Protesters assail removal
Some want access to hydropower, others see future in deal
Tim Hearden
Capital Press
10/27/2011
The debate over whether to remove four dams from the Klamath River continues ever louder here, as some residents and elected officials are rallying to stop the project.
As Siskiyou County supervisors have requested that state and federal agencies extend the 60-day comment period on the project, local farmers and ranchers gathered twice last week to voice their displeasure over the proposal.
About 250 people crammed into a fairgrounds exhibit hall on Oct. 20 to testify in one of six public hearings on the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement's environmental documents. Beforehand, groups of supporters and detractors waved signs and banners outside while others asked questions of experts at about a dozen stations inside the hall.
"Why should we lose our clean hydro power?" said Scott Valley rancher Jennifer Menke, who is against removing the dams.
Last November, Siskiyou County voters overwhelmingly agreed with an advisory ballot measure opposing the removal of the three dams that sit within the county's boundaries, noted Morellen Baird, a Yreka rancher.
"The 79 percent of people who voted in this county not to take the dams down should have a say," she said.
Nearby, Erica Terence of the Orleans, Calif.-based environmental group Klamath Riverkeeper was chanting into a bullhorn, "Un-dam the Klamath! Let the jobs flow!"
"It's all about having farms and fish, and we have some work to do to have farms and fish," she said in an interview.
The dam proposal also loomed large on Oct. 22 at a Defend Rural America rally hosted by local tea party groups at the fairgrounds here, as Siskiyou County Sheriff Jon Lopey led a panel of county sheriffs who blame state and federal interference for their counties' high unemployment and social ills. Wyoming property rights attorney Karen Budd-Falon also was slated to speak at the event.
Emotions over the project are running at least as high in Siskiyou County as they are in the Klamath Basin, where devastating irrigation cutoffs led to the agreement that includes the dams' removal as well as numerous fisheries restoration efforts.
Three of the dams slated for dismantling are in Siskiyou County, though they provide residents here with no irrigation water and little flood control, according to Mark Stopher, environmental program manager for the California Department of Fish and Game. The dams do provide some power to local households, he said.
Local residents have been fighting the DFG over its requirement of special permits for drawing water from the Scott and Shasta rivers, key tributaries to the Klamath. Separately, a state water board has been reviewing a 5-year-old waiver that exempts certain agricultural practices in the Scott Valley from sediment and temperature controls under the Clean Water Act.
