| Future Of Klamath Salmon,May Be In Scotland’s Yard :by Tim McKay |
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With juvenile salmon dying and Klamath River flows dropping toward a record low, river defenders traveled to Scotland last month seeking environmental justice and relief from fish-killing dams.
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August 2004
Members of Klamath tribes—Karuk, Yurok and Hupa—joined fishermen and members of Friends of the River to explain how six Klamath dams up for relicensing block upstream migration to some 350 miles of former salmon habitat.
The dams are owned by PacifiCorp, whose multi-national parent company ScottishPower bills itself as a “green” energy company.
In the days preceding an annual shareholders meeting, the 30-strong delegation from northwest California briefed politicians, conservation and human rights leaders, visited a Scottish salmon stream, held a traditional salmon bake and met the giant energy company’s chief executives.
No Specifics
While ScottishPower’s bosses said they considered the meeting constructive, Craig Tucker of Friends of the River said they offered no specific vision of how the dwindling fisheries above the aging dams would be restored.
Tucker said, “We’ve heard hollow words from PacifiCorp for many years now, which have always turned out to be insincere.”
PacifiCorp has submitted an 80-pound application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to relicense the Klamath dams for another 50 years, an application that is silent on the issue of fish passage.
Frustrated, the upstream Klamath tribes in May filed a damage suit against PacifiCorp for the loss of fish, saying the company’s forebears acknowledged the loss of salmon in 1916 and promised “a fish ladder which will permit unobstructed passage of fish up the Klamath River.”
So as the company’s annual meeting unfolded at the Festival Theater in Edinburgh, tribal members drummed, and and held up signs saying, “Bring Our Salmon Home,” “First The Buffalo, Now The Salmon,” “Dams: Weapons of Mass Destruction” and “ScottishPower: Do The Right Thing.”
Weeping
Humboldter Anna Schultz, now a water-policy graduate student in Scotland, volunteered to take photos for the NEC and said, “Many of the shareholders had no idea of what was going on on the Klamath, and many were actually moved to tears by the speeches!”
Meanwhile back in the western U.S., conditions in the Klamath continued to plummet, raising fears of a repeat of the unprecedented die-off in 2002 of 34,000 adult salmon.
Some commercial fishers, already suffering from decades of sacrifice in an effort to rebuild Klamath stocks, predict the fish kill could halt fishing in the Klamath River and lead to total closure next year of the ocean salmon fishery between the Columbia River and San Francisco.
Another affront to Native Americans ocurred last month when Klamath Tribes Chairman Alan Forman was denied a request to speak before a hearing in Klamath Falls on the role of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in past problems of water supply.
The hearing was called by Stockton Republican Congressman Richard Pombo, a fierce ESA opponent who often sports alligator boots.
Humboldt County Supervisor Jimmy Smith, allowed to speak,described his decades of commercial salmon fishing and denied the ESA was responsible for the conflicts on the Klamath.
Disaster?
Meanwhile, ocean fishers are asking for disaster relief, and Yurok fishers will be in federal court in September to air their claim that federal mismanagement of water flows caused the 2002 tragedy.
They say this violates the government’s treaty responsibility that gives the tribes the right to fish and—most importantly—to have fish to catch.
Federal water managers so far say they have no plan to prevent a repeat of 2002.
Most of the fish that died then were bound for the Trinity River, which joins the main stem of the Klamath 44 miles upstream from the Pacific.
Boon For Trinity
The Trinity won a multi-decade struggle to see higher flows with last month’s Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision to return water to that river (see related story).
In a related water struggle, a coalition of environmental and fishing groups last month sued on behalf of imperiled fish in the Eel River.
The suit, which came after FERC denied their petition, argued that the nearly-century-old Scott Dam has blocked salmon migration routes.
It also contends that PG&E’s Potter Valley Project, which diverts Eel water to the Russian River, has deprived salmon of water they need downstream of the dam.
Hoping for a miracle, and working for the same, the NEC will join the Yurok tribe’s 45th annual Salmon Festival in Klamath the weekend of August 14-15. Hope to see you there.
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Updated Tuesday, August 24, 2004 |
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