[env-trinity] Siskiyou Daily News- Report calls dam proposal ‘an experiment’

[Tom Stokely]

By Jamie Gentner
Siskiyou Daily News
Posted Jul 11, 2011 @ 10:27 AM
http://www.siskiyoudaily.com/news/x1223065266/Report-calls-dam-proposal-an-experiment 

Yreka, Calif. —
At its Tuesday meeting, the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors’ attention was drawn to a Los Angeles Times article that discussed an expert panel’s evaluation of the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement (KBRA) and the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement (KHSA).
According to a summary of the agreement, the KHSA calls for studies of the possible environmental impacts and potential outcomes that would accompany the removal of four dams – J.C. Boyle, Copco 1, Copco 2 and Iron Gate – along the Klamath River.
The KBRA, according to its summary, aims to propose fishery restoration programs, establish reliable water and power supplies, and contribute to public welfare and the sustainability of Klamath Basin communities. The L.A. Times article summarizes a June 13 report by the Klamath River Expert Panel titled “Scientific Assessment of Two Dam Removal Alternatives on Chinook Salmon.” It states the panel’s conclusion is that the proposal “amounts to an experiment with no guarantee of success.”
While the agreements are apparently a “major step forward” in boosting salmon population, the project would have to tackle “vexing problems,” including poor water quality and fish disease, the Times article states. According to the panel’s report, the agreements don’t adequately address those issues.
The agreements would possibly leave biologists trucking fish around a stretch of water with low oxygen levels, the panel finds. They could also require converting about 40 percent of irrigated farmland in the Upper Klamath Lake watershed to wetlands, panelist Wim Kimmerer told the Times.
“That’s a major industrial sector for Siskiyou County,” District 5 Supervisor Marcia Armstrong said Tuesday. “That’s more than one-third of our agriculture. It would take those guys out.”
Kimmerer further told the Times, “It doesn’t seem to me like they’ve thought about the big picture very much.”
The report notes that the agreements do not seem to express “a feasible level of effort.”
The Times article also quotes Dennis Lynch, program manager for the studies, who visited Siskiyou County to discuss the agreements in February.
He told the Times that while a team of scientists gathering information about the effects of dam removal agrees water quality problems will take decades to fix, the scientists are optimistic about being able to resolve them.
“I think they were pretty conservative in their analysis,” Lynch said of the panel’s report.
When County Counsel Thomas Guarino referred to that portion of the article, Armstrong laughed.
“It was interesting to read Dennis Lynch’s comment about how they felt the selected panel of experts was too conservative,” she said. “It was not, ‘We have lousy science.’”
The article also makes mention of the nearly $1 billion price tag the agreements carry. In an update the previous week, Guarino offered details from a meeting of the Klamath Basin Coordinating Council (KBCC), a group created under the KBRA.
He said the KBCC is seeking to restructure the budget for the KBRA, revising estimates from about $1.2 billion to $798.5 million.
It appears the federal government is moving forward with aspects of the KBRA even before receiving secretarial approval, he said, despite the fact that it is “unclear how reducing funding in the KBRA is going to address the concerns that there is insufficient funding as it is,” he says in a memo.
That may not be a good idea, according to Steve Pedery of Oregon Wild, who told the Times, “If federal taxpayers are going to be asked to spend this kind of money, it better be for a program that works.”
Overall, Guarino told the board, the Times story reiterates points Siskiyou County officials have tried to get across for a while.
“This points out that they have to have credibility in the underlying effort, and even their own experts are saying these agreements aren’t going to do what you think they’re going to do,” he said.


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www2.dcn.org/pipermail/env-trinity/attachments/20110713/d46970df/attachment.html>