The massive earthen barrier that was Iron Gate dam is gone. Only the gate tower remains. This morning, crews dug out a notch in the temporary earthen structure that was holding the river back from its historic channel.
Sisters and Yurok Tribal members Amy Cordalis and Ashley Bowers were among those who had gathered to witness history.
“What’s remarkable to me observing the river, is [that] it knows what to do,” said Cordalis. “It’s just been waiting all these years to be set free, and finally the humans have done the right thing and facilitated its freedom.”
Iron Gate is one of four outdated hydroelectric dams that have been dismantled from the Klamath River in Southern Oregon and Northern California over the past year and a half. This massive project has seen milestone after milestone: The removal last October of Copco 2, the smallest of the four dams. The draining of the reservoirs last January. The first scoopful of rock extracted from Iron Gate dam; various blasts and breaches.
Today, it could be argued, saw the most significant milestone yet. Now that two temporary cofferdams—one at Iron Gate dam; one at Copco 1—have been breached, the Klamath is running freely, and salmon will be able to access 420 miles of habitat that had been blocked by the dams.
The crowd that gathered to witness the breach at Iron Gate dam included many of the tribal members, environmental activists, and commercial and recreational fishermen who had been working together for dam removal since the beginning of this century.
“It’s a real honor for us to be standing on the shoulders of our tribal partners who have been at this important work for so long,” said Mark Bransom, CEO of the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, as he addressed the crowd. "To be here this morning to see the realization of yet another milestone is almost beyond words.”
Many present had been part of the delegations that traveled to Scotland in 2004 and 2005 to rally in front of the headquarters of Scottish Power, the parent company of PacifiCorp, which owned and operated the dams.
Jade Souza, who is from the Warm Springs and Klamath Tribes, remembers going to Scotland when she was a young teenager. Now 33, she accompanied her grandfather, Jeff Mitchell, to witness the breach at Iron Gate.
“He fought the dams longer than I’ve been alive,” she said. “He would always tell us I’m doing this work so you guys can fish for salmon, and my great grandkids. It’s going to be awesome, because I keep telling him, not only did you work for it, you get to witness it.”
Michael Belchik, senior water policy analyst for the Yurok Tribe, was part of the delegation to Scotland 20 years ago. That trip “turned the whole tide,” he said. In Scotland, it's illegal to build dams without fish passage, he explained, and Scottish Power enjoyed a reputation as a “clean, green” company. As the coalition pointed out, PacifiCorp’s Lower Klamath Project was an embarrassing contradiction.
In May of 2005, the company sold PacifiCorp to billionaire Warren Buffet and his company, Berkshire Hathaway. Three years later, another delegation traveled to Omaha, Nebraska, and crashed a shareholders meeting.
Belchik seemed a little stunned as he watched the excavator scoop boulders out of the expanding notch and the trickle of river grew into a stream.
“This is the culmination of my life’s work; it’s what I’ve been involved in for 24 years now,” he said. “It’s a little bit surreal.”
Dave Bitts, a salmon fisherman who is mostly retired, represented the commercial fisherman on Klamath River issues for decades. He traveled to the stakeholder meeting in Omaha but was barred from speaking that day.
Now, he’s hopeful that water quality in the river will improve with the dams gone. “As a salmon fisherman, I’m looking forward not only to the renewed access to a lot of miles of good habitat, but also to a renewed scouring of the river in the wintertime,” he said. That scouring should help scrub off colonies of a worm that hosts a parasite that routinely kills up to 95% of juvenile salmon in the river every year. “That alone would to me justify dam removal,” said Bitts.
As Cordalis stood quietly watching the water flow grow stronger, she remembered the people who hadn’t lived to see this day—like Ronnie Pierce, a “fierce, tough as nails” activist and one of the first to call for dam removal, and her uncle Raymond Mattz, whose Supreme Court case affirmed the status of the Yurok reservation and the tribe’s fishing and water rights.
“He was arrested 19 times just for fishing on the Yurok reservation,” said Cordalis, who previously served as general counsel for the Yurok Tribe.
“It’s really emotional and powerful to know when people work that hard and unite under hope and belief in a better future, you can have monumental change occur,” said Cordalis. “It can happen.”
