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WHEELER:

Welcome to the Econews Report. I'm your host this week, Tom Wheeler, Executive Director of EPIC, the Environmental Protection Information Center. We're talking about the Klamath River today in Klamath River Dam Removals, and joining me are Toz Soto, the Fishery Programs Manager at the Karuk Tribe. And we also have Maia Singer, Senior Scientist at Stillwater Sciences. That's a lot of S's.

All right, so we're talking about Klamath Dam Removal. I'm terribly excited because we've taken the steps. The thing is happening. One dam is gone, and we have started the drawdown on three other dams. For a total of four dams are gonna be removed in the coming future. This is gonna be great for the Klamath River. Toz, let's start with why we are doing dam removal and what this is going to mean for fisheries in the Klamath River. Can you talk a little bit about this?

TOZ SOTO:

Yeah, the Klamath Dam removal is, I would say, by far the largest salmon restoration project that anyone's ever attempted, and I've personally been involved with it for over 20 years now. So yeah, we're removing four dams, one of them is already removed, but the primary purpose here is to restore salmon to the Upper Klamath River, the Upper Klamath Basin, where there's roughly 420 miles of habitat. The other purpose, and I'm sure Maia can expand on this, is to improve water quality in the Klamath that's been impacted by the dams and rivers.

WHEELER:

Yeah. Maia, do you want to talk to water quality and how dams relate to poor water quality for salmonids and for other aquatic life?

SINGER:

So the lower Klamath Project dams' effects on water quality and the environment, people in the basin have really been studied for about 20 years, as Toz mentioned. So we know that the dams in place were affecting water quality, certainly water temperature in the spring and fall, which was affecting the fish who are migrating and building their life histories around water temperature. Dissolved oxygen, pH, also very important to fish.

The dams and the reservoirs behind them were changing nutrient cycling in the river in a way that was not entirely helpful. And they were also allowing the perfect conditions for harmful algal blooms to develop. And those blooms, while in addition to directly affecting the water quality parameters I mentioned, also produce cyanotoxins like microcystin and anatoxin A. And those are a problem in the reservoir, but they're also exported downstream. So that's a problem not just for fish, but also for people, for humans who are recreating in the river and using the river for different reasons. And there's also fish disease to consider too. So the dams were setting up a situation where they're interrupting the natural sediment supply from the rest of the basin. It was not allowing scouring to occur and creating conditions, both temperature and also habitat conditions for parasites that were causing fish disease. So there's just a lot of reasons that those dams were affecting water quality in a negative way.

WHEELER:

And so, salmon lovers, in particular, local North Coast tribes, the Yurok, Karuk, Kupa, have been active in dam removal. This is largely Indigenous-led movement to get these dams out of the Klamath River. Toz, can you speak to the importance of salmon and what this means to the Karuk tribe, who you work for?

SOTO:

Yeah, sure. The Karuk tribe is a salmon culture. Karuk tribal members that I've worked with see themselves as salmon people. So salmon is really everything. So they're vitally important for health, all the important things. Salmon are a very important food source for all the tribes, but particularly the Kirk tribe. Ceremonies revolve around the salmon runs. So I think that the whole issue of dam removal has brought the tribes together, really, with this common goal of removing these obstacles for salmon. And I think it's provided a lot of hope and optimism that we can restore the climate and this important resource.

WHEELER:

So dam removal, critically important for ensuring a sustainable fishery on the Klamath River. This is something that is well-studied and has been the product of, of decades of work and research. I should also say dam removal is, is wildly popular. Generally speaking, it has the support of tribal nations. It has the support of the state of California, the state of Oregon, the federal government, the owners of the dams have also supported dam removal. So almost all folks are aligned in saying, this is a good thing and we are glad that this is happening. There is however, a very vocal and persistently online community that is in opposition and they are trying to take advantage of, of some of the kind of difficult circumstances or, or bits are less savory in dam removal to make the argument that this is bad for the Klamath River, that this is bad for salmon, that this is bad for people, and so I think that there's a lot of confirmation bias that is happening, confirmation bias being they have this set position and so then they go out and they interpret facts to support their position. So part of today's show, I hope is that we can get some truth or some better context as to, to, to understand some of the things that are being raised as faults of dam removal. When really I think that we are seeing the, the problems of dams being confronted in, in a lot of these, these issues. So we have a drawdown as we've said of the impounded water behind a number of these dams right now. This has just occurred. And so after this drawdown, some of these dam opponents have sent drones over and found some measure of stranded and dead fish on the banks of the former reservoirs and on the side of the river. And they're, they're playing this up to say, oh, this is a killer river that this is bad for the Klamath. Toz, what is, what is your understanding about the impact of drawdowns on fish populations? And is this, was this expected? Did we understand that this was going to be occurring? And is this looking at it broadly a problem?

SOTO:

Yeah, you know, dam removal is messy, and just in simple terms. I went up and toured the Elwha dams, you know, after those were removed. And one of the lessons that we took home from that trip was this is a messy process. There's a lot of sediment transport. So as far as impacts, yes, there are short-term impacts, and they were accounted for. But thinking long-term, the long-term benefit outweighs the short-term impacts by far.

WHEELER:

Totally. And these muddy banks that we're seeing now will soon be awash in color as I understand it, because there has been a very substantial program to create new riparian habitat, to reseed, to come in immediately after the dams, expose this land again for the first time in however many years, and get native plants back on the ground. Can you talk about the gloom that we are about to see in these former reservoirs?

SOTO:

Yeah, sure. Well, the site is really fresh and raw right now. The river is in the former reservoir footprints. The river is now occupying its historic channel. You go out there and it's basically mudflats on these terraces. The river is in its former channel. But what was shocking to me was that you could see the old massive oak trees are still there. They're dead, but there's these skeleton trees that are still there. You can envision Copco Valley coming back to life.

So right now there's a huge effort going on to revegetate the reservoir footprints. It's mostly hand seeding. And then there's going to be some planting. I've seen photos of grass already sprouting. Really, the objective is to get in there and plant this site before it dries out. So if you can imagine these these terraces, well, when they start to dry out, they start to crack. And it's really important to get those seeds in there while these cracks form and there's still moisture. And then the seeds will start germinating and sprouting. So this is a really productive place. The soils are very productive. So I expect in coming here to see this this this what formerly was Copco Reservoir and now is. I don't know. I mean, I'll just say Copco Valley for lack of better terms, but it's going to come alive. Riparian areas are traditionally really productive places and they grow vegetation really fast. So I'm really looking forward to seeing the plants grow back and the place transform back to a river valley.

WHEELER:

So we've talked a little bit about how dams have interrupted the natural processes of the Klamath river. And one of the things that was most kind of impactful of dams was their impact on, on sediment processes and trapping of sediment behind the dams. Maia, perhaps you can speak to now that we have opened the dams and we're releasing water and we've drawn down the fate of the sediment that had stored up behind these dams. I've seen online concerns expressed about toxic sediment and that this is going to be impactful for the human and natural environment. If you can speak to what is happening to the sediment now.

SINGER:

That's a great question. It's one of the biggest known expected effects of dam removal is the short-term mobilization of the sediments that have built up behind the dams. And they're of a particularly fine nature. It's a lot of silts and clays and a lot of dead algae actually from the reservoirs themselves. They're supporting these very large cyanobacteria blooms. When those blooms die, the algae would go down to the bottom. And that's kind of fluffy material. It's really easy for the river to pick that up and move it down. There's been a lot of analysis modeling consideration of those sediment deposits. And in general, we're expecting 35 to 65 percent of the deposits to move downstream because they're so easy to pick up. They're going to stay suspended and they are. That's what we're seeing. They're staying suspended in the river and moving out through the estuary into the ocean. Because it's such small-grained material, it's not heavy enough to drop out essentially. And there are contaminants that we know were in those sediments. There was quite a bit of sediment coring activity. Dozens and dozens of cores were taken. Over 500 analytes were analyzed for in those cores to look at a whole variety of potential contaminants from mining activity in the basin and just industrial ag.

So there's a fairly good sense of what's in those sediment cores and what's coming downstream in the short-term period. While the suspended sediments are high, which is now and which is expected, there are going to be some concentrations of certain compounds, aluminum, arsenic, things that were found in those sediments during that analytical work that will come up above drinking water levels for a short amount of time. And so that was fully contemplated and understood as part of the analyses that were done and mitigation measures were developed to handle this short-term time period where sediments are elevated. As we move through the next few months and most of the sediments have moved out, we're going to start to see the suspended sediment concentrations come down. Any contaminant levels are going to come down also. And then we'll have a bunch of sediments left behind, which you and Toz just talked about, are going to be revegetated. And they will stay in place because they'll be held in place by the vegetation that's coming in.

So this time period right now is the time period that the short-term impacts were contemplated and understood. And even we thought we developed mitigation measures to deal with this time period. It is something that we've seen in other dam removal processes, but I would say that Klamath is a little bit unique because we have so much fine material behind those dams, so much dead algae, and that's really going out to the ocean. So it's not going to be a long-term problem.

WHEELER:

So again, returning to some of the themes of the show, we have short-term impacts from dam removal because we have this system that had impacted the Klamath River negatively for so many years. And when you're going to get rid of it, it's going to produce some short-term impacts. But again, these are known. They've been studied. There are mitigations in place for these short-term impacts and they're short-term and that the long-term benefits of Klamath River dam removals are going to far outweigh whatever short-term impacts might exist.

SINGER:

Yeah, I think it's a great point. And I would also add that if we're thinking about contaminants in the reservoir sediments, when those dams were in place, the contaminants were there and they were able to get up into the water column and some of them got up into fish tissue. So for folks who might have been fishing out of the reservoirs, they had to contend with elevated levels of mercury in fish tissue, arsenic. Those things were happening in the reservoirs because of the sediments that were there. So removing those reservoirs actually removes a source of contamination for fish tissue and for people who are subsistence fishing in that space, which is something that we also considered as part of the environmental effects of the dams and the reservoirs.

WHEELER:

You are listening to the Econews Report. We're talking about the Klamath River and Klamath River dam removals. And joining me are Toz Soto, the fishery programs manager at the Karuk tribe. And we also have Maia Singer, senior scientist at Stillwater Sciences. So you've said that one of the short-term impacts is that we have concentrations of some pollutants like arsenic, aluminum that are above what we would consider safe drinking water levels. This has been a fact that has been used by some of the antagonists of dam removal to argue, look, this has been a disaster, right? You know, we can't even drink from the Klamath River. Can you contextualize, is this a big impact for adjacent communities in the Klamath River? Do a lot of people just directly source their drinking water from the Klamath?

SINGER:

No, no, that's not the case. The water supply for the city of Puerto Rico is actually taken from Fall Creek, which is upstream. And there was a lot of work done as part of this project to ensure that that water quality supply would be fine. And it was never that they were getting their water from the reservoir, but they had a pipeline that went through the upper end of one of the reservoirs. And so that just had to be moved so that it wouldn't be impacted. But that water source hasn't changed. And there are there are water rights holders that have points of diversion along the main stem downstream of Iron Gate, but it's a relatively small number. And so when folks were doing the analyses for the short term impacts, they were considered the dilution of the water coming downstream from Iron Gate Dam and moving down through the river in terms of like where those points of diversion are. There's dilution as other water comes in from tributaries and just accretion flows from groundwater that's diluting out that signal.

So that was all considered as part of development of these mitigation measures. And that's something that KRC had to build into their plans for dam removal. The State Water Board in California, their water quality certification required that KRC protect potable drinking water supplies prior to dam removal. So all of that analysis was built in. And we're not in a situation where there's a lot of people who are getting their drinking water directly from the Klamath River. And for those who may be, there's already mitigation measures in place to deal with.

SOTO:

I would just add that, you know, I grew up on the Klamath River, I've been there my entire life and I would never drink from the Klamath River under normal circumstances. It is, it's a large river system and I don't know who would drink from the Klamath River under normal circumstances.

SINGER:

Yeah, and Toz, it's a great point, too, to think back to the cyanotoxins that with the dams in place during the summertime periods when large blooms in the reservoirs were sending microcystin and antioxidant A downstream. That's, we think, usually think of thresholds there for recreational contact for people going in the river and swimming because you can get skin rashes and various things. But there are also thresholds for those toxins that are for drinking water. And so with the dams in place, there were larger issues, I think, for an extended long-term period, whereas right now what we're dealing with is a short-term period where we know that when suspended sediment concentrations are high, this is a time that you wouldn't do that. But as you're saying, there aren't a lot of people who are doing that anyway.

WHEELER:

So Maia, one last question on sediment, and then let's get back to fish impacts. So I imagine that the drawdown of these dams was, was planned for right now because this would provide the best opportunity to flush out some of this sediment that had been accumulated behind the dams. And we've talked about how this is going to be a short-term impact. How short is a short-term impact? When do we expect the river to kind of get back to whatever its new normal is going to be? Because it hasn't been normal for, gosh, how, how old is the oldest dam? Old, long time.

SOTO:

You know, the reason drawdowns happening now is, I think you hit it, it's the wintertime, you have a higher likelihood of sediments flushing out. Fish utilization right now is at its lowest point as far as a lot of the fish are still in the tributaries and a lot of the small haven't haven't left yet. But I will add that things are improving rapidly. I've been watching conditions and we've had our crews out sampling and just yesterday our crews were out below the Shasta River in the main stem sampling with seine nets and they were capturing normal looking salmon fry that looked normal, they looked healthy. So while the impacts were pretty severe right in the beginning of drawdowns back in late January, early February, things have improved a lot just in the last month or so. So I'm really happy to report that.

SINGER:

That's fantastic. And I guess what I would add is just in the sort of thinking through the impacts and how long are the short-term impacts likely to occur with the suspended sediments, the analysis really focused on water year type because you don't know as you're going into a dam removal, you don't know what water year type you're gonna get. You can't predict the weather with any real certainty. So we looked at dry years, normal years, wet years, and thought through how many months the elevated suspended sediments were going to occur under those three different water year types. And that just allows some flexibility there.

So it's anywhere between I'd say five months and maybe 10, but the biggest peaks would come kind of in the winter time when there's a lot more precipitation falling, the river flows come up, it's carrying the sediment down. That's inherently makes sense, right? Like that's when it happens naturally in the watershed. And in doing that, you're putting sediment down into the river at a time when the fish are adapted to having it happen anyway, right? Like the blip of Klamath River sediment that's coming out for the dam removal is feeding into the larger watershed where it's raining in other places too. And that sediment is coming down from tributaries and that's a natural thing. So it's adding to that, the sediment coming from the reservoirs is adding to that, but it's not making a 10 times higher or five times higher. It's like fitting into the natural sequence of sediment transport in the winter time.

WHEELER:

So, so in the news this week was a, a fairly large mortality event involving hatchery raised fish going through iron gate dam that these small fish developed something called gas bubble disease, which is similar to decompression sickness and scuba divers. So it was an environmental harm or trauma caused by going through the historic iron gate dam and that this may not have been well-anticipated before. I forget who it was. I it was probably our friend, Mike Belchick with the Yurok tribe, who said iron gate dam has killed its last salmon. Toz, can you tell us what we know about what may have happened and if this is going to impact fisheries in the Klamath river or was this kind of just a freak accident that is correctable in the future?

SOTO:

Well, I would say that the release at the New Fall Creek Hatchery was not a, I think it wasn't an expected thing. And I think that with large dam removals, in particular the Klamath, there's going to be unexpected things that happen. So yeah, it's unfortunate that this happened. And future releases are going to be below Iron Gate. The good news is there's still 3.5 million fish in this hatchery. So this was actually a surplus, as I understand it, a surplus of fish that were at the hatchery. And they simply needed it to release them because they were getting into a situation where there was overcrowding. And that can cause a fish kill in the hatchery, having overcrowded conditions. So I think the lesson has been learned here. The other thing I just want to mention that we still have a lot of wild fish that are entering the Klamath River. We are sampling, seeing those fish, and they appear healthy. So I, as a tribal biologist, I've got to be honest. I'm not a huge advocate of hatcheries. And I'm an advocate of wild salmon. And that's what we do, is try to protect wild salmon. But nonetheless, hatcheries are important for salmon production. And they're still going to meet their hatchery production goals, even with this tragedy.

WHEELER:

Yeah, so as you said, we still have an excess of hatchery salmon. Hatchery is expected to raise three point two seven million more salmon. And that is above the state's goal of three point two five million salmon. So although this happened and it is it is perhaps regrettable, it's something that we've learned from now and are correcting. And hopefully won't be a problem in the future because Iron Gate is going to be gone. Toz, can you give us a schedule for the remaining removals?

SOTO:

Well, like we said before, a lot of this depends on the weather. So, the year type that we're having right now is more or less kind of a normal, maybe even wet, given the storm. So, they can't really remove Iron Gate until the risk of flood has gone by. So, I think that Iron Gate's probably going to start sometime in May or maybe June, kind of depending how the water year shapes up. But I just heard that they're going to start decommissioning COPCO 1 really soon. That doesn't have a flood control component to it. But they're going to wait until the risk of some kind of flood event mid-May to June. But there's a short timeline on getting this thing out. So, the sooner the better, really. And I'll just add another note that the Bureau of Reclamation is releasing water starting today, actually, to do a little bit of a geomorphic flow within that COPCO Valley reach to start to mobilize some of that sediment and also get the Klamath Lake level down a little bit. So, if we do have some type of flood event, we'll have plenty of room to catch it.

WHEELER:

Super. Well, unfortunately we're getting to the end of the show, but the show was inspired by misinformation that is proliferating online because there's a small group of pro-dam antagonists who are trying to use anything that they can to fight this dam removal. So Maia, maybe, maybe this is a question for, for you. Where should folks look for good, truthful information about dam removal and its impacts on the Klamath River?

SINGER:

Well, that's a great question. If folks are interested in the science behind the analyses for the dam removal, there's very recently environmental documents. The State Water Board in California has a website for the Lower Klamath Dam Removal, where the final environmental impact report is. And that's just a great repository of information from the past 20 years of studies. It's really easy to download. So I would say check out the California State Water Researchers Control Board, Lower Klamath Project, and the EIR. There's also the Secretarial Determination set of reports that were developed in a prior round of environmental documentation. And that's something you could also search for online. There's a really nice report, the Secretarial Determination Overview Report, or we sometimes call it the CDOR, the S-D-O-R, that's searchable online. And it's a really nice, there's some nice imagery. And it's laid out in a way that's, I think, very accessible for the public to learn about the impacts of dam removal, what we anticipated and how the various scientists and natural resource managers involved in this project anticipated mitigation. And especially for the short term, short term effects that are pretty well understood.

WHEELER:

Todd's do you have any other places that you would recommend folks going for more information? Well, I recommend.

SOTO:

KRC and another source would be the US Geologic Survey or USGS.

WHEELER:

We'll also then urge people to, to recognize that even if somebody says that they are the news, if they are the Siskiyou news, they might not really be a truthful, unbiased reporter of the news, so let's, let's use some skepticism and let's use our like media literacy and our, our big brains and recognize that folks have, folks are trying to sell us on something. And so if, if you have questions, I would also recommend looking to the Yurok tribe, the Krook tribe, their natural resources departments, safe California salmon, bridges to riffles, all of the great conservation partners who are working on Klamath river dam removals. I would say that these are our most trustworthy folk. So listen to the people who are doing the work, people like Toz. All right. Unfortunately, we are at the end of our show. Maia and Toz, thank you so much for joining the EcoNews Report. Thanks, gang..

SINGER:

Awesome. Thanks, Tom.

WHEELER:

Appreciate it. Cool. All right, and thank you listeners for joining our show Join us again next week on this time and channel for more environmental news from the north coast of California