almost 1 in 5 people in Humboldt county living below the poverty line. Those people aren’t getting heard with the current supervisor. Most of the issues we face can treated with the building of low income housing, something that The Humboldt County Housing Trust Fund and Homelessness Committee have made clear in multiple studies and of the buildings the county has put forward funds toward less than 5% of the needed low income housing has been allocated to be built, and even that is threatened with initiatives masqueraded as housing, one can blame it on being a problem for Eureka voters but the number of housing units that could be built won’t be enough to help even half of the population that needs it. It shouldn’t be decided by voters in more and more contested areas, we need housing now! It is an emergency and it is being ignored. I will do whatever it takes to help solve this crisis that will only get worse as people come here to take refuge from climate change.

When people are able to get homes they should be allowed to use their home as they see fit, using the power of the county supervisor position to limit the people who may be able to scrape by and begin setting up limited rentals, people including teachers and people housing parents of students that come for a week to see their child graduate or help them move during a time when most hotels are crowded or being used to house those who have lost their homes in fires. The people have a right to use their own homes without requiring paying the county for licensing their home as a business. We don’t require month to month renters to do so, and if it is such a problem in one neighborhood they should just start an HOA [home-owners’ association], the government doesn’t need to micromanage every aspect of people’s lives. Research shows that Air BnB and other short term rental agencies are dwindling, people are choosing to use other ways to stay in an area. We don’t need to litigate people’s rights to property.

That brings me to wind. There is an energy company attempting to build windmills offshore, this is better than when they tried to build on sacred grounds. Wind and other renewable energy sources are a big part of fixing the damage caused by climate change, according to a recent study sulfur rich fuel used by very large shipping vessels have been helping negate some effects of the climate change by seeding clouds over the ocean and reflecting back the sun’s rays. Renewable energy is great! It’s wonderful that California requires all new buildings to have at least some solar installed. However, driving down the price of renewables is what happens when there’s parts of the day that get more power than others. What Humboldt County needs is a power storage plant that can sell energy back during peak times when solar and wind aren’t producing. That’s the best way forward without compromising our bay.

As our bay needs so much work, shipping from overseas costs the same as shipping something just one mile by truck. When San Francisco and Los Angeles had so many boats backed up trying to deliver cargo premiums were getting paid, money this county couldn’t receive due to our own dilapidated docks and inability to attract shipping. Our bay is the jewel of our county but it is being treated like the eyesore it is. Let’s work together to make it work for us, it can create jobs, bring cheaper prices for goods, and revitalize our economy! (plus who wouldn’t want to sell some weed from a boat in LA? Why can’t we make that happen?)

I know technology is advancing, yet somehow we still have people in the county using paper time sheets? We definitely need to find ways to make the Auditor-Controller’s Office work more efficiently as a supervisor should but no one seemed to step up when the county lost more than 2.3 million dollars during an audit. Say what you will but we needed supervisors to come in and help work together to solve this issue. Healthcare is another underdeveloped area that could use tax dollars to help beef up the nonprofit sector and get help for the people who love here so they don’t have to drive hours for a basic checkup or wait in overcrowded urgent care or emergency rooms.

This brings me to Rex, it seems like everyday there’s some more news about some embarrassing thing he’s done or said, some apology about disparaging remarks made toward members of our community. As a comedian myself I know the importance of punching up, not down. As a supervisor you need to understand that how you act towards others reflects on how people see their government working for them. Public service is a public trust and that is something I don’t believe he feels when he interacts with the public, so I fear how he must act when he is outside the purview of the Humboldt County voter.

Now I want to say that though you may not agree with me on every issue, if you show me a study that would refute my findings I will keep an open mind. I can change my mind, I can work as a team. I was a logistics officer in the Coast Guard, I’ve had training with both leadership and management, and I’ve lived by the motto that public service is a public trust and that we should elect fair people that we can believe in. In the coming months I am going to reach out more to others in the district who may need help and want to talk to someone who will listen. My E-mail address is clatworthy.gordon@gmail.com please reach out if you feel that you need to, I will try and post responses here as I can.

Thank you for taking the time to read over this,

-Gordon Clatworthy
running for 1st district supervisor, Humboldt County California

Press release from the Calfire Humboldt-Del Norte Unit:

CAL FIRE and multiple other agencies have been inundated with calls on emergency and non-emergency lines from citizens calling to report or ask about recent smoke conditions. The CAL FIRE Humboldt – Del Norte Unit requests the public refrain from calling 911 to report a fire emergency unless a smoke column or flames are visible.

Numerous fires are burning across northwestern California and southern Oregon. Many of these still-active fires can be expected to continue producing large amounts of smoke for some time. As wind conditions vary day-to-day, periods of time when drift smoke becomes moderate or heavy can be expected. For those interested in predicted smoke conditions, please see the National Weather Service’s Eureka Area Smoke Forecast at this link.

There are daily and long range outlooks available.

For those wanting information on the various wildland fires, visit this link.

Links are provided in the map to information on individual fires or complexes.

Again, CAL FIRE requests the public not call 911 to report drift smoke. If flames or a smoke column can be seen, then dial 911 and report it as an emergency. Calling 911 to report widespread drift smoke takes valuable time from dispatchers and may delay them from receiving reports of true emergencies.

CAL FIRE continues to assist other agencies in the Humboldt – Del Norte Unit. There are no major active wildfires that are the CAL FIRE Humboldt – Del Norte Unit’s responsibility.

Oshun O’Rourke waded into the dark green water, splashing toward a net that her colleagues gently closed around a cluster of finger-length fish.

The Klamath River is wide and still here, making its final turn north to the coast as it winds through the Yurok reservation in Humboldt County. About 150 baby chinook salmon, on their long journey to the Pacific, were resting in cool waters that poured down from the forest.

O’Rourke’s colleagues hoisted the net into a mesh-sided bin in the shallows to sort through their catch, in search of young chinook to test for a parasite that can rot fish from the inside.

Two years ago, during a deepening drought, most salmon captured for testing during peak migration were infected with the lethal parasite. One tribal leader called it “an absolute worst-case scenario” for the Yurok, who rely on salmon for their food, culture and economy.

O’Rourke and fisheries biologist Leanne Knutson laid out 20 small dead fish on paper towels, then wrapped them in plastic to send to a lab that will check for the parasite. The rest were released back into the river, where they will swim for days to reach the ocean.

A few years from now, when these fish return as adults ready to spawn, it will be to a Klamath remade.

“These ones will return either as three or four-year-olds,” O’Rourke said, standing barefoot on the riverbank flecked with fool’s gold and crossed by an otter’s footprints. “And the dams will be gone.”

For more than a hundred years, dams have stilled the Klamath’s flows, jeopardizing the salmon and other fish, and creating ideal conditions for the parasite to spread.

But now these vestiges of an early 20th-century approach to water and power are being dismantled: The world’s largest dam removal project is now underway on the Klamath River.

By the end of 2024, four aging hydroelectric dams spanning the California-Oregon state line will be gone. One hundred thousand cubic yards of concrete, 1.3 million cubic yards of earth and 2,000 tons of steel will be hauled out of the river’s path.

Tribal members, researchers, rural residents near the dams, conservationists and the fishing industry are all anxiously waiting to see how this river, dammed for decades, will change — and with it, its fish, wildlife and human neighbors.

It’s an existential question for rivers, especially in a region where water left in nature is often deemed wasted: “Once a river is dammed, is it damned forever?” experts ask.

So many uncertainties remain as the Klamath reemerges: Will sediment from the demolition harm the river and its inhabitants? Will healthy numbers of salmon finally return? Will it flood its banks more readily? What will the riverfront look like?

Young chinook salmon are collected for lab testing on the Klamath River near Weitchpec on July 20, 2023. Photo by Semantha Norris, CalMatters

Fisheries biologists and technicians from the Yurok Tribe’s Klamath program are collecting salmon on the Klamath River. Top: Gilbert Myers, Oshun O’Rourke, Keenan O’Rourke and Leanne Knutson. In middle: Keenan O’Rourke. Bottom: The technicians open a probe to collect tracking data. Photos by Semantha Norris, CalMatters

For O’Rourke, 31, a Yurok tribal member, the Klamath is more than a study subject — it’s home for her and her team, and the lifeblood of their tribe, which has inhabited this region since time immemorial. From the research boat, she gestures to the stretch of river where she grew up in her ancestral village, fishing with her father.

O’Rourke is hopeful that tearing down the dams will mean her son will have salmon to fish, too. But, as a scientist, she plans to investigate, seeking evidence that the river will rebound for the next generation.

“It’s hard to say for sure,” she said, “what things will be like in the future.”

‘To fix a place and right past wrongs’

The Klamath is often described as an upside-down river. It’s born in the high deserts of eastern Oregon as a trickle, and by the time it reaches the Pacific more than 250 miles later, it swells with water drained from more than 12,000 square miles of land, spanning five national forests and seven counties across two states.

There’s a stretch of river, crossing the California-Oregon state line, where feral horses pick their way up pine-studded slopes and osprey nest on power poles.

This is where, in 1918, a power company began operating the first of its hydroelectric dams on the river to light the towns and power the farms, mines and mills of California’s far north and Oregon beyond.

This is where dam construction dispossessed the Shasta people, blockaded salmon runs and stewed the river’s water into a warm, algal brew — drawing decades of activism from tribes and conservationists.

And this is where demolition has begun.

For more than 20 years, four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath have been at the center of a fight to restore the river.

Iron Gate Dam, one of four hydroelectric dams that will be removed on the Klamath River, on July 17, 2023. Photo by Semantha Norris, CalMatters

Top: Copco Number 1 Dam. O: Copco Number 2 Dam. Photos by Semantha Norris, CalMatters

The dams weren’t built to store water for drinking, irrigation, or to stop floods. They generated electricity for PacifiCorp, a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy, producing less than 2% of its customers’ power supply.

On one side are Native tribes in California and Oregon, conservationists and the fishing industry — all fighting to restore native salmon, steelhead and Pacific lamprey that have dwindled under the combined threats of changing ocean conditions, farming and ranching, timber harvesting, mining, overfishing and dams.

On the other side are nearby residents and their politicians, who see demolition as another way for state and federal agencies to impose their environmental wills on their rural way of life.

And in the middle is PacifiCorp. The company had planned to continue operating the dams to generate electricity after its license expired in 2006. But by 2010, facing growing protests and hundreds of millions of dollars in federally mandated updates to make them less dangerous to fish, PacifiCorp agreed to demolish them.

The Klamath River near Happy Camp on July 19, 2023. Photo by Semantha Norris, CalMatters

Deals between the company, California, Oregon, the Secretary of the Interior and others were struck, blocked in Congress, and remade until, last November, when federal energy regulators gave their final blessing to demolish the dams.

“It’s about damn time we got this done,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in December at the fish hatchery below Iron Gate dam, the most downstream of the dams slated for demolition.

California taxpayers will cover $250 million of the roughly $450-$500 million bill with funds from the Proposition 1 water bond approved by voters in 2014. Another $200 million comes from surcharges that PacifiCorp customers, mostly in Oregon, have already paid.

For California officials, the cost of demolishing a private company’s infrastructure is worth the benefit of a more free-flowing river.

“Sometimes, the need to do something so bold — to fix a place and right past wrongs — means you have to sit down and just be pragmatic on how you’re going to get a deal done,” Chuck Bonham, director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, told CalMatters.

Native tribes and scientists see demolition as a victory for the river’s first peoples and the fish they depend on for their food, cultures and livelihoods. Chinook populations have crashed, so much so that the 2023 fishing season was cancelled statewide. The river’s spring-run chinook are listed as threatened under California endangered species law, while coho are listed under both the state and federal laws.

Mike Polmateer, a Karuk fisheries field supervisor, at Horse Creek along the Klamath River. Photo by Semantha Norris, CalMatters

Removing the dams is expected to reopen more than 400 miles of habitat for steelhead and other threatened and iconic fish, and restore flows that can better flush away toxic algae and disease.

But residents and officials in Siskiyou County worry about the sediment that the project will unleash into the river and the consequences of losing a reservoir to refeed groundwater wells, fight fires and recreate.

Landowners mourn lakeside property that will no longer be waterfront as reservoirs vanish and the exposed land becomes the property of the state of California or a designated third party.

“It’s hard to say for sure what things will be like in the future,” said Oshun O’Rourke, a senior fisheries biologist with the Yurok Tribe who is shown near a study site along the Klamath River near Weitchpec. Photo by Semantha Norris, CalMatters

What is clear is that the Klamath won’t return to the river it once was. Designated as a wild and scenic river, the Klamath has long been the nexus of some of the West’s fiercest water wars, and removing PacifiCorp’s hydroelectric dams ends only some of the battles.

Other dams will remain upriver in Oregon, where the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation controls flows from Upper Klamath Lake — portioning out too little water to satisfy tribes, wildlife refuges, lake, river, farms and fish. The battle over water allocation will continue, as will the fights over tributaries downstream of the dams.

“The work is not done, by any means,” O’Rourke said, the Klamath River rushing beside her. “There’s still so much to do after the dams come out.”

As construction begins, ‘there is no going back’

The smallest of the four dams, the 33-foot Copco Number 2, located in Siskiyou County, is already almost gone. Water rushed past it by mid-July, and only a concrete and steel structure on the river’s bank remained visible from above.

“Quite a remarkable sight to see and feeling to feel,” said Mark Bransom, CEO of the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, the nonprofit formed to oversee the removal effort. “Knowing that we’ve broken ground and allowed for the river to start that healing.”

This time last year, Bransom said, the riverbed was dry, the water diverted to generate power. Trees now crowd the canyon floor where they sprouted from a riverbed long absent its river.

By October of 2024, the river will flow freely past the other three dams as well — the J.C. Boyle dam in Oregon and the Copco Number 1 and Iron Gate dams in California’s Siskiyou County.

At this point, Bransom said, “there is no going back.”

Mark Bransom, chief executive officer of the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, stands above the Copco Number 1 Dam, one of four hydroelectric dams being removed on the Klamath River. Photo by Semantha Norris, CalMatters

Driving around the mirror-still reservoirs reveals clusters of activity.

Neon-vested workers on the hillsides collect seeds to replant the bare landscape exposed by drained reservoirs. Overlooking Copco Number 1 dam, the pop-pop-pop of target practice in the distance is audible over the din of drilling for a new groundwater monitoring well.

From a hillside above Iron Gate dam, Bransom explains the vast undertaking that is unmaking four dams and a century of environmental interference.

Starting in January 2024, contractor Kiewit Infrastructure West will use explosives to blast out concrete walls beneath the spillway at J.C. Boyle dam in Oregon and remove the last plug of concrete from a tunnel drilled into the Copco Number 1 dam downstream. Water will flow into Iron Gate reservoir.

A yellow front-end loader trundles to a tunnel at the base of the Iron Gate dam, next to the spillway. This tunnel is where every drop of muddy water will pour into the river starting in January, draining Iron Gate reservoir by up to about 5 feet a day.

About 20 million cubic yards of sediment have collected behind the dams over decades — enough to fill about 2 million dump trucks, though only about a quarter to a third of it is expected to end up in the river, Bransom said.

The sediment can choke salmon and other life, and cause oxygen levels in the river to drop. But the work will be timed to avoid migrations, and the ill effects are expected to diminish with time and distance. Federal officials report that ultimately the new conditions will be beneficial to the river and its fish.

From June through October, excavators will dig into the earthen parts of J.C. Boyle dam in Oregon and use the material to fill in an eroded riverbank and the canal diverting water to the powerhouse.

Contractors will use explosives to break up the concrete of the Copco Number 1 dam into chunks and cart it away. Iron Gate will be unzipped from top to bottom by excavators that will deposit the earth in the spillway and a scar left by the dam’s construction.

Restoration will also start when the reservoirs are drained, replanting the newly exposed land and restoring habitat.

Looking down at Iron Gate dam, where water still churns from the turbines generating power, Bransom said he thinks of the river as a creature exploring new territory.

“I’m most curious and excited to basically watch the river emerge, and to see where the river wants to find its way back through this area where it’s been so constrained for 100 years,” Bransom said. “There’ll be some curiosities and trepidation, but it will be only forward progress.”

Neighbors living in limbo

In the meantime, newlyweds Francis Gill and Danny Fontaine are living in limbo in the Copco Lake community, built on the reservoir, soon to vanish, formed by the Copco Number 1 dam.

Gill, chief of the Copco Lake volunteer fire department, and Fontaine, a realtor, own a home, rental properties, the long-empty Copco Lake store and a workshop next door. Gill estimates that around 75 to 85 people live in the community full time — double that when those with vacation homes are there.

At Gill and Fontaine’s workshop, a sign on the wall lists Lake Rules. “Go barefoot,” reads one. “Jump off the dock.” But the water has already lowered enough during deconstruction that the dock now rests on the reservoir’s grassy bank, foreshadowing the future.

Francis Gill, left, and his husband Danny Fontaine, right, in front of their lakefront property on Copco Lake on July 17, 2023. Their property will no longer be lakeside when the dams come down, since the reservoir will disappear. Photos by Semantha Norris, CalMatters

At first, when the deal was finalized, they were angry — a feeling that reverberates across Siskiyou County, which has long chafed against the reach of state and federal agencies meddling with local industries. County residents overwhelmingly voted to keep the dams.

Now, with dam removal starting in earnest, Gill and Fontaine are feeling more resigned.

“It’s kind of like a facelift,” Fontaine said. “What’s it going to look like? I hope it looks good!”

“Do I really trust this doctor?” Gill joked.

State and federal environmental assessments spell out the potential impacts on local residents, including the loss of lakewater for firefighting, some unstable lakeside slopes and a drop in groundwater levels.

Downstream of the dams, floodwaters could rise as much as 20 inches higher during extreme, 100-year-floods, with levels dropping back down to normal 19 miles downstream, according to federal projections.

Some of the money in the budget — the dam removal corporation won’t say how much — has been set aside for an independently managed mitigation fund that residents can apply to, provided they agree not to sue. CalFire has also signed off on a plan to address local firefighting capacity, which includes dry hydrants and a camera network to spot fires.

Gill and Fontaine fear they will lose access to the water their community was built around. They are holding out hope that at least the river will be close, feeling for the bottom of the lake when they go swimming and measuring it with a depth probe, looking for the river’s original channel. Fontaine thinks he discovered it while swimming off of the store’s boat ramp.

“It was kind of exciting, that maybe it could be right there. But we don’t know,” he said.

Docks lay on the banks of a receding shoreline of Copco Lake on July 17, 2023. This land will soon be riverfront as the reservoir disappears when the dams are removed. Photo by Semantha Norris, CalMatters

They are clear-eyed about the algae that turns the lake green every summer. But the two aren’t convinced that removing the dams will fix it. Gill said he heard that before the dams were constructed, the river would slow to a trickle between puddles of algae in the summer.

The river’s flows will continue to be controlled by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which declined to answer CalMatters’ questions.

The original locals, the Shasta Indian Nation, also have mixed feelings about the dam removal. Though they support the river’s restoration, they’re bracing for what deconstruction and drainage will reveal. Dispossessed by the dam’s construction, the Shasta Indian Nation now faces disturbance once again of burials and other cultural sites.

“There are consequences with the construction of the dams,” said Sami Jo Difuntorum, culture preservation officer of the Shasta Indian Nation. “And now with the dams coming out, we have consequences that are unique to our people — the disruption and disturbance to our sacred sites.”

‘More than just a river to us’: Awaiting return of healthy salmon

Richard Marshall, president of the Siskiyou County Water Users Association, which opposes dam removal, doubts the disruption will be worth it. The idea that demolition is going to “automatically create salmon,” he said, “is simply not true.”

Marshall suspects that warm water upriver, underwater barriers to fish migration and predators have always made the upper basin inhospitable to salmon.

Federal scientists disagree. They point to historical descriptions of chinook, steelhead, coho salmon and lamprey above the dams. A photograph from the Klamath County Historical Society from 1891 shows men in suits, ties and hats displaying their salmon catch on the Link River, which flows from Upper Klamath Lake.

It’s a matter of timing, said Jim Simondet, Klamath branch supervisor for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fisheries division. Temperatures should be cold enough and flows sufficient for spring-run chinook salmon, a state-protected species, to migrate above the dams in the spring, but should also support fall-run chinook migrating after the heat of the summer subsides.

Simondet said scientists will be keeping a close watch for any bottlenecks that might prevent fish from reaching the upper basin.

“There’s a lot of fish that are bumping their heads up against Iron Gate Dam currently,” he said.

The river’s coho salmon, listed as threatened at the state and federal level, are also expected to use about 70 miles of habitat above the former dam sites after demolition, Simondet said.

Juvenile coho salmon collected for tagging in Horse Creek along the Klamath River. Photo by Semantha Norris, CalMatters

Mike Polmateer is helping the Karuk tribe track them — if and when they do return.

“We believe wholeheartedly that once the dams come down, the fish will return,” said Polmateer, a field supervisor with the Karuk Tribal Fisheries Program. The Karuk and the Yurok downriver are the largest tribes in California.

Polmateer is also a traditional fisherman and a fatawana, which he describes as a medicine man. He’s been protesting the dams for years, after a massive fish die-off on the lower Klamath in 2002 catalyzed the movement to restore the river.

“That’s still the water that runs through my veins. We only want it to be taken care of,” Polmateer said.

Mike Polmateer, a fisheries field supervisor and member of the Karuk tribe, at a pond built as a refuge for coho. Photo by Semantha Norris, CalMatters

Top: Juvenile coho salmon are weighed and measured before tagging in Horse Creek. Bottom: Fisheries technician Clay Tuttle injects a tag into a coho salmon. Photos by Semantha Norris, CalMatters

Highway 96 unfurls along the river from the dry volcanic slopes downstream of the dams to wooded canyons downriver. And just off the highway, tucked away down a bumpy dirt road where horned cattle rest in the shade, is a clear blue pond built as a refuge for young coho salmon.

Polmateer meets his team there — three younger men in wetsuits who wade into the pond to capture the small silver fish for tagging.

The operation takes seconds: The fish, less than three inches long, are sedated in a bucket of water laced with clove oil and something more, then weighed, measured and scanned for existing tags. Then, a deft poke into the fish’s abdomen with a needle, and a tag, no bigger than a grain of rice, is slipped inside.

Tagged, these coho can be tracked on their way to the ocean and as they return, after the dams are gone.

Polmateer, now 63, will be retired by then, but he hopes that his crew, the next generation, will continue the work.

“It’s more than just a river to us. It’s more than just something that harbors fish,” Polmateer said. “It’s who we are as a people. We’re fix-the-world-people, Karuk people are.”

Hunting bugs — a critical link in the river’s food web

Green gobbets of algae raced down the Klamath about 11 miles downriver of Iron Gate dam. Big rigs roared in the opposite direction on Interstate 5 above, rumbling towards Oregon.

And in the middle of the river, water up to his knees, stood Yurok fisheries technician Gilbert Meyers, a net plunged into the gravel and muck. A team of researchers was there to take the river’s pulse.

One way to do that, said Meyers’ boss, Jamie Holt, is by capturing bugs.

“Fish eat bugs, so it directly equates to fish food,” said Holt, a senior fisheries technician with the Yurok Tribe’s Klamath program.

Gilbert Myers, a fisheries technician with the Yurok Tribe, collects mayflies and other aquatic bugs from the Klamath River near I-5 on July 19, 2023. Photo by Semantha Norris, CalMatters

Top: Dragonfly larvae collected from the Klamath River. Bottom: A fly perched on a branch at Tree of Heaven Campground. Photos by Semantha Norris, CalMatters

Monitoring which insects like mayflies, caddisflies and salmon flies are living where, and in what numbers, offers a real-time view into the river’s health before and after the dams come down. The work, a collaboration with UC Davis and California Trout, spans the basin, fingerprinting conditions on the Klamath over time.

The crew’s next sampling location, at a campground downriver, is more scenic than the site under I-5. But here, too, algae clogs the sampling nets.

A flotilla of children on rafts have scared away the fish the team tries to survey, and they break for food — salmon that Yurok fisheries technician Keenan O’Rourke caught, smoked and jarred last summer.

This year, salmon projections are so dismal that federal officials and the Yurok tribe canceled commercial and subsistence fisheries, a devastating decision for people with an average income of less than $21,000 a year.

Jamie Holt, a Yurok senior fisheries technician, examines insects taken from the Klamath River on July 19, 2023. Photo by Semantha Norris, CalMatters

Holt warns that the dam removal won’t be a panacea as the federal government will still control flows upriver. But she’s optimistic about all the ways it will improve the river’s health. “It’s just going to harbor far more life … It’s going to hatch all kinds of bugs, which grow bigger fish,” she said.

Holt’s been hearing about demolition of the dams for so long that it doesn’t seem real that they’ll soon be gone.

“I kind of joked around for a lot of years that I’ll believe it when I’m floating over where they used to stand,” she said. “And it still kind of holds.”

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