GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — A California congressman tried Thursday to block removal of four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River by eliminating funding for a key study.
In Washington, D.C., Republican U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock succeeded in putting an amendment into the House continuing resolution Wednesday that cut $1.9 million from the Department of the Interior budget for the rest of this year.
McClintock planned to offer a second amendment Thursday to specifically target the study being done so that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar can decide whether to go ahead with removing the dams as part of a landmark agreement to open hundreds of miles of spawning habitat for struggling salmon blocked for a century, assure water for farmers on a federal irrigation project, and restore the ecology of the Klamath Basin.
“At a time we can’t guarantee enough electricity to keep people’s air conditioning going, the idea of tearing down four perfectly good hydroelectric dams turning out 155 megawatts of power . is insane,” McClintock told The Associated Press from Washington, D.C.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are supposed to finish the study next year. It is examining sediments trapped behind the dams and other issues to see if dam removal is feasible. It was not immediately clear whether cutting off funding at this point would be enough to delay or stop dam removal, now scheduled to begin in 2020.
Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., would fight to protect the study funding, said spokeswoman Julie Edwards.
“The farmers, tribes, fishing organizations and local officials who worked on the restoration agreement should not see that work undone,” she said from Washington, D.C.
Greg Addington of Klamath Water Users Association, who represents farmers who have twice seen irrigation cut off to save protected salmon in the Klamath River, said they hoped McClintock would fail, noting that a key issue farmers, tribes, conservation groups and others have agreed on has been the need to know specifically what will happen if the dams are removed.
“The thing that makes me mad is by cutting this money, McClintock is saying he would rather have Washington, D.C., solve the Klamath crisis than people who live and work in the Klamath Basin,” said Craig Tucker, Klamath campaign coordinator for the Karuk Tribe.
The dam removal agreements were signed in 2008 by the states of Oregon and California, tribes, conservation groups and farmers.
They represented years of negotiations to bring peace to decades of battles over sharing scarce water in the Klamath Basin between fish and farms.
A drought in 2001 shut off water to more than 1,000 farms on the Klamath Reclamation Project. When irrigation was restored in 2002, some 70,000 adult salmon died from diseases tied to low water. Irrigation was cut back again last summer to protect water for salmon.
