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Title
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Dam Removal: Uncharted Waters of Environmental Policy
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Creator
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Walters, Lindsay
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Date
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2020
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extracted text
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DAM REMOVAL: UNCHARTED WATERS OF
ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
by
Lindsay Walters
A Thesis
Submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree
Master of Environmental Studies
The Evergreen State College
September 2020
©2020 by Lindsay Walters. All rights reserved.
This Thesis for the Master of Environmental Studies Degree
by
Lindsay Walters
has been approved for
The Evergreen State College
by
________________________
Shawn Hazboun, Ph.D.
Member of the Faculty
________________________
Date
ABSTRACT
Dam Removal: Uncharted Waters in Environmental Policy, Three Case Studies in the
Pacific Northwest
Lindsay Walters
Dam removal is rapidly becoming a popular idea for river restoration. However, the
social and policy side of the issue has been studied less. Removal decisions span complex
jurisdictions, with wide ranging impacts. Diverse coalitions of stakeholders often form
around these decisions. This thesis analyzes the relative impact of coalitions on dam
removal decisions compared with differences in policy. I explore three case studies, the
Elwha, Rogue, and Klamath Rivers and use interviews, document and archival research,
to examine the impact stakeholder coalitions had on significant policy change. I employ
Social Movement Theory and the Advocacy Coalition Framework to analyze how these
coalitions form and what, if any, substantive impacts they have. Comparing these cases
allows analysis of overarching themes to compare and contrast the issues raised in each
case. While each decision has its own unique characteristics, there was overlapping
concerns over fish runs, hydropower, and water rights. Tribal treaty rights were
especially important on the Elwha and the Klamath, and showed a unique ability of tribes
to effect policy change. In all these cases, the coalitions that formed were highly
influential in policy decisions, likely more impactful than the individual groups would
have been on their own. Each of these cases were lengthy and complex processes,
oftentimes spanning decades from initial consideration to physical removal of the dams.
This contrasts with physical restoration, which is often quite swift. Dam removal is
highly contentious, highlighting the political polarization common today. Environmental
issues have long been points of conflict, with dam removal certain to be an ongoing issue,
it is likely that these decisions will continue to be complex and controversial.
Table of Contents
List of Figures ................................................................................................................... vi
List of Tables ................................................................................................................... vii
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................ viii
I.
Introduction ................................................................................................................2
II.
Literature Review ...................................................................................................8
Overview of Historical Dams ............................................................................................9
History of Dam Construction in the US .........................................................................12
Reasons Behind Increased Understanding of Removal ................................................17
A.
Controversies around Removal Projects ............................................................................ 19
B.
Kennebec River, Maine ..................................................................................................... 22
C.
Future Removal Projects .................................................................................................... 23
Theoretical Framework ...................................................................................................25
III.
Methods ..................................................................................................................30
Interviews..........................................................................................................................30
Archival and Regulatory Document Analysis ...............................................................32
Background Information on the Three Cases ...............................................................35
D.
Elwha ................................................................................................................................. 35
E.
Rogue ................................................................................................................................. 42
F.
Klamath .............................................................................................................................. 49
IV. ......................................................................................................................................56
V.
Results ....................................................................................................................56
Elwha River ......................................................................................................................57
G.
Legal Challenges................................................................................................................ 58
H.
Tribal Treaty Rights and the Boldt Decision ..................................................................... 61
I.
Activists, Coalitions and FERC ......................................................................................... 63
J.
Differing Ideas Around Restoration ................................................................................... 68
K.
Political Machinations ....................................................................................................... 72
L.
Anti-Removal Activists Gather.......................................................................................... 75
M.
Removal Moves Forward ............................................................................................... 79
N.
Conclusions ........................................................................................................................ 82
Rogue River ......................................................................................................................87
iv
O.
Water rights, Salmon, and a Shifting West ........................................................................ 87
P.
Save the Rogue v. Save the Dam ....................................................................................... 89
Q.
Decision on Savage Rapids ................................................................................................ 92
R.
Local Pushback Against Outsiders .................................................................................... 94
S.
Task Force.......................................................................................................................... 96
T.
Listing of Salmon on ESA ................................................................................................. 99
U.
A Final Decision .............................................................................................................. 101
V.
Removal Goes Forward ................................................................................................... 102
W.
Conclusions .................................................................................................................. 105
Klamath River ................................................................................................................107
X.
Water Rights, Irrigators, and Fish .................................................................................... 108
Y.
Tribal Treaty Rights ......................................................................................................... 109
Z.
Trouble in 2000 ................................................................................................................ 113
AA.
Coalition Forms ........................................................................................................... 116
BB.
Conclusions .................................................................................................................. 122
VI.
Discussion.............................................................................................................124
CC.
Leverage Points ............................................................................................................ 126
DD.
Common Themes ......................................................................................................... 127
EE.
Political Polarization and Anti-Government Alt-Right Conspiracy Theories ............. 135
FF.
Coalitions are Key to Sustaining Change..................................................................... 137
GG.
Challenges of Failing Infrastructure and Climate Change ........................................... 141
VII. Conclusion ...........................................................................................................144
References .......................................................................................................................150
v
List of Figures
Figure 1: Timeline of events for construction and removal of the Elwha Dams .............. 42
Figure 2: Timeline for construction and removal of the Rogue River Dams ................... 49
Figure 3: Timeline of events for construction and removal of the Klamath Dams .......... 53
Figure 4: Location of dams on the Elwha River ............................................................... 57
Figure 4: Images of dammed river and current free-flowing river ................................... 86
Figure 6: Map of dams on the Rogue River ...................................................................... 87
Figure 7: Images of the dammed river and post-removal ............................................... 106
Figure 9: Map of dams on the Klamath River ................................................................ 107
Figure 10: Image of fish kill of 2002 .............................................................................. 115
Figure 11: Image of the Iron Gate Dam .......................................................................... 123
vi
List of Tables
Table 1: Interview Requests and Completed Interviews by Case Study .......................... 31
Table 2: Documents Analyzed by Case Study .................................................................. 34
vii
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my thesis reader, Shawn Hazboun, for her assistance with
this project. This has been an entirely new method of research for me, and she has been a
great help in learning how to conduct qualitative research. I have thoroughly enjoyed
exploring the social science side of environmental issues, and she has been a great help in
the process. I would like to thank all the interview subjects who took time out of their
busy schedules to speak with me and help me learn more about the dam removal process.
I would also like to thank my friends and family for their support during this process.
This was a complicated time to be finishing a degree, and the support from the friends
and family, even if it was virtual rather than in person, was deeply meaningful. I would
especially like to thank my sister, Mandy Whitaker, for helping to proofread my thesis,
and my parents, Larry and Barbara Walters, for their unwavering support in my decision
to go back to school for another degree.
vi
1
I. Introduction
Rivers are a vital and complex ecosystem, and they are deeply connected to
people. Rivers provide many of the necessities for life, and we have often used them for
our own purposes, altering the natural flow of the river to best suit our needs. The most
basic way humans alter rivers is by constructing dams, however, now we are beginning to
reckon with the damage this does to the natural ecosystem. While many dams are
important sources of power, resources, and assistance in flood control, they often cause
negative environmental impacts. Now in the push to restore river ecosystems, dam
removal is becoming a more common idea, but it is a complex issue that deals with not
only the natural sciences, but also legal, policy, and social issues. This thesis compares
three rivers as distinct case studies, comparing the decisions that were made about dams
on the Elwha River, the Rogue River, and the Klamath River.
Many studies have focused on the natural science side of river restoration. Fewer
have focused on the social and political aspects of these decisions. Dam removal is
heavily influenced by policy, as it intersects with multiple layers of government
regulation, from local, state, federal and tribal governments. It is also further complicated
by the private ownership of many dams and the intensely personal relationship that locals
can have with these long-standing structures that can be seen as a key part of their
communities (Doyle, Stanley, Harbor, & Grant, 2003b; Fox, Magilligan, & Sneddon,
2016a; Jørgensen & Renöfält, 2013). Due to the wide-reaching nature of these decisions,
dam removal often creates coalitions among groups, both those that favor removal and
those that want to save the structures. These decisions are also technically complex and
typically have multiple different policy suggestions seeking to reach the same objectives,
2
sometimes taking massively different paths to reach those goals. This work seeks to find
the driving force behind removal decisions. Do differences in policy determine outcomes,
or do the political groups and coalitions that form around these issues have more impact?
As of 2016 there are over 90,500 dams throughout the United States that are more
than 10 feet tall (ASCE, 2017). There are many different types of dams, and while it may
seem obvious to define what a dam is, it is helpful to give a basic explanation of the
differing types of structures. Embankment dams are the most basic types of dams. They
rely on using gravity and a heap of soil or rock to hold back the force of the impounded
water (Jackson, 1995). These are the simplest dams and were how most ancient dams
were constructed. They are also highly susceptible to failure from erosion and washouts,
as was seen in one of the most well-known flood disasters due to a dam collapse, the
Johnstown Flood of 1889. Masonry gravity dams are a slightly more complex design, but
still rely on a massive structure using gravity to hold back the force of the water. These
structures simply use masonry rather than soil or rock (N. Smith, 1971).
Arch dams don’t rely on gravity for stability; they are typically constructed in
narrow canyons with hard rock walls, the arch curves upstream and allows the force of
the water to be pushed out into the walls of the canyon, allowing it to resist the
hydrostatic pressure (Jackson, 1995). Arch-gravity dams combine these methods; they
rely both on gravity and the arch structure of the dam to hold back the force of the water.
They are often massive structures and tend to be fairly stable, the Hoover Dam is one of
the best known examples of this style (Stevens, 1988). Buttress dams also primarily rely
on gravity for stability, but can be less massive than traditional gravity dams. These dams
3
often have a flat face upstream but are reinforced by buttresses built on the downstream
side, lending strength and stability to the structure (Billington, Jackson, & Melosi, 2005).
Multiple-arch buttress dams were pushed by John S. Eastwood, an engineer and
proponent of this style of dam construction. This style uses the principle of buttress dams
while adding arch structures to the supporting buttresses. This allows for a dam to be
built more quickly and economically, since it takes fewer resources to build than the
comparable gravity dam (Jackson, 1995).
Another reason that dam removal is becoming more common and acceptable is
the serious concerns over our aging and deteriorating infrastructure. On average a dam in
the US is 56 years and over 15,000 of them are considered to be potentially high-hazard
(FEMA, 2012). To upgrade this infrastructure would take a massive amount of funding,
with some estimates around $45 billion needed to repair the over 2,000 dams that are
classified as critical but high-hazard (ASCE, 2017). This is a major concern, especially
because many dams are near population centers and a catastrophic failure could send
walls of water and debris rushing through homes and businesses, killing people who live
downstream. This was made obvious at the scare on the Oroville Dam in California in
2017, but also in the death of Kenny Angel in Nebraska in 2019 when the Spencer Dam
on the Niobrara River failed and his house was swept away (Lieb, Casey, & Minkoff,
2019; White, Moore, Gottas, & Neiman, 2019). This was the first death in the United
States as a result of a dam failure since 2006, but it is an area of increased concern,
especially with the threats of more extreme weather events due to climate change in the
future (Nagourney & Fountain, 2017; Patterson, Bita, & Helsel, 2018)
4
Another aspect of the consequences of damming rivers is the vast changes it
creates in the river ecosystem. Environmentalists have often opposed the construction of
dams, seeing the damage it can do to the river and the plants and animals that rely on the
river. However, those concerns were often put aside by those who wanted to use the river
for industry or for other economic purposes (Townsend, 2014). In the latter portion of
the 20th Century and beginning of the 21st, the idea of dam removal started shifting from a
radical, almost unthinkable proposal, to one that was becoming more acceptable.
Especially when older dams began the process of renewing federal licenses the high cost
of upgrading the structures to comply with modern safety and environmental regulations.
This has caused a paradigm shift where large-scale removals have been completed, with
many more being considered (Doyle, Stanley, Harbor, & Grant, 2003a; Foley, Bellmore,
O’connor, et al., 2017). One of the best examples of this was the removal of the two
large dams from the Elwha River in Washington state. This served as a nearly-perfect test
case to show removal as a tool for restoration. The two dams on the Elwha were the only
man-made alterations to the river, the majority of the watershed is pristine and protected
by the boundaries of Olympic National Park. This example with be examined in this
thesis and compared with the decisions on the Rogue River and the Klamath, both of
which were more complex than the Elwha.
This study was done by interviewing people who were involved in the decision.
As many differing viewpoints as could be included were used in the scope of this study. I
wanted to speak to people from all sides of the issue, those who favored removal and
those who fought to keep the dams, the company officials, government officials,
management agency staffers, and those working for the tribes. The interviews allowed me
5
to gain insight into these cases by speaking to people who were directly involved, but I
also relied on document analysis to look through the many legal agreements, court cases,
and the extensive relicensing documents. This allowed examination into whether there
were any common themes or overarching ideas that are shared in these three cases. These
watersheds are all different, the state laws and ownership of the dams were different, but
there are some similarities in concerns over endangered anadromous fish, water quality
issues, and tribal treaty rights. This study looks to see if there are any similarities and
overarching themes in dam removal decisions, and what that could possibly mean for
future removal decision, specifically in the western states.
Dam removal also has some broader implications beyond ecosystem restoration.
Dams do not only influence the river, but the effects can ripple out into larger societal
impacts. While dams have provided a great deal of good for large portions of society, the
negative effects have often been placed on the shoulders of already marginalized groups,
who gain few to no benefits from the structures. For example, the dams of the Klamath
River have provided cheap power to many of the residents in the area, but at the heavy
cost of decimating salmon runs that the indigenous tribes rely on. While their traditional
livelihoods and cultural practices have been impacted by the dams, the Klamath people
have not benefited from the structures. In many places on their reservation they do not
have power, even with the dams providing cheap power for other communities (Interview
1). Many dams were constructed in such a way that they provided economic benefits for
broad swaths of the population, but with no consideration for those who were being
harmed, and now some dam removal decisions are taking on a social justice and
environmental justice lens.
6
These three case studies show while everyone in these decisions are working
toward similar goals, there are vastly different understandings of the issues, and much
disagreement on the best way to proceed. In all three cases, everyone involved was
concerned over protecting native fish runs, while also making sure that agriculture was
able to flourish, water rights were protected, and tribal rights respected. These issues
came up in the majority of interviews, but there were wildly divergent ideas about how
these goals should be met. There was also agreement that the coalitions were incredibly
important to these decisions, but policy also played a key role. There were also
competing understandings of science and selective use of facts to further political
agendas. In addition, all three of these case studies showed that the idea of dam removal,
while becoming somewhat more accepted, is also becoming entrenched in our political
divide and like so many environmental issues before it, is becoming part of the culture
wars that dominate our political sphere.
This thesis will explore the history and impacts that dams have had on our society
and the river ecosystems they are a part of. Then, it will present an examination of a
through case study for each river that delves into the legal, social, and regulatory
decisions that ultimately decided the fates of the dams, and the implications that these
may have for the future. Finally, these three case studies will be compared and contrasted
to see if there are any overarching themes that may be a core issue around dam removal
decisions, or if each dam removal is too unique to be compared to one another. Dam
removal is likely to be important to environmental policy in the coming decades,
especially as we wrestle with the challenges posed by climate change and an aging
infrastructure.
7
II. Literature Review
One of the more recent trends in river restoration has been the removal of dams.
This has been part of an effort to restore rivers to their more natural state, but also due to
concerns about aging dam infrastructure. Many dams, especially across the western
United States, were built decades ago and are now reaching the end of their expected
lifespan. Maintaining and upgrading these structures is an expensive prospect, and dams
have wrought highly impactful changes to river ecosystems and species, such as salmon.
However, hydropower is highly effective at producing power with limited carbon
emissions, something that is highly valuable when considering the threats from climate
change and the desires to move to a lower-carbon footprint. Dams allow for water storage
for uses during dry seasons, for irrigation, and for recreation. Dams have also been
helpful in managing river flooding. The relationship between environmental policy and
dams is a complex one, and dam removal must be considered from many different
perspectives.
By looking at real-world case studies of dam removal, we achieve a more
thorough understanding of the significance of removing these structures for restoring the
ecosystem, as well as for the communities that live around and rely on the river. In
analyzing dam removal, we must also understand the highly variable nature of river
systems and how this may impact restoration projects. This paper will examine the
broader implications that dam removal may have on other factors beyond the ecosystem,
including economic and social justice, policy and political decisions that come along with
these large infrastructure projects and restoration of the river ecosystem.
8
Overview of Historical Dams
Human society has long revolved around rivers. Many of our oldest civilizations
sprang from river valleys, such as the Indus and the Nile. Rivers provide essentials that
we need to survive, water, sustenance, and a method of transportation. For as long as
people have lived near rivers, they have built structures that allow them to use the river
for their benefits. The oldest known dam, the Jawa Dam located in Jordan, dates to
roughly 3,000 BCE (Fahlbusch, 2009). A dam in its simplest form is simply a structure
that restricts or stops the flow of water. The reservoirs that are created by dams are used
in a multitude of ways, including irrigation for agriculture, water storage for human
consumption, aquaculture, and hydropower production (Jackson, 1995). The earliest
dams were constructed throughout the Middle East and Mesopotamia. These dams were
typically low structures made from packed earth, and often used to control flooding and
manage water for irrigation. In nearly every ancient culture, there is some example of
dams being built, some highly intricate in their design and impact. Considered an
engineering wonder of the ancient world, the Great Dam of Marib in Yemen began
construction somewhere around 1750 and 1700 BCE; it was a packed earth structure that
was between two rock structures, and was tied to them with complex stonework. This
dam was triangular in cross section and nearly 2000 feet in length and 13 feet high
(Biswas, 1967). The dam stood for centuries and was expanded and improved by
different groups who controlled it though history. In roughly 115 BCE the dam was
increased to nearly 46 feet tall, with two reinforced sluices, five spillways and a canal
system that linked to a distribution tank. This massive improvement project took
9
centuries, and was not fully completed until 325 CE, but once finished allowed for
25,000 acres to be irrigated (Biswas, 1967).
The Romans were well known for their engineering and construction, with
advanced canals and aqueducts to control the water supply. They were also among the
first to see the possibility of dams forming large reservoirs to secure a water supply
throughout the dry season (N. Smith, 1971). With the advances in creating a waterproof
mortar and stronger Roman concrete, larger and more robust structures were able to be
constructed (Smith, 1971). The highest dam built by the romans was the Subiaco Dams,
built to create a pleasure lake for Emperor Nero’s luxurious summer villa. With an
impressive height of 160 feet, it stood as the tallest dam in the world until it was
accidentally destroyed in 1305 due to a flood and disrepair (T. A. Hodge, 1992). While
Roman engineers routinely used the standard dam designs seen in the ancient work,
primarily embankment dams and masonry gravity dams, they also invented many new
designs that would continue to be used by future generations. These included arch dams,
buttress dams, arch-gravity dams, and multiple arch buttress dams (T. A. Hodge, 2000),
all of which are now commonly used throughout the world.
While the Romans built the first arch dams, the Industrial Revolution during the
19th century gave us the skills both in engineering and construction to build these
structures on a large-scale. Three dams were built in the British Empire that were
considered forerunners to many modern dams (Hubert Chanson & James, 2001). These
dams were all masonry dams, made with multiple arches. One of these was built near
Parramatta, Australia in the 1850s to create a reservoir to supply water to the growing
city, and was notable because it was the first engineered dam built in Australia and only
10
the second arch dam in the world that was built using mathematical designs. Australia
also had what is possibly the world’s first concrete arch dam, called the 75 Miles Dam,
located near Warwick (H. Chanson, 1999). Throughout the 19th Century, engineering
and scientific advances altered how dams were built, changing the approach to one
heavily based on scientific principles and mathematics (N. Smith, 1971).
The 20th Century ushered in the era of the construction of truly large dams, as
shown by the construction of the Aswan Low Dam in Egypt in 1902. When completed it
was the largest masonry dam in the world (Cook, 2013). However, the initial height
limits proved too short to provide adequate water for irrigation and the dam was raised
twice. When complete its finished height was 118 feet above the riverbed and 6,400 feet
long (Cook, 2013). The most well-known large dam, especially in the United States, is
the massive Hoover Dam, a concrete arch-gravity dam constructed on the Colorado River
(Stevens, 1988). Many dams were constructed during the Great Depression, as it was a
good way for the government to quickly create jobs and build structures to help with
flooding, irrigation, and power production (Doyle, 2018). Prior to the depression, the
federal government was often unwilling to spend into debt, except in times of war. Due to
the unprecedented economic stresses, Franklin D. Roosevelt unleashed the federal
government to spend truly massive amounts of money to attempt to reinvigorate the
economy. In 1929 federal spending on rivers was $57 million, it ballooned to over $128
million by 1937 (Doyle, 2018). Throughout the 20th Century, many large dams were
built for hydropower and to help irrigate the more arid West, this construction included
some of the well-known dams including the Glen Canyon Dam completed in 1966, the
11
Bonneville Dam in 1937, the Grand Coulee Dam in 1942, the Oroville Dam in 1967, and
many more (Billington et al., 2005).
History of Dam Construction in the US
Rivers are a vital resource to provide water, food, transportation, and irrigation for
agriculture. Their management has always been a contentious issue. As the United States
became more industrial, many people sought to harness the power in rivers. Dams were
seen as a way to control the flow of water, controlling flooding events, as well as storage
for crop irrigation (Billington et al., 2005). Using the power of the river was also seen as
beneficial for mills and manufacturing plants, especially along the fast-moving rivers that
settlers encountered as they began living in the western United States. Dams were a
source of controversy, even in the earliest cases of small, low dams being built by millowners along rivers. United States water law is based on English common law, which
states that if the person owns the land around the water, they have the rights to use the
water, but do not technically own the water. This leads to conflicts with other people who
use or have claims to the water downstream. Initial rulings tended to side with people
who opposed blocking the flow of water, but as the need for power increased officials
began siding more often with mill owners, especially in New England where the textile
industry was heavily reliant on mills (Billington et al., 2005).
Water is a far more complicated issue in the western United States, due to the arid
climate and the extremely uneven distribution of water and precipitation. Water law in
the West is highly associated with to the idea of “prior appropriation,” which is basically
the idea that the first person to claim the land also claims the water rights (Billington et
12
al., 2005). This system functions where there is abundant water, but during droughts it
creates confusion and contention. As irrigation increased throughout the West,
specifically in California, there were many legal challenges over who owned the water
rights. California had been working under both the doctrine of prior appropriation, but
also the idea that if you own the land around the area, you have rights to the water,
sometimes referred to as riparianism (Billington et al., 2005). These two legal ideologies
often conflicted with one another and in 1886 in Lux v. Haggins, the California Supreme
Court held that riparianism was law, but an appropriator could have superior claims if
they used the water before the owned acquired the property. The timing of when you
claimed the water right was key to this decision. This was a very unpopular decision with
the public, but it eventually became the law along the entire Pacific Coast, as well as the
Great Plains (Billington et al., 2005). Throughout the Rocky Mountain states, water rights
are solely governed by prior appropriation, often with the state in full control of granting
water rights. Prior appropriation led to several large economic booms in the west, but the
benefits were not enjoyed by all of society (Doyle, 2018). Large corporations and
monopolies benefitted greatly but the environment was severely degraded and many of
the poorer portions of society saw no benefit to the boom-bust cycles.
In the mid-1800’s with the United States economy becoming more industrial,
there was interest in making rivers more navigable (H. John Heinz Center, 2002). One of
the proposed solutions was to install dams in specific locations to increase the depth of
water in the river channel. There were also many who saw the benefits of creating
reservoirs to store water for periods of drought. The first major dam project was
completed by the Army Corps of Engineers on the upper Mississippi River. From 1883-
13
1912 they constructed six dams upriver of Saint Paul, Minnesota (Billington et al., 2005).
In the west, diverting streams and rivers for irrigation was popular among the AngloAmerican settlers, but it was quickly becoming apparent that larger dams would need to
be constructed to meet the demands for water in the region (H. John Heinz Center, 2002),
and to make rivers navigable to large cargo vessels. This was challenging due to the large
costs that were likely to be associated with large dam projects on remote sections of river
with difficult topography.
There were also conflicts between the conservation movement that was popular
during the Progressive Era and industry forces who wanted to further develop resources.
This came to a head during the fight over the dam in the Hetch Hetchy Valley in
Yosemite. San Francisco officials wanted to dam the river to create a reservoir that would
serve the needs of the city. This was opposed by many conservation groups and farmers
who depend on the Tuolumne River. This case illustrated the deep divisions between
conservation advocates like John Muir and the Sierra Club, who were seeking to preserve
nature, and market advocates like Gifford Pinchot, the father of the US Forest Service,
who viewed nature as a resource to be managed and used (Billington et al., 2005). In the
end, the dam was approved by Congress in 1913 and completed in 1923, likely due to the
sympathy from the fires that had devastated San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake, as
well as industry pressure from the growing hydroelectric business (Doyle, 2018).
The pace of dam construction increased during the 20th Century due to interest in
developing irrigation as well as hydropower throughout the nation. Nearly 12,000 dams
were built between 1921 and 1950, nearly 30,000 between 1951 and 1970, and nearly
20,000 more from 1971-1999 (FEMA, 2012).This included many of the large-scale dams
14
that are well known, such as the Hoover Dam and the Grand Coulee. While these dams
created huge economic and social benefits by providing power, water for irrigation,
recreation opportunities, protection from flood events, and other positive aspects, there
were also negative consequences (H. John Heinz Center, 2002). Large portions of society
did not benefit from dam construction and some marginalized groups were actively
harmed (Doyle, 2018). Dam construction on Native American reservations displaced
numerous people and disrupted their cultural practices that had been practiced for
millennia. Since dams inherently change the flow of the river, it altered many of the
traditional food sources that tribes had relied on for millennia, and dam construction often
flooded areas that held special significance to many tribes. For example, the Elwha
people of the Olympia Peninsula’s creation story tells of the Creator molding the people
out of the mud from near the river, on a large flat rock that stood beside the river. This
place was a sacred location to the tribe, but when the two dams were constructed on the
Elwha River 1911, the reservoir flooded this location, cutting members off from this
location for over a century until the dams were removed in 2012 and 2014 (Guarino,
2013).
The damage done by dams is more difficult to see, since the effects are a more
diffuse, complex, and slow process. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, while the modern
environmental movement was becoming a political force, dams were still viewed as a net
positive. Because the dam affects the entire watershed as a complex system, it was
initially difficult to conceptualize the harm caused by the construction (Townsend, 2014).
The damage done by a dam is less obvious than the pollution being emitted by a coal
power plant, so it is easier to ignore, but that does not lessen the impact to the ecosystem.
15
Dams immensely affect the morphology of a river by changing water flow rates,
temperatures, and oxygen levels, as well as severely disrupting the sediment transport
downriver (Pess, McHenry, Beechie, & Davies, 2008).
Where dams have been removed there are immediate and long-term changes to
the ecosystem (Ritchie et al., 2018; Warrick et al., 2015). Observations of dam removal
have shown that there are immediate effects from the changes in water flow through the
system. The most visually striking change is often the redistribution of sediment and
other material downstream that had been trapped by the structures. Sediment is a vital
part of a river ecosystem, providing structure to the river as well as habitat for fish and
other animals who rely on the river. When dams are removed the sediment can
redistribute through the system, and in some areas like the Pacific Northwest, the
redistribution can be very fast (Ritchie et al., 2018; Rubin et al., 2017). Depending on the
watershed, there can be concern if the sediment is contaminated and how that may affect
the downstream ecosystem (Cantwell et al., 2014; Palanques et al., 2014; Rothenberger et
al., 2017). Removing the dams also affects a number of other facets of the river
ecosystem, from changing water temperature and oxygen rates to changing the
morphology and path of the river’s channel, as well as changing how fish and other
species use the river as habitat (Brenkman et al., 2012; Breslow, 2012; Learn, 2010;
Ritchie et al., 2018)
Dams intensely change river ecosystems and, in many cases, create ecological
problems. In the Pacific Northwest, this is especially problematic where dams often block
fish runs. Most of the initial dams were not built with any sort of fish passage and
16
attempts to retrofit to allow fish to swim upstream have been less than successful
(Brenkman et al., 2012; Brewitt, 2019; Mcdermott, 2016).
Reasons Behind Increased Understanding of Removal
The debate around dam removal is beginning to shift as more people see the
appeal of a restored river ecosystem. One of the primary benefits of dams is the ability to
produce hydropower. However, as shown by the removal of the Elwha dams, alternative
sources for power can sometimes be found elsewhere. Also, as societal views are shifting
on environmental issues, more people are placing increased value on ecosystems
themselves (Costanza et al., 1997; Farber, Costanza, & Wilson, 2002; Gowan,
Stephenson, & Shabman, 2006).
As an example, during the debate over removal of the Elwha dams, which
spanned multiple decades, from initial discussion and relicensing during the 1970’s to
federal legislation in the 1990’s and finally removal in the 2010’s, there was a primary
shift in the argument. Over time, more value was given to a restored river ecosystem,
rather than the industry’s interest in keeping the dams (Gowan et al., 2006; Winter &
Crain, 2008).
Decisions about removing dams can also be influenced by the economic argument
of the costs associated with keeping the dams, and in some cases this is more influential
than the environmental argument (Gowan et al., 2006). This factor is especially powerful
in the Pacific Northwest, where older dams often do not include adequate fish passage for
anadromous species and those can be extremely costly to install (Brewitt, 2019; Winter &
Crain, 2008).
17
The coalitions that form around these debates can be complicated, and often have
a large impact on the removal process. In the 20 years that it took from the initial serious
consideration to remove the Elwha dams to actually beginning the removal process, the
core coalition of advocates and Native activists remained stable. Throughout the process
they were slowly able to bring the companies and government agencies involved in the
decision onboard to favor removing the dams, which likely impacted their success in the
long run (Brewitt, 2019).
An important force in many of the more recent dam removal cases has been the
influence of Native activists and tribes. This is especially evident in the Pacific
Northwest, where tribal treaty rights to fish provide a legal standing for arguing that dams
should be removed due to their huge impact on tribally significant fish species. With an
increasing amount of knowledge about the costs associated with dams and their impacts
on the ecosystem there has been an increasing in support for removal efforts (Doyle et al.,
2003a). River systems are increasingly understood to be fairly resilient ecosystems that
respond well to recovery efforts. This is especially true when the restoration is wellplanned and is managed by successful compromise and negotiations between multiple
stakeholders (Hammersley, Scott, & Gimblett, 2018).
There is also the issue that the dams are aging and degrading. Many of these dams
were built decades, some even over a century ago, and now are reaching the end of their
expected life span (Griggs, Troy; Aisch, Gregor; Almukhtar, 2017). One serious concern
about these aging structures is the threat of catastrophic failures (FEMA, 2012; Griggs,
Troy; Aisch, Gregor; Almukhtar, 2017). Often the plans to retrofit and restore dams, both
to comply with modern safety and environmental regulations, are prohibitively expensive
18
(Winter & Crain, 2008). The risk of aging dam structures was clearly shown by the near
failure of the Oroville Dam in California in 2017. Construction of the dam began in 1961
and was completed in 1968 (California Department of Water, 1974). Unusually heavy
rainfall in the winter and spring of 2016-2017 pushed the reservoir to its maximum
levels, and the emergency spillways were needed to help control possible flooding
(Koskinas et al., 2019; White et al., 2019). However, as rising lake water was being
released, a massive crater opened in the major spillway designed to allow water to be
safely released. This led to a chaotic emergency evacuation of nearly 200,000 people who
were downstream of the dam. This crisis caused economic damage to the towns in the
area, in addition to the psychological toll the residents experienced and the concerns they
continue to have . It also cost the state of California an estimated $870 million to deal
with the crisis (Patterson et al., 2018). This event clearly showed how dangerous aging
dams can be. There are hundreds of thousands of dams across the United States that
continue to get older. Often the options to either retrofit or remove, with removal
sometimes being the less expensive option for dam owners. For example, dam removal
on the Elwha River cost $325 million, which included the price of purchasing and
removing both dams, as well as restoration efforts throughout the watershed (Mapes &
Ringman, 2013; NPS, 2015)
A. Controversies around Removal Projects
In addition to the ecological arguments around dam removal, the issue is
complicated by the economic and social issues that arise. During the debate around
removing the dams on the Elwha, the primary concerns were environment and safety.
19
There was also a case to be made around the economic consequences and benefits to dam
removal. When large-scale policy decisions are made, monetary concerns are often a
primary interest for stakeholders. For example, the removal on the Elwha River was
made a bit simpler because the dams were constructed to provide power for a paper plant
in the area. In the 1990s when removal was first considered, the power would actually be
cheaper purchased from the open market, when compared with the cost of upgrading the
dams (Bender, 1997a).
There are many groups who can be impacted by the decisions to remove or keep a
dam, including power companies who use the dams for hydroelectric power, farmers who
use the reservoirs for irrigation, property owners who live along reservoirs, the tourism
industry who relies on the area for enjoyment, anglers and tribal members who are
concerned about fish, and many others (Brewitt, 2019). This often leads to conflict as
people see the dam in many different ways; some see the benefits and will fight hard to
maintain the dam; others see the harm and will push for removal. People also sometimes
view the dams and the reservoirs they create as an integral part of the community identity
and will push back against removal advocates, especially if they are from outside the
community (Brewitt, 2019; Fox, Magilligan, & Sneddon, 2016b; Jørgensen & Renöfält,
2013; Ryan Bellmore et al., 2017; Saulters, 2014a). This is a common argument in many
dam removal decisions.
The complex relationship between groups advocating for and against removal can
be seen by competing, local organizations that have sprung up around the decision on
Capitol Lake in Olympia. This is a particularly interesting case, because the dam that was
built to create Capitol Lake was built purely for aesthetic reasons. When the Washington
20
State Capitol was designed in 1911 the architects Wilder and White proposed creating a
body of water to serve as a reflecting pool for the Capitol buildings, which were to be
built near the mouth of the Deschutes River. The dam was completed in 1951, with the
construction of the 5th Avenue Dam, which impounded the Deschutes River and covered
the existing estuary and tide flats (DES, 2016). The debate around this removal than
becomes an argument between those who want to keep the structure for nostalgic reasons,
with other arguing the dam needs to be removed and the estuary restored for ecological
reasons (Garlesky, 2015). Advocacy groups are attempting to restore the estuary, but
other powerful groups are fighting to save the lake, even though numerous studies have
shown that estuary restoration is likely the best option to deal with the environmental
issues present in the lake (Garlesky, 2015).
For most of the history of the U.S., tribal interests were not regarded as important
as non-tribal forces, as evidenced by the long history of federal government dismissing
tribal claims and frequent losses in court cases (Wilkins & Lomawaima, 2001). This has
been seen especially when looking at the construction of dams and the negative impacts it
had on many areas vital to tribes. For decades people have argued against dam removal
by holding up the needs of agriculture or other economic interests, at the expense of tribal
interests and treaty rights. Tribes and other activists were able to show they could use
their interests and claims to pursue removal of dams. With the success of the removal of
the Elwha dams, the Savage Rapids Dam on the Rogue, the Marmot Dam on the Sandy,
and a growing list of other removals, there may be a paradigm shift occurring where the
interests of tribal activists pushing for river restoration may have a more potent voice in
21
the discussion. This could be key to the largest removal decision that is currently being
considered, the proposal to remove four large dams from the Klamath River.
When studying dam removal, it is often helpful to look at case studies of the
different removal projects that have been completed throughout the United States. The
following chapters of this thesis will examine three specific case studies in depth, the
Elwha River in Washington, the Rogue River in Oregon, and the Klamath River in
Oregon and California. While these cases are geographically separated, there can be
overarching themes that present themselves, and may show broad trends in dam removal
more generally. It is also helpful to examine the basics of the first time dam removal was
ordered against the wishes of the dam owners, and how that emboldened advocates to
push for dam removal and altered the views around dam removal, moving it from a
radical, unthinkable idea to a possibility.
B. Kennebec River, Maine
Dam removal had been considered a fringe idea for many decades in
environmental groups, however in 1999 it got a real-world test case when the Edwards
Dam was removed from the Kennebec River. This dam was the first ordered removed by
the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) against the wishes of the dam owner
(H. John Heinz Center, 2002). In this case, economic arguments around dam removal
were useful to quantify the costs of the alternatives (Gowan et al., 2006). It brings the
choices into clear and familiar terms for participants. By using standard economic
demand theory, it is fairly easy to show that the cost caused by losing the power
production of the dams is usually less than most people assume (Gowan et al., 2006).
This makes dam removal a more palatable alternative for many people. It is also helpful
22
to be mindful of who is involved in the decision-making process. If vital viewpoints are
excluded due to the rules and approaches to public policy, the outcome may be worse for
various participants. An inclusive and open process is incredibly valuable, and often
necessary for these removal projects to be approved.
There is often concern from property owners that dam removal will negatively
affect their property value. Reservoirs are often seen as a source of recreation, but a case
can be made that a restored river has more value than a stagnant reservoir. The removal
of the Edwards Dam was a useful case study when comparing property value both preand post-dam removal. The dam was removed primarily to help restore fish access to 15
miles of historical spawning habitat blocked by the dam, while adding fish passage would
cost 1.7 times more than removal (H. John Heinz Center, 2002). Lewis et. al (2008)
found a positive effect on local property values, when focused on the local market
comparing pre- and post-removal. After dam removal the price of property near the river
began to rise, but this was most likely not simply due to the removal of the dam (Lewis,
Bohlen, & Wilson, 2008). The authors thought that it was more likely due to the longterm restoration efforts that improved the ecosystem, of which removal of the dam was a
component. Through these restoration efforts the Kennebec River now has much stronger
runs of salmon and many other fish and aquatic species are showing improvement, which
is leading to more interest in areas around the river. The removal of the Edwards Dam
was an important portion of the restoration, but not the sole force behind rising property
values (Lewis et al., 2008).
C. Future Removal Projects
23
Due to the success of previous dam removals and river restoration projects, it is
becoming a more politically viable idea. For example, the tribes who live along the
Klamath River in northern California and southern Oregon have been seeking removal of
the dams for decades, but they are finally getting some traction. In 2010 an agreement
was reached to remove four dams, in an attempt to restore the river system to benefit the
tribes, the endangered fish populations, as well as the agricultural interests that rely on
the river for irrigation. This is beginning to show that there may be a shift in the power
dynamics between tribal and non-tribal interests (Gosnell & Kelly, 2010).
An agreement was reached on the Klamath dams, and is particularly notable,
because the restoration effort is inclusive and multidimensional, seeking not only
ecological restoration, but also emphasizing that economic and social needs must be met
for all stakeholders involved in the process (Gosnell & Kelly, 2010). This is a hopeful
sign that perhaps these contentious problems may lead to communities working together,
rather than fighting in court to protect only their own narrow interests. Some portions of
the community are now looking to benefits that could come along with a restored river
(Gilman, 2016). There are new opportunities being planned for expanded tourism for
whitewater activities and expanded fishing tours. While this decision is ongoing and still
highly contentious, there is hope that previous removals will give knowledge and insight
to make the process a success for all stakeholders.
The issue of dam removal is complex and contentious. Many of these structures
have been present for decades or up to a century, and they have vastly changed the nature
of the river systems themselves. They have also become a part of the culture of the
communities that live near them. The reservoirs created by dams are popular recreation
24
areas, and removing the dam can be seen as taking away a part of the community’s
history and way of life (Brewitt, 2019). This leads to contentious political strife and there
is often serious push-back from stakeholders who wish to see the dam remain (Fox et al.,
2016b). There have been many successful dam removal projects, and there will likely be
an increasing number in the future as the structures continue to age and the costs
associated with repairing and relicensing can be unreasonable. The continuing push by
advocates to restore these systems has become a more potent force, as the economic
arguments have begun to shift in favor of removal.
Theoretical Framework
This study is relying on data from interviews of subjects who were involved in the
three different dam removal decisions. Data from document and archival research is also
used. Including legislation, court decisions, treaties, FERC filings, and many other
official sources. In comparing these three case studies, several theories are used to try and
further understand each removal decision, what relationship, if any, they have with one
another, and how these may relate to broader ideas and movements. The primary theories
that will be used are Social Movement Theory, Advocacy Coalition Framework, and
Environmental Justice.
An important aspect of dam removal is examining how the political coalitions both
for and against removal form, how that can impact the decisions, and how those
coalitions change throughout the process. This will be studied through the lens of Social
Movement Theory, which grew out of sociologists work in the early 1900’s around
collective behavior theory and was eventually summarized by two books in the 1990’s by
25
Alberto Melucci and James Jasper, and Advocacy Coalition Framework, developed
by Paul Sabatier and Hank Jenkins-Smith in the 1980’s (Jasper, 1997; Melucci, 1996; P.
Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1993).
Social movement theory has emerged over the last few decades as researchers have
investigated the rise in large social movements (McAdams, 2017; Sen & Avci, 2016).
Social movement theory grew out of sociologists’ previous study of collective behavior
and was heavily impacted by the many large social movements that grew and managed to
create policy change throughout the 20th Century, such as the Civil Rights Movement, the
environmental movement, women’s rights, and LGBTQ+ rights, and many other
movements (Sen & Avci, 2016; Turner, 2013). By studying these social movements,
researchers attempted to understand what made social movements form, and how they
could successfully seek to change policy and political structures. This has led to a broad
application of this theory to many different disciplines, from the social sciences, to policy
analysis, regulatory decisions, and environmental policy. This makes it useful to attempt
to understand dam removal decisions, as they have undergone a dramatic shift in views
over the past several decades, as well as the many differing intersections of specialties
that are involved in these decisions. Dam removal went from being considered a radical,
almost impossible, idea, to one that is becoming more commonplace. This large shift in
opinion in the space of a few decades is likely related to other movements that were
affecting the politics of these decisions.
Advocacy Coalition Framework analyzes at how coalitions form and are maintained,
how information can influence these coalitions, how the coalitions interact with the
policy process, and how the passage of time impacts policy change the coalitions can
26
create ( Sabatier, 1988). Advocacy coalition framework (ACF) takes into account how
different organizations interact with varying levels of government to affect policy
decision, and considers the belief systems of groups that also may impact what sort of
policy outcomes they advocate for (Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1993). By considering
coalitions of varying organizations as one unit, it allows study of complex issues that can
have many actors from multiple differing institutions. ACF also allows understanding
that policy actors can be part of multiple coalitions, and there is often overlap between
the groups based on shared goals and ideals (Cisneros, 2016). Since the framework was
proposed, it has been used by many different researchers attempting to understand how
political actors can work together to bring about policy change, it is especially useful for
studying large-scale policy decisions, as it requires looking at long-term decisions over
years or decades to understand how the coalitions were able to exert change (P. Sabatier
& Jenkins-Smith, 1993). ACF also takes into account how individuals within the groups
can learn and incorporate new information into the belief system and framework of their
organization (Pierce, 2020). This is likely to be a key manner of understand dam removal
decisions, because in many successful removals, there are large scale coalitions that
forms among groups that broadly share related ideals and desires. These coalitions are
often key in forcing policy change and creating a change from the status-quo (Brewitt,
2019).
While this study does not focus on Environmental Justice, it is an important
consideration in each of these case studies. Many dams were built over the objections of
indigenous people and tribal treaty rights have been an important factor in many of the
legal decisions around dam removal decisions. Doctor Robert Bullard is often cited as
27
being the father of environmental justice as he has been one of the leading voices on
environmental racism since the 1980s, when he began researching the disproportionate
impact that race has on the environmental issues that people have to contend with
(Bullard, 1993). Many studies over the years have shown that minority communities are
often more severely impacted by pollution, industrial activity, and many other
environmental issues when compared to white communities (Bullard, 1999; Bullard,
Johnson, & Wright, 1997). This is especially true when researchers look at indigenous
people, in addition to many treaty rights that have been violated throughout history, many
tribes have been affected by environmental degradation and industrial pollution (Mauer,
2020; Norgaard & Reed, 2017; Schlosberg, 2004). While this paper will not focus on the
environmental justice lens extensively, it is an important one to consider, especially when
focusing on the Pacific Northwest. The indigenous people of this area often have deep
ties to salmon and the rivers of the region, which are severely changed and impacted by
dam construction.
It was also useful to consider a comparative approach to the many different policy
documents that were included in the document and archival research. Traditional policy
analysis focuses more on crafting policy decision to solve problems. Comparative
studies, such as those in Knoepfel et al.’s book Public Policy Analysis. This approach
allows consideration of the social actors who act within the political arena, while also
considering the influence that institutions have on the substance of the policy. This
framework also takes into account what resources are used by the differing stakeholders
and how they can be used to emphasize their goals (Knoepfel, Larrue, Varone, & Hill,
2007). This is a useful approach when considering dam removal decisions due to the
28
large number of overlapping government agencies, tribal governments, corporations, and
advocacy groups involved.
29
III. Methods
This study analyzed three different dam removal decisions as case studies to
compare the policy solutions and political coalitions that form around removal decisions.
The primary research questions asks if policy differences between the three cases explain
the outcomes, or if the political coalitions have more impact on the final decisions. This
allows for analysis of overarching themes and similarities in dam removal decisions, even
when they are geographically separated. If these cases do not share overarching themes, it
may be due to factors that are unique and intrinsically connected to the area. The analysis
focused on comparing the distinctions between the three case studies, including
differences in how the dams were used, legal issues around ownership of the dams, water
rights, tribal treaty rights, local government concerns, and the differing policies in
different states.
This study employs qualitative analysis using interviews and document and
archival research. This chapter will outline the methods both for the interviews and the
archival research, as well as the theoretical framework that will be used to analyze the
data and produce conclusions.
Interviews
This thesis relied on qualitative interview data with individuals who were
integrally involved in the dam removal processes in three case studies. To ensure a robust
data set, I aimed to include a diverse set of voices by including activists who were both
for and against removal, government officials from all levels, tribal officials and activists,
scientists studying the area and helping plan the removal and restoration, and legal
30
experts who were involved in the process. While doing an archival and document based
research of each case study, I kept notes of the key people involved in the cases and these
were used for initial points of contact (see Table 1). Once interviewing commenced, I
used snowball sampling to ask for other people I should contact. Initially I contacted
potential participants by email and provided a letter of information about the study (see
Appendix), and I then followed up with a phone call. The interviews ranged from 25
minutes to an hour and a half in length, were digitally recorded, and primarily conducted
over Facetime, Zoom, or the phone. In all 11 interviews were conducted and represented
multiple different perspectives and backgrounds across the three case studies (see Table
1).
Table 1: Interview Requests and Completed Interviews by Case Study
Case study
Elwha
Rogue
Klamath
Requests sent/Backgrounds
10 requests sent,
1 tribe, 3 government
officials, 1 anti-removal
advocate, 4 pro removal
7 requests sent
2 tribal officials, 1
government official, 1 antiremoval advocate, 5 proremoval advocates
15 requests sent
4 tribal officials, 2
Government officials, 3
anti-removal advocates, 6
pro-removal advocates, 1
company
Interviews completed
3 interviews done
2 government official
1 pro-removal activist
2 interviews completed
1 anti-removal activist
1 pro-removal activist
6 interview completed
2 pro-removal advocates
1 tribal official
1 government official
1 anti-removal activist
1 company official
Interviews were semi-structured, using an interview protocol that varied slightly
from case to case. Semi-structured design provided flexibility to offer follow-up
questions depending on the responses of participants. Participants responses were kept
31
confidential, each was issued a specific number, which was the only identifier on the
recordings, and names and numbers kept on one document that will be destroyed at the
end of the study.
I transcribed the interviews verbatim and proceeded to code them. For the coding
procedure I first read all transcripts, making note of prevalent themes. I also used my
analysis of regulatory documents and other literature to create an initial of factors that
seemed to impact the decisions. This allowed me to begin considering what themes that
would be most prevalent when coding my interview data. Next, I read each transcript
again to code for specific themes and to highlight quotes that seemed to be important.
These themes were then compared across the case studies, to see if there were any
similarities between the areas. Once the interviews and initial coding were complete, I
analyzed what overarching themes were most present, and if there were any secondary
themes that were present and required a second coding of the interviews.
Archival and Regulatory Document Analysis
To build a comparative case study for this thesis, rather than doing a traditional
policy analysis, I instead used a variety of archival and regulatory documents to compare
the different proposed alternatives in each decision. Typically policy analysis looks at a
problem and seeks to create policy solutions to those problems (Knoepfel et al., 2007).
Instead this research consisted of a comparative study of three different policy decisions
made to deal with comparable issues. All of these case studies revolve around the
ecological issues that dams create, specifically, all of them have a conflict with
protections of threatened and endangered fish. This then creates a policy issue when the
32
dams go through the re-licensing process and companies are faced with the high costs of
retrofitting the structures, as well as public pressure to remove the dam. This leads to
looking for what the best policy solution is, which is often complicated by the many
competing interests and the large number of stakeholders in these decisions.
To compare these policies, archival sources, primarily government reports and
legal documents were used to examine the different solutions that were proposed to deal
with the ecological issues that arose during the relicensing decisions. One of the
important factors in most dam removal decisions is finding a leverage point that allows
for a possibly massive change in the way these systems have been operating (Meadows,
2008). Most dams in the United States fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission (FERC), which grants licenses under the Federal Power Act
(FPA) for companies to run hydroelectric dams (Staff, 1995). These initial operating
licenses cover 50 years, so due to the construction booms that we saw in the early to mid20th Century, many of these structures are coming up for relicensing. This process
includes holding the dams to the current legal requirements for environmental and safety,
which provides an opportunity for interested parties to try and make massive changes to
these systems (Chaffin & Gosnell, 2017).
A variety of documents were examined for this analysis (see Table 2 for a list of
sources by case). Since there were differing policy structures in each case study some had
legislation from a federal level, some had court decisions, while others were decided
primarily through agreements I chose to compare the Environmental Impact Statements
(EIS) that were created during each case study’s re-licensing process. This gave me a
consistent source of documents to compare the alternatives that were proposed for each
33
river, while the other policy records gave me useful background material to build my case
studies. Each of the EIS’s have several different recommendations that were proposed to
deal with each dam’s problems with fish passage, and by comparing these suggestions I
was able to see if there were differences or similarities in the policy proposals. In
addition, every dam removal case had fairly extensive litigation that occurred around it.
Comparing these different court cases allowed me to look for similar legal challenges that
were raised in the different cases, as well as comparing if the political coalitions
remained cohesive throughout these decades-long battles, or if there was change in the
makeup of the coalitions. The legal cases tended to be key turning points and were often
used to create leverage points, specific events that allow for a change in the existing
system and creates the potential for advocates to push for policy changes, that were
important in the decision making processes (Meadows, 2008).
Table 2: Documents Analyzed by Case Study
Case Study
Documents
Elwha
EIS, 6 court cases, Elwha River
Ecosystems and Restoration Act,
Rogue
EIS, Oregon Wilderness Act, 3 court cases
Klamath
EIS, Upper Klamath Basin
Comprehensive Agreement, Klamath
Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement,
Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement, 5
court cases
34
Background Information on the Three Cases
This thesis focuses in-depth on three specific case studies, to provide a variety of
views on dam removal, hoping to see if there are any overarching common themes or
links between various removal decisions. The three case studies chosen are the Elwha
River in Washington, the Rogue River in Oregon, and the Klamath River that covers both
Oregon and California. These three were chosen because they are at different places in
removal decisions, the Elwha dams have been completely removed, many large dams
have been removed from the Rogue, while the Klamath is still in the process of deciding
if removal will go forward. Also, by covering three different states this study can
examine how differing state laws and government regulations can affect dam removal
decisions. This also impacts the influence that tribal governments can have on these
decisions, based on differing treaty rights and relationships with state governments.
Tribal advocates have been key in many dam removal decisions, and they likely are
going to continue to be heavily involved in any future removal decisions. It is important
to understand their role in the process, both the harm that has been caused by the
construction of these structures, as well as how they may be able to influence policy
decisions going forward.
D. Elwha
The Elwha River is a powerful river that runs through Western Washington. It
springs from the Elwha Snowfield, a perennial snowfield in the Olympic Range within
the boundaries of Olympic National Park. This river has long been known for its runs of
salmon and trout. It is one of the rivers in the Pacific Northwest that supports all five
native salmon species (Coho, sockeye, pink, chum and chinook) as well as four trout
35
species (cutthroat, bull, steelhead, and Dolly Varden char) (Brewitt, 2019). Prior to the
construction of the dams, the Elwha was known for plentiful salmon runs with
exceptionally large salmon being common on the river. Before the dams were built
approximately 400,000 salmon and steelhead were seen in the runs every year, with
chinook weighing over 100 pounds being common, in most other rivers 40 pounds is the
average (Brewitt, 2019; Guarino, 2013). Klallam tribal members tell stories of the
monster salmon being the size of children and requiring multiple fishermen to link arms
and essentially play tug-of-war with the fish, once they were gaffed. Prior to construction,
fish had access to 70 miles of habitat up the river. After construction of the Elwha Dam in
1913 and the Glines Canyon Dam in 1926, they had access to less than 5 miles of river
and numbers plummeted down to fewer than 4,000 salmon returning each year (Guarino,
2013). This case shows how dam removal can be involved not only in ecological
restoration, but can play a powerful role in the fight for environmental justice. This is
especially true in the Pacific Northwest because of the relationship between tribes and the
State as co-managers of the fisheries.
The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe have lived by the river for millennia, and it is
deeply intertwined with the tribe, they relied on it for physical sustenance, but it also
became a key portion of their spiritual and cultural practices as well. There is evidence of
human activity along the Olympic Peninsula dating back to 12,000 years and a village
that has been identified as Klallam was unearthed in 2003 and dated back to 2,700 years
old (Guarino, 2013). The people of the Klallam lived throughout the Olympic Peninsula
and relied heavily on fish for their sustenance, as well as other hunting and gathering.
Because the area was so rich with natural resources, the tribes of the area were often able
36
to produce more food than actually needed to survive, and were likely among the
wealthiest societies in North America (Brewitt, 2019).
To the indigenous people of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, the Elwha River
was not only a source of physical support, it was also considered to be their sacred
lifeblood. The river sustained them, from the water, to the sustenance provided by the
plentiful fish runs, to the vegetation that grows along the riverbanks. In their creation
story, they were created from the soil of the river, and it was seen as their duty to protect
and live alongside the river and the animals that depend on the river (Sadin, Vogel, &
Miller, 2011). European exploration drastically changed the way of life of the tribes in
the area. The population went through a devastating decline due to illnesses introduced
from Western countries, to which the Native population were not immune. It is estimated
that 80% of the population died as a result of contact with Europeans (Guarino, 2013).
The Elwha Dam was first conceived as an idea to provide power for the growing
city of Port Angeles by Thomas Aldwell, who moved to the town in 1890. By 1908 he
had created a company to begin buying land and gathering funding to build a dam on the
Elwha River. Construction began at a site 4.9 mile upriver from the mouth in 1910
(Guarino, 2013). Washington state law did require fish passage to be part of any new
dam built, but the Elwha Dam was completed by 1912 with no passage over the one
hundred and five foot dam for returning fish. Game wardens and tribal members both
documented fish returning to the river after construction of the dam being unable to
return up the river, with many dying without spawning (Guarino, 2013). However, the
Fisheries Commissioner took no action against the company, likely due to the economic
interests that gave heavy preference to timber and hydropower industries. In an attempt to
37
circumvent compliance with the fish passage laws, Aldwell built a hatchery, attempting
to claim that the dam created a tool for collecting salmon to supply the hatchery. It was
built in 1915 but failed dismally after only seven years and nothing else was done to
improve the situation (Brewitt, 2019).
The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe fiercely objected to the construction of the dam,
especially as it inundated many traditional villages and their creation site. In the creation
story of the tribe, it is said that on a large flat rock, the creator scooped earth from near
the river to form the people and then blessed them with the waters of the river. (Brewitt,
2019; Guarino, 2013). This location was sacred to the tribe and was inundated by the
construction of the dams.
The tribe had little recourse to stop construction, and the feelings of anger and
resentment were increased when the base of the dam, which had foolishly been built on
gravel and not bedrock, blew out in 1912 and inundated the Klallam village below the
dam with no warning. While this incident caused no deaths or major injuries, there was
vast property damage and lasting worry over the safety of the dam, which was never tied
to the bedrock (Guarino, 2013). To the members of the tribe, the blowout of October 31,
1912 became known as the “day the fish were in the trees” as any fish that were in the
river were forced out by the rushing waters from the suddenly released reservoir (Brewitt,
2019).
Aldwell sold the Elwha Dam in 1916 and another dam, the Glines Canyon Dam
was built eight miles upstream of the Elwha Dam by the Northwest Power and Light
Company in 1927. This 210-foot structure was also constructed without fish passage, but
the argument was made that no salmon were present in the upper river due to the Elwha
38
Dam, so there didn’t need to be any fish ladders constructed (Brewitt, 2019). Initially the
nineteen megawatts these two dams produced provided electricity for the settlers in Port
Angeles, but not the Klallam Tribe. Quickly though, the town demanded more power
than the dams could produce and they were ultimately used to provide power for a paper
company, Crown Zellerbach, which gained ownership of the dams in 1937 and would
operate them throughout most their lifespan (Brewitt, 2019). The forestry and timber
industries were powerful economic forces in the Pacific Northwest, and provided the
basis of much of the economy for most of the 20th century. The paper mill was the
second-largest employer in Clallam County, employing 320 people (Brewitt, 2019).
These dams drastically changed the flow and course of the river which had a large
impact on the symbiotic relationship the Elwha Klallam people had with the river, and
had dependent upon for generations. The reservoirs also drowned many of their sacred
sites and traditional villages and usual hunting, gathering, and fishing areas (Sadin et al.,
2011). The runs of the Elwha River were known to produce legendary large salmon,
some weighing over 100 pounds, with runs so rich with salmon the Native people
claimed you could walk across the river on the backs of the salmon (Sadin et al., 2011).
For several decades after construction of the dams on the Elwha, fish populations
remained somewhat strong, even with the truncated river. Returning salmon were often
seen throwing themselves at the dam, futilely trying to pass the obstacle. The dam not
only blocked fish from going upstream, it blocked sediment and organic material from
coming downstream. This made the riverbed much more barren and difficult for fish to
spawn in. The flow of the river was also managed by the company’s demands for power,
occasionally leaving the lower river dry and fish dying on the banks, or when more power
39
was required the flow would be increased causing floods that endangered both fish and
people near the river. Tribal members were legally prohibited from gathering fish that
were stranded by the river, and their complaints over the unnaturally managed river was a
core component of their legal argument against the dam (Brewitt, 2019). Even as
sustenance fishing became less common, sport and commercial fishing was becoming a
powerful portion of the economy of the region. Many anglers advocated for changes,
even going so far as to mail sacks full of dead fish to the Washington Department of
Fisheries Director. Unfortunately, this didn’t lead to political change in the decision
making and the salmon runs continued to drop off throughout the decades, with the last
big run of pinks being seen in 1963 and the Elwha sockeye becoming essentially extinct
(Brewitt, 2019).
One of the primary arguments used to illustrate the harm the dams created was
due to the treaties that had been signed between the tribes of the Olympia Peninsula and
the United States government. The Treaty of Point of No Point was signed January 26,
1855 with the Skokomish, Chimakum and S’Klallam tribes ceding ownership of their
traditional lands to the U.S. government, but importantly it guaranteed the tribes “[t]he
right of taking fish at usual and accustomed grounds and stations…in common with all
citizens of the United States.” (Gates, 1955) These rights were not enforced, and many
tribal members were in fact prosecuted, harassed, and even assaulted for fishing in areas
they were guaranteed by treaty. The legal processes against the dams gained steam when
the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe gained federal recognition in 1968, and would further be
upheld by decisions from the courts.
40
To preserve their rights, several of the tribes took their case to court in the mid1900s, and in 1974 Federal District Judge George Boldt issued a sweeping ruling in the
United States v. Washington case. This was a significant and sweeping affirmation of
tribal rights, affirming they had the authority to take 50% of harvestable fish in their
usual and accustomed areas (Brown, 1994; George & Boldt, 1974). In his decision,
Judge Boldt recognized that treaty tribes had been systematically denied rights they were
guaranteed in the treaty, ensuring that they had the rights to fish off their reservation. The
state of Washington appealed this decision, with many officials ignoring the ruling
outright. Many of these officials assumed the ruling would be overturned, on appeal to
the Supreme Court. This was not true, in 1979 the Court upheld Boldt’s decision (Brown,
1994). While this decision recognized the tribe’s right to fish, and eventually moved to
the tribes acting as co-managers of the state’s fisheries, it did not deal with the
obstruction that dams created for the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe’s rights. Throughout
the 20th century the tribe had been advocating for removal, but as time went by the idea
of removing dams began to become a more accepted, rather than radical, idea. This will
be further discussed in the analysis of the case study.
41
Figure 1: Timeline of events for construction and removal of the Elwha Dams
E. Rogue
The Rogue River flows from its headwaters near Crater Lake in the Cascade
Range to the Pacific Ocean. It has been known for plentiful salmon runs, rugged
landscapes, and a fast-flowing wild river. It was one of the original eight rivers that were
included in the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, passed in 1968 (Brewitt, 2019). Indigenous
tribes have lived near the river and its tributaries for at least the past 8,500 years, relying
on the river for sustenance and cultural significance. The Rogue River supports runs of
chinook and Coho salmon, as well as steelhead and cutthroat trout, it was considered one
of the finest fisheries in the West. However, these fish runs have been dwindling
throughout the years, leading the native fish species to be labeled a “species of concern”
and in 1997 the Southern Oregon/Northern California Coast Coho salmon was federally
listed as threatened on the Endangered Species Act (NOAA, 2014).
42
Native tribes relied on the river for fishing prior to dam construction, with salmon
being a major portion of their diet. Initially, the contacts between Western explorers and
the tribes were peaceful. The first Westerners that first encountered the native inhabitants
of the area were fur trappers, with the name Rogue being given to the river by French fur
trappers who called the river La Riviere aux Coquins, because they considered the natives
rogues (coquins in French) (McArthur, 1985). However, the Oregon Trail and several
gold rushes in the early 1800s brought waves of settlers, who used the natural resources
with no restrictions, this lead to conflicts with the Natives who relied on these resources
for their survival (Mcdermott, 2016). The number of Westerners entering the area
increased dramatically after 1846 when a southern alternative trail was developed off the
main Oregon Trail, mostly for people heading toward the Willamette Valley (Allen,
Stuart; Buckley, Aileen; Meacham, 2001). There were fears, both among the tribes and
white settlers, that this increase in contact between the two would lead to more violence,
however throughout much of the 1830’s-1840’s violence was relatively limited. Most of
the settlers passing through were happy to move through quickly, seeking their final
destination in the Willamette Valley, with little contact with the Native inhabitants on the
Rogue. The tribal members tended to leave those settlers passing through alone, glad to
see them not lingering in the area. This peace did not last, especially as increasing
prospecting along tributaries and the mainstream of the river.
Throughout the 1850’s miners began to create camps along the river and white
emigrants began to claim greater amounts of land and resources. The tribes fought back
to attempt to protect their way of life. These clashes eventually led to the conflict that
became known as the Rogue River War. This conflict erupted into open battles beginning
43
in 1855, throughout the 1850’s Governor Stevens wanted to pursue a policy of displacing
the natives and seizing their land. However, the U.S. Army opposed open land grabs.
Western settlers began to attack indigenous villages and the commandant of Fort Lane,
Captain Smith, attempted to smooth the tensions by having his men inserted between the
settlers and the Natives (Schwartz, 1997). Eventually, in October of 1855 Captain Smith
brought the Native women and children into the fort for their own safety. Unfortunately,
the settlers then attacked the fort, killing 27 Natives. The tribal members struck back,
killing 27 settlers in an attempt to even the score, but the attacks on native camps
throughout the winter continued. In May 1856 Captain Smith attempted to arrange the
surrender of the tribes to the US Army, however the tribes did not agree with this action
and attacked the soldiers themselves (“Journal of the Rogue River War 1855,” 1933).
They continued to fight for another month, but eventually were forced to surrender and
were sent to reservations.
This land seizure and forced relocation of the indigenous people allowed Western
settlers to focus their economy on the river by concentrating on resource extractive
industries such as mining, logging, commercial fishing, and agriculture (Benke, Cushing,
2005). Dam building along the river has always been controversial. Early structures that
blocked fish passage were dynamited by disgruntled salmon fishers, but over time most
of the river was blocked by dams that were used for irrigation and flood control, among
other reasons. These dams were of a wide variety of sizes and for many different
purposes. For example, the William L. Jess Dam was constructed in the 1970’s for
hydroelectric power as well as flood control, it is a large-scale dam, 345 feet high and
360 feet long. It creates the seventh-largest reservoir in Oregon in Lost Creek Lake and
44
blocks access to the river 157 miles upstream from the mouth of the river and impedes
fish passage up river (Johnson, 1985). The Gold Ray Dam was constructed in 1904 for
hydropower, and when this structure was built they did include a fish ladder to help with
passage, the original log structure was later replaced with a 35 foot high concrete dam in
1941 that included a fish ladder and counting station (Freeman, 2009). It eventually
became obsolete for hydroelectric power and was demolished in 2010. Many other small
dams and structures had been constructed throughout the Rogue River watershed, both on
the main stem of the river and along the tributaries. Most of these were to provide water
for mining and irrigation, but public pressure and increased environmental interest in fish
passage have led to removal or retrofitting many of these structures, by 2005 there were
roughly 80 non-hydroelectric dams in the basin and only a few large reservoirs such as
Lost Creek Lake (Benke; Cushing, 2005).Smaller diversion dams, such as the Gold Hill
Dam, that were intended to provide small amounts of power and to divert water resources
have been removed in the early 2000s to comply with environmental regulations
(Polluck, 2008).
The Savage Rapids Dam was built with great fanfare in 1921 to serve the
irrigation needs of the Grants Pass Irrigation District. It was a diversion dam that could be
raised to allow a reservoir to form seasonally, to trap water to be used for the local
farmers to irrigate their crops. The State of Oregon granted the Grants Pass Irrigation
District a water right to divert 230 cubic feet per second from the Rogue in 1929
(Brewitt, 2019). This dam proved to be disastrous for salmon and steelhead runs, farmers
recalled fish being diverted into irrigation canals and pumped onto the fields themselves,
one farmer recalling that he “scooped hundreds of salmon out of his fields” (Arman &
45
Wooldridge, 1982). Screens were not installed on the turbines when lead to fish being
churned up, and those fish that did manage to find the fish ladder installed alongside the
dam, found their progress slowed and making them easy targets both for anglers and
natural predators (Brewitt, 2019). The Rogue was well-known for its abundant fisheries,
especially for plentiful wild salmon. It was the first river designed as a wild and scenic
river by Congress in 1968, which protected eighty-four miles of the lower river,
preserving habitat for wild salmon. The Savage Rapids Dam was the first obstacle that
blocked returning adult salmon after they had traveled over 100 miles upstream from the
Pacific Ocean, through near pristine river conditions (M. Blumm & Erickson, 2012).
While attempts to create fish passage were made, it continued to be problematic
(Mcdermott, 2016).
Problems with fish passage at the Savage Rapids Dam continued throughout the
20th century, with little improvement being made. In the 1960’s biologists working for the
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife classified it as the largest obstacle to fish
passage on the entire Rogue River, engendering it the label of “fish killer” and “smolt
pulverizer” (Brewitt, 2019). These problems with fish passage as well as changes to the
regional economy and changing how water rights were allocated eventually lead to the
removal of Savage Rapids Dam. The decision about removal quickly became heated and
divisive. These high levels of fish mortality continued to be one of the prime reasonings
behind removal consideration, and when the Oregon Water Resources Commission
granted an extension for irrigation rights in 1994, it was dependent on exercising good
conservation and fish passage plans to operate in the public’s best interest. The
commission mandated that to keep their water rights, the Savage Rapid Dam needed to be
46
removed, by 2001. It was argued that removing the dam would provide more benefits to
the public than the expensive option to add fish passage to a low-cost irrigation system
(M. Blumm & Erickson, 2012).
Removing the dam had few serious impacts, the water for irrigation could still be
provided and there were no job losses that were going to be caused by removing the
structure. Instead it quickly became a fight over community identity associated with
affection for the dam (Brewitt, 2019). Grants Pass is a small community in southeastern
Oregon and there had been serious talk to remove the dam starting in 1994, but it faced
fierce pushback from community groups. The dam was not removed until 2009 after
decades of acrimonious fighting. During the fight over this dam, many community
members saw the advocates as outsiders and accused them of trying to ruin the
community, that they saw a dependent on the dam.
Throughout the 20th Century, the demographics of the area changed considerably.
The rural area shifted to a more suburban nature, with retirees becoming more common
than farmers in the area (Nelson, 2005). Under Oregon water laws, the permit holders
must prove that the water is being used in a beneficial way, which includes irrigation,
mining, or water for stock animals. With the changing nature of demographics of the area
by the 1980s significantly less water was used for irrigation, which lead to a weaker
water rights claims, especially when combined with the significant problems with fish
passage over the dam (Mcdermott, 2016). Even though the dam and canals were not as
significant for irrigation purposes, they had created a somewhat unique ecosystem for the
area. The canals that carried water through the Grants Pass area often leaked water,
leading to a lush, green nature of the surroundings. When conversation began about
47
removing the dam, many residents opposed it, because they feared it would change the
look and feel of their community (Brewitt, 2019).
While the dam no longer had any economic purpose, it supported no jobs, and it
was a clear hazard to fish passage, the community saw it as part of their identity. Even
though the state had mandated removal of the dam, throughout the 1990’s members of
the Grants Pass Irrigation District board of directors and water users fiercely fought
against removal, even refusing a deal with the federal government that would have
completely paid for removal of the dam as well as purchasing replacement pumps to
maintain the water needed for irrigation. GPID used nearly one-third of their entire
operating budget on legal fees from 1998-2000, topping $500,000, to oppose removal of
the dams (M. Blumm & Erickson, 2012). Many conspiracy theories flourished in the
community around activists and officials who were pushing for removal. Some
community members looked to blame the liberal residents of Salem and Portland, others
seeing it as an attempt of the federal government to take over local affairs, some even
seeing it as an attempt by the United Nations to seize rural land and force residents into
urban areas, showing an increasing cross between culture wars and environmental issues
that is becoming more prevalent throughout the west (Brewitt, 2019; Inwood & Bonds,
2017). This case illustrates how complicated dam removal decisions can be, as they are
not simply environmental or economic decisions, and there are complex issues from the
many different stakeholders who are involved.
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Figure 2: Timeline for construction and removal of the Rogue River Dams
F. Klamath
The Klamath River has an extensive watershed, covering almost 16,000 square
miles that covers a diverse set of ecosystems. It crosses the arid high deserts of southcentral Oregon, the rugged Cascade and Klamath Ranges, before eventually reaching the
Pacific coast’s temperate rainforest in California (Gilman, 2016; Saulters, 2014a). It is
vital for many anadromous fish, including salmon, steelhead, and rainbow trout. These
runs were important sources of food for the indigenous tribes who have lived in the area
for at least the last 7,000 years, as well as being a significant cultural resource (Saulters,
2014a). There were complex trade and cultural relationship between the many tribes in
the area around the different fish runs, with evidence of tribes coming together in large
gatherings around the fish runs (Saulters, 2014a).
49
Initial contact between European-American explorers came in the 1820’s when
fur trappers from the Hudson Bay Company came looking for new resources. The
conflicts between white settlers and tribal members were severely exacerbated by the
California Gold Rush, which lead to a huge influx of new miners who were seeking quick
riches from the Klamath River, not caring about the damage being done to the native
tribes as well as the ecosystem. Native inhabitants were routinely slaughtered by miners
and the legal system had little care to protect either their safety or rights. The first
governor of California openly called for genocide of all Indians in the territory, and state
laws were crafted to completely strip the indigenous people of any civil rights, essentially
enslaving them even as California entered the Union in 1850 declaring themselves a
“free” state (Hyer, Joel, Trafzer, 1999).
When the Klamath Tribes Treaty was signed in 1864, they ceded more than 23
million acres of their land to the United States government. The U.S. government forced
three rival tribes to consolidate onto the Klamath Indian Reservation, to appease the
demands of white settlers, which lead to conflict with government forces through 1873
(Saulters, 2014a). The three tribes who signed the treaty with the government retained
their rights to fish, hunt, and gather into perpetuity, over the years though their land rights
were eaten away. The General Allotment Act passed in 1887, it allowed the Bureau of
Indian Affairs to break up the reservations, which had been communally owned by the
tribes, and assign parcels of land to individual members. This then allowed any remaining
reservation land to be acquired by non-Natives who could then purchase the land under
the guise of making the land more productive (Wilkinson, 2006). This act slashed the
tribal-owned land, and roughly 25 percent of their original lands went from collective to
50
individual ownership, while much of the other reservation land passed into non-Native
hands. .
Even with these infringements into their rights, the Klamath Tribes were one of
the wealthiest and most self-sufficient with their timber and grazing industries. Yet this
prosperity was dealt a serious blow through the aggressive forced assimilation pressed by
the U.S. government and the 1852 Klamath Termination Act, which revoked their federal
status and revoked many services and land rights in exchange for money, taking the tribe
from the second wealthiest in the nation to a poverty-stricken community (Saulters,
2014a). Even while many rights were being stripped from the tribe, there were
provisions that protected their fishing, hunting, trapping, gathering and water rights. The
Klamath Tribe was eventually re-recognized under the Klamath Restoration Act in 1986,
although much land that was lost and the strength of the tribal governance has been
diminished (Saulters, 2014a).
As the population around the Klamath increased and demand for water for
agricultural irrigation and hydropower, many dams were constructed on the river
throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. These dams were constructed due to settlers
claiming water rights under the prior appropriation doctrine. This was the idea that you
could claim water right essentially by practicing the idea of first come, first served, those
who laid the first rights had priority over those who came later. It is commonly used
throughout the western United States in regard to water rights. However, the Klamath
Tribe have argued that their prior rights from treaties with the federal government
supersede other claims (Gosnell & Kelly, 2010). The tribes also argue that their rights to
gather fish are damaged by the presence of the dams. Four hydroelectric dams were built
51
from 1920-1960 including the JC Boyle Dam, the Iron Gate Dam, and the two Copco
Dams. These dams create a multitude of issues on the river, including trapping sediment
from traveling downstream and blocking access for returning fish to spawning grounds.
There has long been concerted efforts to improve these issues, or to remove the
dams. However, when the dams were up for federal re-licensing in 2004, seeking another
50-year permit to operate, PacifiCorp included no provisions to allow fish access into
nearly 300 miles of upriver habitat (PacifiCorp, 2004). In 2007, the federal government
mandated that the dams must have fish ladders, which could cost upwards of 300 million
dollars (Bailey, 2006). These ladders, to date, have not been installed, because the
company has come to back dam removal as a more economically friendly process. These
dams are still creating issues with water quality and blocking the migration of salmon and
steelhead, causing environmental groups and Native tribes to push for broad reform in
how the river is managed, including calls for one of the largest scale dam removal
projects proposed in the United States, which will be discussed further in this paper
(Gilman, 2016).
52
Figure 3: Timeline of events for construction and removal of the Klamath Dams
All three of these case studies show the incredible amount of complexity that
comes with considering dam removal. The dams were often built in eras with much
looser environmental regulation, and sometimes still ignored even those regulations that
were in place. The ecological impact of the dams was often overlooked in favor of the
positive aspects, such as power production, flood control, or water for irrigation. In all of
these cases, there were treaty agreements with the tribes of the areas, which were often
violated or overlooked. This factor became an important one when advocates began
pushing for removal, as many of the tribal treaty rights supersede other water claims, and
the impact of the dams on protected salmon runs became increasingly dire. The process
of getting a decision to remove the dams spanned decades in all these cases, and that will
be the focus of the results section. Each removal decision will be presented with
information from interviews with individuals who were involved in the decisions, as well
53
as archival research into the regulatory documents, court decisions, and laws that were
enacted.
54
55
IV.
V. Results
This thesis relies on a qualitative approach to explore three case studies of dam
removal. This chapter will lay out a narrative chronological background of each case,
using information gathered from archival and document analysis, including multiple
court cases, pieces of legislation, and regulatory processes. These will present the
important events and decisions that were involved in each case, as well as showing the
important themes and issues that came up during each case. This will be augmented with
information gained from interviews with individuals who were involved in these three
decisions. I attempted to include voices from all sides of these decisions, to better
understand the complexity and intricacy of the issues. These interviews provided a better
understanding of which issues and themes were most important and relevant in each case.
This provided a deeper understanding of what factors may be most influential in the dam
removal decisions, and allowed comparisons across the three cases to analyze for
overarching themes.
The results section is organized by river, each case study will be presented in a
sequential way from the first serious discussions around removal to the eventual
decisions and removals in the cases of the Elwha and Rogue, and the current state of the
ongoing discussion on the Klamath. The cases will also be organized in order of when the
final decisions were made, beginning with the Elwha as the first major removal project,
continuing onto the Rogue, and ending with the Klamath which is still in the decision
process. In considering each of these cases, I will also examine the different policy
56
decisions that were made, the political coalitions that were created both for and against
removal, and will seek to understand which had more of an impact on the process, the
policy, or the coalitions.
Elwha River
Figure 4: Location of dams on the Elwha River
Key to most dam removals is an event or some leverage point that allows groups
an in-road to advocate for change in the system. When removal of the dams on the Elwha
River was seriously considered, there were multiple issues that were key to the
discussion. One of the primary issues was the worry over fish passage, and the conflict
with the tribal treaty rights of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe. There was also broader
economic concerns, worries about possibly losing the important timber and milling
industries, which were key to the economy of the area. There were also anxieties over
water rights for the town of Port Angeles, concerns over aging infrastructure, and worries
about the impact of trapped sediment. In many respects the Elwha was seen as less
57
complicated than other rivers, since most the land was already under federal protection,
but there were many competing stakeholders and differing opinions about how to best
manage the river.
G. Legal Challenges
As previously mentioned, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe fiercely objected to the
construction of the dams on the Elwha River in the early 1920s, and had been advocating
for their removal since they were constructed. At first, this was seen as a radical request,
especially considering the power and influence wielded by the timber industry and other
resource extractive sectors. The dams were built to provide power, initially for the
nearby town of Port Angeles, then primarily for a paper mill (Crane, 2011). Early on,
many people looked at these dams as a source of progress, as a way to literally bring the
Olympic Peninsula out of the dark and into the modern era with surrounding cities like
Seattle, as explained by a Seattle Times reporter who covered the Elwha decision:
The Seattle Times is a very old paper, we've been around since 1886. So I knew
that there would be really interesting archival newspaper stories to mine to look at
the changing attitude towards dams even expressed in our own paper, which was
indeed the fact it was fascinating to look at old newspapers all over the Olympic
Peninsula and in Seattle, and see how people were rooting for these dams. You
know, they were just regarded as lifesavers, they're finally going to literally turn
the lights on the Olympic Peninsula, which felt like it was lagging way behind
Seattle and even Port Townsend in development and this so it's important to
remember what these were built which was to, to bring industry to the peninsula.
Even though the dams were breaking Washington laws around fish passage, it
was ignored for decades (Guarino, 2013). Tribal advocates gained leverage in their fight
against the dams with federal recognition of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe in 1968, and
the Boldt decision in 1974, which gave the tribe more legal leverage in protecting the
58
salmon (Brewitt, 2019; Bruun, 1982; George & Boldt, 1974). This theme was key to the
decision around the Elwha dams and was integral in the interviews, and was an important
factor in many court cases, especially considering, the ability of the tribe to use their
tribal treaty rights to attempt to protect and restore the ecosystem for healthy salmon
runs. These legal arguments are often bolstered by an environment justice lens,
particularly since the dam had been opposed by the tribe since the beginning, and they
were being disproportionately negatively impacted by the dams. This was strengthened in
Washington by the power of the Boldt decision, but is often present in other dam removal
discussions. As illustrated by the quotes below, the tribe was an important and key
member of the coalition pushing for removal, and their unique legal situation allowed
them to advocate to protect the salmon and their treaty rights:
So you can't diminish sort of the power of the fact that the tribe called for the
removal of the dams in in protection of their treaty rights. So the importance of
that which is tied into the legal decision of the Boldt decision.
-Interview with an official at Olympia National Park
The story of the Elwha dams is really a much more interesting story of the whole
storyline of colonization and then industrialization of…the Pacific Northwest
because you can see the whole story in one little geography of the Eddiz Hook
and the Indian villages that were there and displaced by the colonization and then
the industrialization of the area, including the damming of the Elwha River and
then the building of big mills that were put right on top of where the village sites
had been.
-Interview with Seattle Time report who covered the Elwha removal
Another change that affected how dam owners operated was the 1965 US
Supreme Court decision in the Federal Power Commission v. Union Electric Company
case. This decision established that using any navigable streams in the U.S. for energy
production and transmission required a federal license (Poland, 1969). This decision
59
forced dam operators to apply for licenses from the Federal Power Commission,
including the Elwha Dam. Before this decision, only dams that operated on land owned
by the federal government required a license from the FPC (Staff, 1995). Initially, the
company that owned the Elwha Dam claimed that FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission), the re-named Federal Power Commission, did not have jurisdiction,
claiming the Elwha River was not navigable under the law. FERC disagreed and in 1979
stated it did have jurisdiction, but did not issue a license at that time (Dietrich, 1995).
The licensing around the upper Glines Canyon Dam was also complex, under the
Federal Power Commission it had been granted a fifty-year license in 1926. However,
the Olympic National Park was created in 1938 and the dam and reservoir were included
in the park boundaries. Hydroelectric dams were not allowed to be created in national
parks, thus creating a question about whether an existing dam could be re-licensed and
essentially grandfathered in when construction of a new dam would be explicitly
forbidden in that location. Crown Zellerbach, the company that owned both dams, hoped
that it could be re-licensed and applied for a new license in 1973 (Brewitt, 2019). This
regulatory complications that could have broader impacts on other dams, as is explained
by a former fishery biologist who worked at both Olympic National Park and for the
Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe:
In the course of evaluating the process the solicitor's office federal solicitor's
office determined that FERC did not have the authority to relicense that the
Glines Dam because it was in Olympic National Park and therefore, the
jurisdiction fell to the park and not to FERC. Nobody wanted to hear that the
federal agents, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission did not have the authority
to license all privately owned dams in the United States that that decision, then
led to people saying well we need to come up with a settlement.
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When projects licenses are up for renewal, FERC cannot grandfather in outdated
features, instead each project must be treated as if it were an entirely new project and
must meet current laws (Bryant, 1999). The environmental laws of the 1970’s were far
more stringent than the early 20th Century laws, when the dams were built. It quickly
became apparent that fish passage and maintenance of the structures were going to be the
key issues for both re-licensing decisions. Crown Zellerbach and the State of
Washington reached a deal in 1975, which included building a Chinook hatchery and the
Elwha Dam’s water flows would not be artificially manipulated to maximize power,
instead using the water as it flowed down from the headwaters (Fisheries, 1986).
H. Tribal Treaty Rights and the Boldt Decision
All of these decisions around re-licensing were further complicated by the Boldt
decision in 1974. This decision was a sweeping and expansive change that would alter
how Washington’s rivers were managed, giving the tribes co-equal management of the
fisheries, and affirming that they were entitled to half of the fish in the state. Before this
decision, tribes had taken an estimated 2% of the annual catch (Brewitt, 2019; Bruun,
1982). The State of Washington initially argued with the ruling, interpreting it that native
fishers had the right to fish in their accustomed waters, whether or not there were fish
present due to obstructions, and that hatchery fish were not subject to this decision. In
1980 Judge William Orrick issued a decision that became known as Phase 2, following
the retirement of Judge Boldt, that stated hatchery fish were included in the harvest, as
well as provisions that upheld the legal requirement to conserve fish habitat (Monson,
1981). The Boldt decision continues to be a key tool for the tribes to protect fish and
their habitat, and was cited in a case that was before the United States Supreme Court in
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2018 that concerned culverts that blocked fish passage throughout the state of
Washington (Bernton, 2018).
The Attorney General of Washington who argued against the Boldt decision was
Slade Gorton. His involvement in this case helped him build a reputation and launch a
political career that often had him working in opposition to tribal interests and rights
(Hughes, 2011; Martin, 1996). This would later become important with his role in the
decisions on the Elwha River. He would go on to win the U.S. Senate seat for
Washington in 1980, and fail in a re-election bid in 1986. But then he mounted a
successful bid for the other open Senate seat in 1988 where he served until he was
defeated by Maria Cantwell in 2000 (Ammons, 2000; Wilma, 2003). Throughout his
career, Senator Gorton was well-known for his hostility toward tribes and often was seen
as an enemy of tribal interests (Martin, 1996).
While the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe were not directly involved in United States
v. Washington, they were guaranteed fishing rights under the Treaty of Point of No Point
(Gates, 1955). While these Boldt and Orrick decisions guaranteed the tribe’s right to
50% of the fish, with the obstruction of the dams there were often no fish in the river,
making it difficult to harvest 50% of nothing. This lead to the view that to secure the
rights guaranteed under the treaty, the Elwha River watershed had to be restored.
Restoring the river also had the potential of leading to a cultural and economic restoration
of the tribe (Mauer, 2020). However, even with these goals, dam removal seemed like an
unreachable goal. In an attempt to rehabilitate the fishery, a hatchery was constructed in
1978 by the tribe, to guarantee them the fish they were entitled to. They also joined with
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the other signatory nations of the treaty in 1974 to form the Point No Point Treaty
Council to better manage the fisheries (Pinkerton & Keitlah, 1990).
I. Activists, Coalitions and FERC
Early on, the primary coalition that sprung up was pushing for removal of the Elwha
dams. The core of this coalition was between environmentalists and the Lower Elwha
Klallam Tribe, these primary members of the coalition would stay involved throughout
the process and were key to pushing the policy forward. The unique legal and social
power of the tribe and the outside resources that the environmentalists were able to bring
to the table allowed this coalition to influence the regulatory and policy decisions being
made around the dams. Throughout the process the coalition eventually expanded to
include many stakeholders, from regulatory agencies to, eventually, even the company
who owned the dams. But this process took many years and had to overcome competing
interests and desires.
All of these legal decision had impacts on the licensing decisions that were being
undertaken for the two dams, in 1976 the tribe got involved in the decision, as well as the
Secretary of the Interior, in his role as the tribal trustee, since the Bureau of Indian
Affairs is included in Interior (V. Egan, 2007). FERC continued to issue yearly operating
licenses for the two dams, as these larger questions were being debated. By 1979 FERC
had decided that the two dams would be considered together as one hydroelectric project,
since the operations were interconnected and the company agreed with this determination
(Dietrich, 1995). The Department of the Interior, which included many impacted
agencies such as National Park Service, BIA, and USFWS, voiced concerns about the
impacts and issues that the Elwha dams had caused, much of which had not been properly
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mitigated, but this had little impact on the process (Meierotto, 1980). The dams
continued to operate in limbo, with FERC continuing to issue yearly licenses throughout
the 1980’s (V. Egan, 2007).
The 1980’s were a time where environmental activism was increasing throughout
the Northwest, and when the campaign to remove the dams on the Elwha began to
become serious. Bruce Brown published Mountain in the Clouds in 1982, it was hailed as
a brilliant account of the decline of the Olympic Peninsula’s salmon. It laid out, in detail,
the underhanded dealings that led to the construction of the dams and the destruction of
the fisheries, sometimes being compared to an environmental crime story and
occasionally called the Silent Spring of the Elwha River (Brewitt, 2019). This book was
often cited by conservationists and activists as the kindling that ignited their concern for
the Elwha.
The activist most often cited as the spark of the campaign to remove the dams was
Rick Rutz. Volunteering for many different environmental organization, such as the
Seattle Audubon Society, the Mountaineers, and others, Rutz had been involved in
several licensing decisions and became familiar with the strengths and limits of the FERC
process. He saw the potential in the unlicensed Elwha Dam and unrenewed Glines
Canyon Dam, and began preparing a motion to intervene in the process (Brewitt, 2019).
Due to the shaky nature of FERC issuing annual operating licenses for the dams, there
was an opening for environmental groups to become involved in the process.
Eventually he persuaded a coalition of environmental groups to get involved in
the decision, they were eventually called the conservation interveners, when they
officially intervened in May 1986. This coalition included Friends of the Earth, the
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Seattle Audubon Society, the Olympic Park Associates and the Cascade chapter of the
Sierra Club. All of these organizations had interests that were tied to the Elwha River, as
well as dam and hydropower issues in more general terms. The Olympic Park Associates
(OPA) also had valuable local connections, which allowed the coalition to hire Len
Barson, a former staffer for Congressman Al Swift to serve as council (Brewitt, 2019).
These groups formed the core of the environmental coalition and were involved in nearly
every action in the decision on the Elwha Dams and were closely allied with the Lower
Elwha Klallam Tribe. This coalition would be important to work with the tribe and form
the core of the advocacy coalition that would work for decades toward removal of the
Elwha dams. Throughout the interviews, the theme of the strength and broadness of the
coalition came up as a key point that allowed those who were working toward removal a
powerful tool to push their ideals and policies through the regulatory system. The
cooperation of environmental groups, the tribe, and eventually recreational groups,
agencies and the company is what likely made this a successful removal project.
This coalition became involved at a fortuitous time, in 1986 the Electric
Consumers Protection Act set the precedent that environmental and recreational values
were to be held as equally important as economic valuations and usage that were usually
the basis for dam licensing (Echeverria, 1987). This allowed for environmental and
recreation advocates to be on a more even footing with dam owners and lessened the
heavy-handed advantages that dam owners had previously held in these decisions. This
coalition of environmental organizations formed the core of the political coalition that
began pushing for removal of the dams on the Elwha, and in coming years would be
joined by a plethora of other environmental groups. This also allowed for a paradigm
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shift where the importance of the environment was held as important as economic
concerns, which also allowed for this issue of two, relatively, small dams in a remote part
of Washington to be shown to be important to broader swaths of the population, as
explained by a former fishery biologist for Olympic National Park and the Lower Elwha
Klallam Tribe:
Some interesting research done on kind of the early phases of determining the
economic value of…knowing that there is a wild place on the Olympic Peninsula,
where they did this nationwide interview with people, how much would it be
worth to you to know that you know the Elwha River was free and it was billions
I mean billions of dollars that people would be willing to donate to have a free
and wild the Elwha River
The environmental groups weren’t the only ones who were organizing in the mid1980’s. The Point of No Point Treaty Council was also preparing for the involvement of
their signatory nations, and there was the beginning of a cooperative relationship between
the tribes and the environmental groups (Pinkerton & Keitlah, 1990). Russell Busch was
a lawyer who would represent the Elwha Tribe throughout the process, and according to
some, he and tribal biologist Steve Ralph helped assist Rutz in preparing their
intervention (Brewitt, 2019). The tribes were glad to have Rutz and the other
environmental organizations joining them as allies in the fight, although Crown
Zellerbach objected, citing the tardiness of these interventions. The advocates pointed to
the stalled nature of the decision, citing no movement for years on the decision (Derrick,
1990). FERC accepted the interventions of both the tribes and the environmental groups
in 1986, marking the true start of the struggle over the Elwha and the dams.
The shifting debate around dams and their impacts on the ecosystem put some
agencies in a difficult situation. The management of the Elwha had not changed for
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decades, but the re-evaluation of the dams’ licenses caused some agencies to re-evaluate
their own approaches (Clarke & McCool, 1996). Some of the changing attitudes and
ideas were generational, as younger individuals began working in the agencies, they
brought with them a different understanding of environmental issues. By the 1980’s
many of those who had entered their careers during the heyday of the environmental
movement were now beginning to reach leadership positions within their agencies
(Gross, 2006). Many government units were involved with the Elwha, and they formally
banded together to form a working group in 1985, focused on restoration and relicensing.
This working group covered a wide variety of agencies, the National Park Service, the
Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Services, the Point No
Point Treaty Council, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Washington Department
of Game (later the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife). This association would
be known as the Join Fish and Wildlife Agencies (JFWA) and would work together as a
united front in regard to FERC. They also regularly disseminated information to the
other groups, who had more freedom to push for restoration and removal, this broad
coalition of regulatory agencies uniting to provide a consolidated opinion was helpful
during the complex FERC process, as explained by a former fishery biologist for
Olympic National Park and the Tribe (V. Egan, 2007):
The federal agencies actually joined together in what they called the Joint Fish
and Wildlife Agencies, the JFWA, that included the tribe. And actually the state.
At that time the Department of Wildlife was separate from the Department of
Fisheries so it included the Department of Wildlife, but those agencies working as
a coalition provided a single opinion on every action that FERC was thinking
about, and then later in writing the EIA’s we would meet and come up with, okay,
this is our…joint consolidated position.
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There were many complexities over the process, in 1989 FERC issued scoping
documents and a draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in 1991 (NPS, 1994a).
One of the primary complications was an argument over whether the Glines Canyon Dam
was within FERC’s jurisdiction (Busch, 2007). The law excluding national parks from
the creation of dams was clear, but organizations concerned about electricity production,
including FERC and Crown Zellerbach, argued that existing licenses that pre-dated the
exclusion law could be re-licensed (Brewitt, 2019).
There was a suggestion for a work-around for the jurisdictional issues by Senator
Dan Evans (R-WA). In 1986 he proposed the federal government buy the dams, but
found little support for the idea. Antigovernment ideals and distrust toward the federal
government are common among locals on the Olympic Peninsula (Dark, 1997; Loomis &
Edgington, 2012). The idea of the federal government taking, even if it was purchased,
private property was a deeply unpopular idea in an area that prides itself as being as far
away as possible from Washington D.C. (Morgan, 2019). The environmental groups
petitioned FERC in 1988, stating that the Glines Canyon Dam was not in their
jurisdiction. A request was made by Rep. John Dingell (D-MI12) to have the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) study the matter and give their
opinion. GAO responded that in their view, the dam did not fall into FERC’s jurisdiction
(General, 1990). This was a non-binding statement, but was important as it came from a
well-respected, non-partisan organization known for thorough research.
J. Differing Ideas Around Restoration
One factor every stakeholder in the discussion around the Elwha agreed on was that the
fisheries needed to be restored. The methods and type of restoration fueled much of the
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debate over the years. The dam owners, for obvious reasons, favored restoration without
removing the dams, however this was always going to be a complex prospect. After the
environmental and tribal groups filed their interventions with FERC in 1986, the
company proposed a convoluted prospect of restoration. This involved many proposals
that involved combinations of trapping fish and hauling them above the dams, adding fish
ladders, screens to protect the fish from the turbines, and altering the way water was
released from the dam in a beneficial way for fish (Associates, 1990). This was not only
staggeringly intricate it would have been incredibly expensive.
To the activists and tribes, this idea was inherently undesirable. It seemed like the
company was attempting to put patches on the problem, not to solve the underlying issues
in the river. The tribe had a full restoration in mind, defined by fish constantly being
present in the rivers and able to move freely up and down (Busch, 2007). To the Elwha,
their ancestors had settled at the mouth of the river for a reason, it provided for the people
so long as they cared for the river. The river is deeply woven into the traditions and
spiritual beliefs of the people, to see it fully restored would also be seen as a restorative
force for the tribe itself (Crane, 2011).
Fish were not the only issue in the watershed, the artificial management of the
river and the dams blocking sediment and organic material from traveling downstream
for nearly a century severely altered the river’s structures and dependent ecosystems.
Sediment is crucial to the structure of a river, and the Elwha was severely sediment
starved. Salmon and other fish were unable to make viable redds in the larger cobbles
that dominated the lower river, caused reductions in eelgrass beds, and worsened coastal
erosion which can threaten crab and mollusk species (Shaffer et al., 2008). This concept
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was one that intrigued many people looking to restore the Elwha, including a Seattle
Times journalist who was covering the removal decision. She said initially her editors
thought it rather out there to be interested in sediment, but when looking at the broader
picture it becomes fascinating, as she explains below:
It's a glorious, interrelated engine of life and…it's also a whole physical process
that gets rebooted, right, you suddenly had the delivery of big wood to the near
shore and logjams and you have gravel and sediments and…you turn on a whole
physical system which once again then can provide the basis for the biology to
come back.
Throughout the early 1990s the company continued to support restoration with
retention of the dams, but to all the other key players, the tribes, the environmentalists,
and the agencies, it continued to look like the worst option (Interveners, 1989). While
FERC did not take a public position on the 1991 EIS, a year later JFWA (the Joint Fish
and Wildlife Agencies) publicly stated that dam removal was the best option, remarking
that only the company’s interests were best served by retention (Brewitt, 2019). The
more studies that were done on restoration, the more improbable and unfeasible any
restoration project could be completed without dam removal.
Another controversy was brewing that was unrelated to the attempted removal
efforts, but which would profoundly impact them. In 1990 the northern spotted owl
(Strix occidentalis caurina) was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act
(Bonnett & Zimmerman, 1991). This had profound impacts on the timber industry,
which was one of the dominant economic forces on the Olympic Peninsula. The owl
relies on old-growth forests for its habitat, and with the listing that shut down timber
operations in those forests. It created a furious backlash by the resident of the area and
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had a devastating impact on the economy of the region (Bonnett & Zimmerman, 1991).
It created the view of many in the area that environmentalists cared more about animals
and the wild than people, creating a hardened opposition that saw dam removal as
another front in the spotted owl wars.
This was further compounded by the fear of dam removal causing the paper mills
to shut down, further damaging the economy of the area. The dams provided power for
the mills and the company was concerned about having to purchase power as well as
possibly pay for removal, while the county worried that if the mill were shut down it
would lead to crippling job losses for the area (Crane, 2011). These concerns among
residents of the area were common and often tied to deeper issues, as explained by an
official for Olympic National Park below:
It's a really, it becomes…more than just the question about whether or not these
dams are really serving the best purpose, it becomes tied up in identity and
questions about sort of who's…who has the right to say, how we're supposed to be
living our lives and what we're supposed to be doing. It becomes much more
question about that than I think it is. For some people…becomes a question about,
you know, who is telling me how I'm supposed to be living and how my family
earned a living…in the past and how my kids are going to…my grandkids are
going to be earning a living and taking care of my family and into the future. And
that's what it becomes a question of more than it becomes a question of about
whether or not the dams are useful or not.
None of the stakeholders wanted the mills to close, so through much discussion and
mediation, it was agreed in 1992 that the federal government would purchase the dams
from the company, thus passing the financial burden from the company to the federal
government (Busch, 2007).
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K. Political Machinations
As the coalition pushing for removal of the dams began to create policy changes and
began making removal seem more likely, other coalitions began to form to attempt to
protect the dams and push back against changes for the local residents. This theme of proremoval advocates being cast as outsiders, attempting to force locals to change their way
of life was prominent in the archival research and was an underling thread in interviews.
As dam removal began to be considered a more viable option, anti-removal advocates
began to organize, especially in the neighboring town of Port Angeles. Letters to the
editor began appearing in the local paper extolling the virtues of the dams, the beauty of
the lakes, and the clean hydropower (Brewitt, 2019). While people in Port Angeles
hosted rallies attempting to sway the decisions on the dams, they had little power in the
decision since the dams were privately owned and the watershed was within the park
boundaries, most of the decision came down to the government and FERC. One portion
of the decision that did explicitly affect the city was related to their water supply. The
dams blocked sediment from moving downstream, and there was concern that the city’s
water could be overwhelmed by the released sediment. This was also a concern of the
Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, since they relied on the same water source (Busch, 2007).
The concern over water rights and released sediment were common concerns in the
interviews, as they were often brought up by the public during the decision process.
In 1991 advocates for removal, both environmental organizations and the tribes,
took a bold step to finally solve the problem of the Elwha dams. The core coalition of
environmental groups and the tribe petitioned the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to rule
on the issue of jurisdiction on the Glines Canyon Dam (T. Egan, 1990). The threats of a
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broad and sweeping judicial ruling or expensive litigation brought together legislators to
try and craft a bill to manage dam removal. Al Swift (D-WA), Brock Adams (D-WA)
and Bill Bradley (D-NJ) began to craft legislation to remove the dams, while preserving
the economic support of the mill, and respecting and restoring rights to the tribe.
Advocates rallied support from the public and the company seeing the increased support
behind removal decided to support the legislation, which protected their economic
interests and power concerns for the mill. This large coalition was often cited in
interviews, as illustrate by the quotes below, as a key reason removal was able to move
forward. Without cooperation among these groups it was seen as unlikely that the
removal decision would have moved forward. These coalitions were able to band
together and force policy change through the bureaucratic FERC process.
Well, there were certain absolutely critical players. One was the Lower Elwha
Klallam Tribe, of course, which pushed initially for removal and never give up.
Secondly, the city of Port Angeles was an absolutely key player in terms of how
the deal got done, and why it cost so much. And what they required and were
given, total guarantee up, with no cost sharing in the legislation, something I don't
think you'll ever see again in a political project. And so the city Port Angeles was
very key player, the group Trout Unlimited was a very key player they came in
into the Hail Mary rescue and when the whole deal was falling apart even after
the legislation had been passed. They were they helped create a process by which
citizens came to understand what a sweetheart deal this was for them actually,
they were basically cooked without it because they'd have to deadbeat dams and
they’d lose the jobs and have nothing to show for any of it. And this, you know,
solves their problem. The feds paid for everything. They got full replacement
power, they kept the jobs and, you know, sadly, those jobs have since gone away,
for reasons that have nothing to do with the river, it's just changing economics.
But in any event, the short answer to your question is city Port Angeles, the tribe,
Trout Unlimited. And there were others there were some key lobbyists who
nurtured this very skillfully through Congress. Norm Dick’s, never would have
happened without his every single year appropriations. I mean, this took like 15
separate congressional appropriations and he just never gave up on it.
-Interview with Seattle Times reporter who covered the Elwha removal
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I think that what really made the Elwha project work was not because any one
group… had more to offer. It was that each group had something very important
to offer, and they were functioning as a coalition. The…federal agencies actually
joined together in what they called the Joint Fish and Wildlife agencies the JFWA
that included the tribe. And actually the state... we would meet and come up with
okay this is our you know joint consolidated position. And further because there
was a lawsuit involved. The, the parties to the lawsuit, were also getting together
and coordinating their ideas. So, the nonprofit organizations Friends of the Earth
and others…could do things, as could the Elwha Tribe that a Federal agency
couldn’t do, they could lobby. Federal agencies had other abilities that obviously
Friends of the Earth couldn’t like management responsibilities. So I would say it
was a coalition of equals, and it was the fact that there was a coalition that made it
possible. You know, I think the tribe, certainly was a focal point, because of their
dependence on the river. But I don't think anyone would have been convinced
based solely on the tribal concerns at that time.
-Interview with former fishery biologist for Olympic National Park and
the Elwha Tribe
This coalesced basically all the long-standing stakeholders in this issue on the side
of removal, with some local opposition still present but with no real influence. This
mega-coalition that combined not only the environmental activists and tribes, but also
regulatory agencies and the company was crucial to moving forward with removal. The
last hurdle was getting the legislation passed by Congress. Many lawmakers were
nervous about passing a bill that expressly called for dam removal, seeing how it may be
used to go after dams in their district. To get around this the text of the Elwha legislation
calls for river restoration, which is not controversial, without mentioning dam removal
(Elwha River Ecosystem and Fisheries Restoration Act, 1992). The bill passed at the end
of the 102nd Congress and was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush on
October 24, 1992.
While this lead to much celebration, it was far from the end of the struggle over
removal. By 1994 the Interior Department had produced a study showing dam removal
was the only way to fully restore the river (NPS, 1994b). Even with this study and the
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policy recommendations, the political world was shifting and not in favor of dam
removal. In 1994 the Republicans swept the elections in what became known as the
Gingrich revolution. Marked by their anti-big government views and disdain for
environmental issues, it marked a giant challenge for the Elwha removal. The greatest
challenge came in the form of the newly-elected Senator, former Attorney General, Slade
Gorton (R-WA). He relied on support from Eastern Washington, where the dams on the
Snake River are of concern to the locals (Bernton & Mapes, 2020; M. C. Blumm, Lucas,
Miller, & Rohlf, 1998). Gorton chaired the Senate Interior Appropriations
Subcommittee, where he controlled the fund appropriated under the Elwha Act. There he
was able to severely underfund the project, effectively stopping it, in 1997 President Bill
Clinton requested $110 million for removal, Gorton released $4.7 million (Brewitt,
2019). This was illustrated in my interview with a former fishery biologist who worked
for both Olympic National Park and the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe during this removal
process, he explained the funding process in the following quote:
So, the Elwha Act was passed. And that was really important. But then, it was
very difficult to get any funding dedicated to actually implement this new Act.
And I remember sitting in, I was working for the Elwha tribe at the time and we
were meeting with Senator Gordon’s staff about the project. And his comment
was something like, well I think I can come up with a million dollars a year to
fund the project at the ultimate cost to the project would have taken us 200 and
something years to complete…but the tribe was willing to do that because it kept
advancing the project, right, it wasn't it wasn't dead it was something that kept it
as a, as a possibility.
L. Anti-Removal Activists Gather
While this was occurring in Washington D.C., on the Olympic Peninsula local
opposition to dam removal was organizing around a new group. A group called Rescue
Elwha Area Lakes (REAL) made up of locals were opposed the removal plans and played
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up anti-government messages began asserting themselves in 1994. The group used
tactics that environmental advocates had used against them, focusing on trumpeter swans
(Cygnus buccinator) that used the lakes during their migration (Chastain, 2010).
Well, I think for some of the opponents, they just looked for they…at a certain
point, I think they just began grasping at straws for ways to derail the removal
project, so, when they…tried to use the Endangered Species Act to stop dam
removal. So they looked at things like, I believe it was, trumpeter swans that
used…the lakes. And so…they tried to use the Endangered Species Act, that they
couldn't remove the dams because the endangered swans were using the lakes for
habitat. So you couldn't remove the dams because there was endangered animals
there and I think that that probably gave them great joy that they were using…an
environmental law to thwart the environmentalists and things like that
-Interview with official from Olympic National Park
REAL also argued that removing the dams would in fact harm salmon, due to the
released sediment (Chastain, 2010). These tactics, as well as their appeals to
antigovernment sensibilities of the area, allowed them to gain political clout and their
efforts gave Gorton political cover to oppose removal. Throughout the removal decision,
the Endangered Species Act was important and was often referenced during interviews, it
was used by both sides of the argument to attempt to lend weight to their own arguments.
It is a good example of how science and environmental policy can be twisted and
weaponized for political gain.
All of the acrimonious fighting and holdups concerned many of the local citizens,
who lacked any sort of strong and coherent voice in the debate. All involved agreed that
delay was helpful to no one, so in 1995 the Elwha Citizens’ Advisory Group (CAG) was
formed. This was a 12 member board made up of well-respected local residents who
were mostly neutral about dam removal, with a few exceptions. While the coalitions that
had formed around this decision were quite important and had influenced a great deal of
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the policy decisions to this point, they had their own political goals and were not neutral
arbiters at this point. Key to moving a decision forward is bringing all the stakeholders to
the table and discussing the differing proposed solutions, this can be especially helpful if
locals are involved who do not have strong opinions about removal. This point was
brought up multiple times in interviews as a key turning point in the process, as the
quotes below explain:
And I talked to colleagues at the park who were involved for the whole process,
Brian Winter was the project manager. And…he would be someone who I think
was instrumental from the Park Service side because…he was here for the whole
entire time. And one of the things that he said that was really instrumental was
that the Congressman, I believe it was Norm Dicks and maybe Senator Bill
Bradley, that they set up a community sort of group that brought together different
members of the community, both for and against dam removal, and they…set up
this community advisory committee and they came together. And they heard from
the experts. And they…were really instrumental, I think (in) coming to some
consensus.
-Interview with official from Olympic National Park
Things looked somewhat bleak until there was an ad hoc committee formed,
which didn't include the tribe or any of the federal agencies, and they, to their
credit, they were formed with people who are in favor of dam removal, people
who were very much opposed to dam removal. And they spent a considerable
amount of time, evaluating what dam removal would mean to the city of Port
Angeles and…to the resource but more to the city of Port Angeles, and they,
ultimately their decision was that they supported dam removal, because they were
operating on 100% consensus. They supported dam removal.
-Interview with former fishery biologist for Olympic National Park and
the Elwha Tribe
The group reached out to those involved in Washington D.C., asking if they
would want the advice from a local group and the positive response gave them the goahead to pursue a balanced plan. CAG reached out to all stakeholders and heard from a
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variety of differing perspectives. They eventually suggested a cautious approach to
remove the dams that satisfied nearly all groups, with the exception of REAL, and
showed that despite some vocal opposition there was local support for removal (T. Egan,
1990). This group was cited often in the interviews as important and key to gaining
approval from locals in the area and significantly helping to push dam removal forward.
The group considered many of the issues that were consistently brought up as concerns,
water rights, economic impacts, tribal rights, restoration efforts, and infrastructure issues.
Concerns over the aging infrastructure were well-illustrated in the interview with a
former fishery biologist for Olympic National Park and the Tribe, in an experience he had
with a state committee’s visit to the dams:
There was subsequent…attempt at the state level to kill dam removal. And that
one…personally involved them. The state legislature, I forget which committee, it
was natural resources something committee held a field visit to the Elwha to look
at the magnificent dams and talk about dam removal. And it happened to be the
day of a massive rain event and a huge storm. And I had just finished giving a
presentation on dam safety and how this dam, the lower dam, was not supported
on bedrock that it was essentially dirt fill underneath a concrete bridge. So they
had that in their mind and we went out on the dam, and it was shaking with water
coming through. And I could see the, the guy who was opposed to dam removal
who had organized the site visit, as he's looking at all his cohorts. Very alarmed
standing on the shaking dam, he really…I could see his face recognize that he had
lost his chance with the legislature.
This pulled the rug out from under REAL, weakening any claims they made to
continue opposing the removal. At the same time, the Park Service released a draft EIS
that found that removal would be unexpectedly easy from an engineering perspective and
that the sediment could be allowed to naturally re-distribute (NPS, 1994a; Shaffer et al.,
2008). The EIS compared five alternatives to meet the policy objectives of restoring all
runs of native anadromous fish and restoration of the Elwha River ecosystem; 1) taking
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no action, 2) retaining both dams and adding mitigation, 3) removing the Glines Canyon
Dam only, 4) removing the Elwha Dam only, and the proposed action 5) removal of both
dams. The document also predicted that removal would be a boon for the region’s
economy, by increasing tourism and recreation. Marv Chastain, the vocal advocate for
REAL disagreed with these findings, but it further weakened the calls to retain the dams.
Even with support for removal coalescing, Slade Gorton remained opposed and
continued to use his power to withhold money and attempt to protect the Snake River
dams. In a final power play, he introduced an amendment to the Elwha Act that would
prohibit any alteration of all the dams on the Snake and Columbia Rivers (Hughes, 2011).
He face political blow-back from this and he finally dropped his opposition in 1999 and
stopped blocking funding, some thought it was an attempt to help his re-election
campaign (Hughes, 2011).
M. Removal Moves Forward
In February of 2000, all the major stakeholders, the tribes, the environmental
organizations, the federal government, and the companies signed an agreement approving
the government purchase of the dams. By March, the company had officially turned the
dams over to the Bureau of Reclamation, who would operate the dams, hopefully
bringing the process closer to completion. While the process moved forward on a federal
level, anti-removal tension continued among the local resident of Port Angeles, with
many public displays and letters to the editor, but it had no real political power to change
the process. With Gorton’s defeat by Maria Cantwell (D-WA) in the 2000 election,
appropriation for the Elwha project shifted to Representative Norm Dicks (D-WA) who
was a long-time supporter of removal and an avid sport fisherman. Throughout the
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coming years he carefully appropriated funds to keep the project moving, without
stripping too much from the Park Service’s annual budget (Brewitt, 2019).
Removal began with many studies to ensure that there was good understanding of
the state of the river, so restoration goals could be set realistically (Duda, Freilich, &
Schreiner, 2008; Shaffer et al., 2008; Winter & Crain, 2008). There was also preparation
that was done along the river to help restoration, for example adding logjams along the
lower river and nurseries raising native plants to help with re-vegetation efforts. There
were also other construction projects that needed to take place before the dams could be
removed, a new water treatment plant was built to ensure that Port Angeles water was
protected from the increased sediment load of the undammed river (NPS, 2010).
The coalition of environmental activists, tribal members, and agencies continued
to work to promote this project to the public, hoping that perhaps people would see the
benefits of this project and possibly increase interest in other environmental issues. The
different groups that made up this coalition continued to work together, from American
Rivers creating three-dimensional models showing a restored Elwha River and Olympic
National Park hiring artists to create scenes of a renewed river (Chew, 2007). However,
there were still many skeptics among the locals who were sad and afraid to see the dams
go.
There were delays in building the water treatment facility. Ground was broken in
2008 but due to water quality issues removal was pushed back initially to 2009 and then
again to 2012, although this date was then moved up a year due to the federal stimulus
bill of 2009 (Brewitt, 2019). In these intervening years, much of the public in the region
became more comfortable with the idea of removal, it was seen as a project that had the
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potential to be influential and bring attention to the community. The removal plans went
ahead and June 2011 saw the generators on both dams stop for the last time (Gottlieb,
2011).
Removal began with a large celebration and removal ceremony that praised the
cooperation that was needed by so many agencies, activists, tribal members, and
environmental groups. It was attended by many prominent politicians and dignitaries,
including Obama’s Interior Secretary Ken Salazar as an administration representative
(“Secretary Salazar Applauds Beginning of Restoration of Elwha River, Largest in U.S.
History | U.S. Department of the Interior,” 2011; Warren, 2011). The dams were
essentially removed concurrently, without the long wait that was suggested in some of the
initial policy documents. The lower Elwha Dam was removed first, with the Glines
Canyon quickly following. Both dams were removed after controlled draw-downs of the
water in the reservoirs, which allowed management of the silt releases to avoid spawning
salmon and trout (Staff, 2011). The dams were then taken down with careful demolition
and some explosives, with the Elwha Dam being completely removed by March 2012 and
the Glines Canyon Dam following by 2014 (Crary, 2013; Mapes, 2016a; NPS, 2019).
There have been some ecological and physical issues since the dams were removed, some
of the replanting has failed and the river has shifted in unpredictable ways leading to
some trail, campground and road wash-outs, as well as problems that have occurred with
the water treatment plant (Mapes, 2016b; Ollikainen, 2018; Rice, 2015). But many of the
restoration efforts saw speedy changes to the ecosystem once the dams were removed,
from sediment redistributing throughout the system and massively changing the structure
of the river and delta, to fish finding their way back up the river, and elk and bears being
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seen in the former reservoir sites (Mapes & Ringman, 2013; Ritchie et al., 2018; Slobig,
2014). This swift restoration process was described in an interview with a Seattle Times
reporter who covered the entire process in the following quote:
Generally speaking with nature, it abhors a vacuum and if you create a place for
life, to be it will be there. And sure enough, I mean, like right away fish started
coming back and not just salmon but you know forage fish in the near shore and
then animals that eat those, animals start changing their behavior distribution and
baseline health and, you know, it's a glorious, interrelated engine of life and…it's
also a whole physical process that gets rebooted, right, you suddenly had the
delivery of big wood to the near shore and logjams and you have gravel and
sediments and you know, you turn on a whole physical system which once again
then can provide the basis for the biology to come back. It's an, it's an intertwined
revival. It's a physical one. And it's a biological one and the to support each other.
N. Conclusions
In many respects the Elwha River provided a near-perfect test case for how dam
removal could be used as a river restoration tool. The watershed is exceptionally pristine
since the majority is protected by the boundaries of Olympic National Park. The only
man-made impact on the river was essentially the two dams that had impeded its flow for
over a century. It seemed to be the perfect ecological test case to see if dam removal
could restore an ecosystem and if salmon runs could be brought back. It is likely to
remain a good laboratory for restoration techniques and can be studied in future years,
since further human impacts and development are unlikely, except the possible impacts
of climate change. Many advocates hope that it can remain a true refuge and stronghold
of salmon and the ecosystem they support, as well as an inspiration for future dam
removal projects (Montgomery, 2003; Warrick et al., 2015).
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Throughout the removal process, the basic policy goal of restoring the river and
protecting the salmon was agreed on by all groups who were involved. The debate often
focused around how to best meet those objectives. The complexity of dam removal
decisions is often due to the large number of groups that are involved who all have
different values, views, and goals for the project. Each person interviewed for the case
study emphasized, the coalition of these groups as important in this decision. It showed
how a large coalition can be key to resolving these complex issues and pushing
something as momentous as dam removal forward. But bringing these coalitions together
brings additional complications. In the case of the Elwha, different stakeholders had
different perspectives on the river and the removal. For industry, the river is a useful tool
and a source of power and capital. For the environmentalists, the river is an ecosystem
that needs to be protected or restored from man’s influence; it is seen to have value but
not as something to extract resources from. Management agencies have to operate within
their own regimented spheres with goals and values that are based in their organization,
and sometimes may be reined in by laws, rules, and regulations. The tribes have a dual
role of protecting their sovereignty and wielding their power through government-togovernment relationship and treaty rights, but also have deep cultural and spiritual ties to
the river and the surrounding environment.
One key to understanding the removal decision on the Elwha is the importance of
finding leverage points, where there was both the opportunity and the political will to
make changes in how the system functioned. The fact that the dams were up for
relicensing from FERC were key as, it allowed the consideration of different policy
solutions and allowed for political coalitions to begin to form. This then lead to the
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creation of the Elwha Act, and then the creation of a firm plan after advocates forced a
new leverage point by taking the case to court and forcing compromise and action. Even
though this process spanned decades, the core of the advocacy coalition did not change
much, the same core groups remained involved and continued to add allies along the way.
In the end, bringing together the mega-coalition that included not only these core
environmental and tribal groups, but also the management agencies and the company
likely proved to be key in moving removal forward. This coalition was not a firmly
united group, as they all had differing values and roles, but they all were able to work
together seeing a common goal in their purpose.
The jurisdiction of the Elwha dams was relatively uncomplicated in that it was
always going to play out on the federal level due to the FERC relicensing role, the tribal
treaty rights, and the location in a national park. This lead to backlash and reaction from
many of the locals around Port Angeles, and showed some deeper cultural fissions.
Much of the local push-back was focused around anti-government views and the
urban/rural divide we see in other political issues. Many of the pro-removal advocates
were from Seattle or other urban areas, and many locals saw this as another skirmish in
the plot of urban elites to control their homes and take away their voices. Interviewees
often brought up these conflicts when considering water rights, the impact to the local
economy, the complexities around hydropower, and the shared desire for a restored river.
The Elwha joined a long line of contentious environmental issues such as wolf
reintroduction, the spotted owl wars, land acquisition and many other sources of tension
between rural and urban areas.
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These conflicts were even deeper when considering the role of the tribe. There is
a long history of resentment and even blame place on the tribe for dwindling fish
numbers (Brewitt, 2019). These conflicts have often shown an undercurrent of racism
(Guarino, 2013; Mauer, 2020), because while people from Port Angeles would complain
that the locals were not being listened to, the tribe certainly had more claim to being local
than any other group. This conflict over who was defined as a local, as well as how the
dams became a part of the identity of the community was an important underlying idea.
That was illustrated by this quote from an official at Olympic National Park:
It's a really it becomes, it becomes more than just the question about whether or
not these dams are really serving the best purpose it becomes tied up in identity
and questions about sort of… who has the right to say, how we're supposed to be
living our lives and what we're supposed to be doing. It becomes much more
question about that than I think it is. For some people, for some people becomes a
question about, you know, who is telling me how I'm supposed to be living, and
how my family earned a living…in the past and how my kids are going to…my
grandkids are going to be earning a living and taking care of my family and into
the future. And that's what it becomes a question of more than it becomes a
question of about whether or not the dams are useful or not. And for, for tribal
members, it's, you know, it becomes a question of…it's almost the inverse of that,
right? You know, for…100 years, this dam had been in place and nobody asked
us whether or not it was going to impact the way that our ancestors had made a
living or whether our, our kids and grandkids are going to have an opportunity to
make a living. So it's kind of the inverse of a coin. And if they could only just see
one another and see that they're really arguing about the same thing. They might
be able to hear one another. But they can't. They, they aren’t able to do it.
The deep ties and importance of the river and its restoration to the tribe are
difficult for other groups, even those who work with the tribe, to understand. The Lower
Elwha Klallam Tribe opposed the dam from its initial construction, and did not waiver in
their convictions. Throughout the interviews, their persistence and position were often
cited as key to the success of the project.
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The Elwha River now stands as a free and restored river. It was one of the first
large-scale dam removals and has served as a model for multiple other coalitions that
have come together to remove other dams. It shows the complex nature of these
decisions and the importance of coalition-building to accomplish a successful restoration
project.
Figure 4: Images of dammed river and current free-flowing river
The lower Elwha Dam, before
removal began.
Tom Banse
Northwest News Network
Photo taken of the restored and
free-flowing river, standing on the
site of the former dam structure
Lindsay Walters
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Rogue River
Figure 6: Map of the Savage Rapids Dam on the Rogue River
O. Water rights, Salmon, and a Shifting West
Water rights have always been a hot topic in the Western United States. It is an
area with many powerful rivers, but also large swaths of high mountain deserts and arid
areas. Indigenous tribes often used the rivers to sustain themselves but when settlers
began migrating to the West they brought with them societies that were structured around
agriculture and irrigation, which lead to many dams being built across the West. The
Savage Rapids Dam was built on the Rogue River to provide irrigation for the Grants
Pass Irrigation District. While it provided a great deal of prosperity for the valley, it came
at a steep cost for the renowned fish runs of the Rogue. As time went on and the economy
of the valley shifted away from primarily agriculture, activists began seeing an
opportunity to challenge the water right granted by the State of Oregon and to possibly
remove the Savage Rapids Dam.
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By the early 1990s a group of organizations who were interested in restoring the
Rogue to a free-flowing river began seeking dam removal options, these core groups
were WaterWatch of Oregon, American Fisheries Society, and Rogue Flyfishers
(Brewitt, 2019). By this point, Oregon Water Resources Division (OWRD) had already
lowered the water right that had been initially granted to Grants Pass Irrigation District
(GPID) due to lower use of irrigation for agriculture in the area to 96.94 cfs (cubic feet
per second) in 1982 (GPID, 2019). Throughout the 1980s OWRD continued studying
how much water GPID actually used, and in 1985 they recommended only 20 cfs was
actually required for beneficial purposes. GPID disagreed and in 1989 applied for 90 cfs.
Eventually the Bureau of Reclamation, along with GPID, began a study to improve water
management and fish passage in the area. During this study, the state granted them
temporary water diversions at their historic levels (GPID, 2019; BOR, 1995). The
uncertainty around how strong GPID’s claims on the water rights allowed the groups
interested in removing the dam and restoring the river a leverage point that allowed them
to begin discussions about changing the policies around the Savage Rapids Dam. A
former staff attorney for WaterWatch reflected on how and when they knew they had a
case for dam removal:
And we were monitoring, I say we, basically Tom, at that point WaterWatch had
pretty much just volunteer staff monitoring the state process in connection with
proving up on the Grants Pass Irrigation Districts right. And we knew that they
didn’t, they were not irrigating enough lands to justify the amount of water they
needed to operate. And so the state finally proved up on the right and cut the
District’s water right to divert water in half. And so the district had to come back
and apply for additional water right for additional water. And that's when we that
that we identified that as our leverage point to start a discussion with the Irrigation
District.
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P. Save the Rogue v. Save the Dam
A strong coalition was forming between environmental groups and anglers who
had a deep interest in restoring the Rogue River its free-flowing state. The Rogue was
one of the initial Wild and Scenic Rivers recognized when the Act was passed by
Congress in 1968 (Wild & Scenic Rivers Act, 1968). The group was bolstered by the
legal and administrative experience that WaterWatch had in dealing with complex water
rights cases, and a willingness to pursue the case through the court system. A former
attorney for the group explained how they worked with other groups to build the case for
removal of the Savage Rapids Dam below:
So I did, what WaterWatch is, we're sort of experts on the water law and sort of
state administrative procedures. And we focused on the water and other things. So
when we needed expertise, like an ESA (Endangered Species Act) or something
like that, we retained Earth Justice. And we worked with Earth Justice, who just
incredible group of attorneys…they helped greatly. And then we work with other
groups too. We I mean, we all build a coalition of basically local sport fishing
groups, commercial fishing interests from the coast, sport fishing industry groups.
GPID had been friendly with anglers in the past, previously they had helped
improve the fish ladders and fish passage, but when the coalition began focusing on
cutting the water right, the relationship became far more contentious. The coalition of
environmental groups and anglers began making a unique argument to cut the water right,
arguing that the supplemental water would only seep out of the canals, and would not
actually be used in a beneficial way, which made a relatively strong argument for the
state of Oregon to cut the water right (Whitworth, 2001). The idea of beneficial use is
fairly common in arid Western states, where the doctrine states that no water user can
appropriate more than is actually needed for a specific beneficial use, this type of water
right is sometimes seen as a better way to allocate scarce water rights than the usual
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doctrine of prior allocation (Toll, 2011). This showed a unique aspect of this case, the
arguments around the water right gave outside groups a leverage point to push for
removal of a privately owned diversion dam, which is not part of the federal licensing
process seen in both the Elwha and Klamath dams. The issue of water rights was by far
the most prominent theme present in interviews about the Rogue, since it was the primary
force that brought about the discussion around removing the dam. It also showed the
competing themes of water rights for agriculture and fish, which was another key theme
in discussing the Rogue and examining court cases.
While the coalition of environmentalists and anglers were pushing through state
bureaucratic paths and in the courts, GPID was still deeply committed to keeping their
dam, as was the local community of Grants Pass. There were candlelight vigils held by
supporters hoping to keep the dam, as well as grassroots efforts to create groups to rally
public support for saving the dam (Brewitt, 2019). A local journalist reflected on this
contentious time:
They (the public) were really involved. In fact, I did a man on the street column.
And we asked a question, do you think the dam should be removed and 80%.
Okay, I need to back up, I do a Best of Valley publication every year in which is a
reader survey, you know, favorite restaurants, favorite teacher..the whole thing.
And I had political questions. And the question was, and I don't know, 1994 or 95
or 6, I asked a question, do you think that the dam should be removed? You
know, we get three or four hundred responses on that survey? And 80% said, no.
Yeah. 80% said no. So the public was involved, I knew all about it. And most of
them are not very happy in my opinion.
Interview with local journalist in Grants Pass who covered the case
Many of these groups were locals who benefited from the water, for example
homeowners who had built boat docks to take advantage of the lake or businesses that
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benefited from tourists, however they had no real legal standing, as they were not actually
a part of the irrigation district. They tangentially benefited from the water but did not
have legal standing to file suit. There was one particularly aggressive group that formed,
called the Association to Save Savage Rapids Dam and Lake (ASS, their chosen
acronym). The leader of this group was a well-known local Republican named John
DeZell and he was key in filing a multitude of nuisance lawsuits to a wide range of
individuals involved in the decision. These suits are typically known as SLAPP (strategic
lawsuit against public participation) suits (Canan, 1989; Hurley & Shogren, 1997) and
included a huge range of individuals from local activists up to the Secretary of the
Interior (Bender, 1997a).
Oh, I forgot to mention there was there was an attorney running for congress
down here. And he filed suit against a lot of agencies and organizations and, and
individuals including myself for slandering Savage Rapids dam and…a number of
other things too. And of course, that was also dismissed but it was a kind of a
crazy suit that that attorney eventually he won didn't get very far in the in this
campaign.
Interview with former staff attorney for WaterWatch
The intention of these suits was to try and stop environmentalists from speaking
in public against the dams, and as with many SLAPP suits the claims were fairly
frivolous, but it was not truly a case trying to win a particular legal victory, instead it was
an attempt to bog the activists down in a lengthy, expensive, and draining legal process
(Staff, 1994). By resorting to this tactic, it did show the weakness in the political and
legal positions of those trying to save the dam, they could use public pressure and attempt
to slow the coalition down with court cases, but they had few strong policy procedures to
push their agenda. In some respects this shows an interesting reversal from other
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environmental fights, more typically the environmental groups are the scrappy upstarts
attempting to push back against powerful institutions and corporations, but here the dam
savers groups were playing defense. This particularly different from the Elwha and the
Klamath.
Q. Decision on Savage Rapids
The Bureau of Reclamation continued their ongoing study in two different
directions, one a water conservation study that was completed by outside experts and a
fish passage study that was done by BOR. In 1994 they released to the public a draft
Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), giving their recommendation to restore fish runs
along the Rogue. BOR identified dam removal, with replacement pumps to provide for
GPID’s irrigation needs, as the preferred alternative. This plan was estimated to cost $10
million, while reworking the dam and creating adequate fish passage would cost $15
million (BOR, 2005). The EIS also recognized that removal would not only increase the
fish runs, it would also allow for many other public benefits to having a free-flowing
Rogue that made it an attractive proposal and would allow OWRD (Oregon Water
Resources Department) to grant GPID the supplemental water rights they had been
seeking (Bender, 1997b; Whitworth, 2001). While these finding were broadly accepted
among agencies and environmental groups, there was still push-backs on the local level
disputing many of the findings. This conflict between the needs of water for fish and
agriculture was a common theme throughout the decision around the Savage Rapids
Dam, and is likely to be common among other removal decisions where irrigation is key
to the local economy. A former lawyer for WaterWatch explained the decision making
process around the Savage Rapids Dam:
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I'll first talk about Savage Rapids dam. So what we did is, because of the water
right issue, we filed a protest which started a negotiation…We reached an
agreement in 1990 to two years to negotiate and that agreement was to have the
state issue a four year temporary additional water right permit so the district could
continue to operate. But with the obligation on the district to do a water
conservation study to see how they could reduce their water use and to study the
fish passage alternatives at the dam…Multiple adverse impacts this dam was
having on both adult and juvenile fish and the Bureau's planning report…that
indicated that…it was reducing this fish escapement at the dam by 22%. Which,
whether high or low estimate, the point was, is there (were) multiple problems
with the ladders, the screening, the reservoir pool and so on and so forth…it's
very expensive to try to fix the ladders, and you are never able to solve all the fish
passage problems, even with ladders, ladders, never work fully as well …the
Bureau's report showed that it was cheaper to remove the dam, the Savage Rapids
Dam and replace it with pumps that could actually, were safer for the district to
use…brand new pumps were ultimately actually quite a good deal for the district
to get modern infrastructure to replace the old infrastructure and still be made
whole and get a guarantee of their water and be out from under liability for
harming and endangered fish species and so on and so forth.
This lead to some hard decisions for the GPID board, since they obviously could
not foot the bill, either for removal or the more expensive upgrades, they had to seek
funding from the federal government for the project. This also lead to a realization that
the GPID would have to work with the environmentalist groups to have a successful
project. Several of the groups, including WaterWatch were open to helping GPID find
funding for the project, but it made an awkward alliance. GPID was faced with dealing
with the reality being presented to them, to continue as an irrigation district they needed
to protect their water rights, and even if they managed to save the dam they would face a
steep uphill of incredibly expensive repairs and upgrades, and without any support they
would be pressed to find the funds. Several attempts were made to try and raise the funds
from GPID patrons, but when a survey was done only 28% of respondents showed any
willingness to pay to save the dam, and while local advocates attempted to raise the funds
they were unsuccessful (Gregory, 1993a, 1993b).
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Seeing no alternatives, the GPID Board unenthusiastically voted to remove the
dam in January 1994 (GPID, 2019). This vote attached conditions, which the board
published as an ad in the local newspaper. These included: a permanent water right of
149 cfs, outside funding for pumps, power, and restoration, guarantees of support from
environmental groups and agencies, forgiveness of debts from the BOR, and the right to
change their decision if local funds for fish passage could be raised (Brewitt, 2019).
While plans moved forward and funding was being gathered at the federal level, despite
the many assurances this would be cheaper for the community and provide greater
benefits, removing the dam still remained an incredibly unpopular idea among the people
of Grants Pass.
R. Local Pushback Against Outsiders
As was seen in the Elwha, the deep and complex relationships between
environmental advocates and local communities exist throughout the Pacific Northwest
and were evident in the case of the Savage Rapids Dam. The conflict over the listing of
spotted owls that lead to so much conflict in the Olympic Peninsula also occurred along
the Rogue. One of the hotspots of the owl wars was Roseburg, Oregon, which is only an
hour’s drive north of Grants Pass. Many of the anti-removal advocates first experience
with environmental politics was this conflict, and it lead to tension and distrust and the
widespread view of outsiders as the enemy (Loomis & Edgington, 2012). The suspicion
and dislike that was simmering within the community quickly lead to seeing the salmon
as simply a replacement for the owls, and a way for outsiders to force changes on the
locals. This conflict is continuing and in some cases escalating throughout the West, for
example, in 2016 anti-government protesters took over a wildlife refuge in eastern
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Oregon that showed many of these anti-government ideals are weaving into
environmental issues as a further escalation of the current culture wars (Inwood & Bonds,
2017). A former staff attorney reflected on how these conflicts have played out in dam
removal decisions:
Dams are kind of symbolic, they represent to many people The Taming of the
West, progress and you know, why remove a good dam a lot of people are, don't
understand that you know, dams serve a wide variety of functions and some are
still doing that and are providing great benefits to society, but many are not and
many are also harmful, but a lot of people just are there's some people that again,
it's kind of an ideological issue into them they think every dam is providing great
benefits.
Interview with former staff attorney for WaterWatch
But it's still dam removal, it's still itself is still one of those sort of ideological
issues that in the political arena is still a very, very hot topic. One of our later dam
removals, you know, we had the Oathkeepers got involved and they showed up
with their, you know, packing their guns and tried to delay the start of
decommissioning and one project, you know…
Interviewer: Which dam was that?
That was Fielder Dam and tributary, but that was just a very short you know, one
morning blip where they were hoping that you know, they made a little show and
then it went away.
The community was also deeply unhappy with the idea of losing their seasonal
lake. While the water for irrigation would be replaced by the pumps, there were no plans
to save the lake. The community had long enjoyed the recreation created by the lake, but
that was not the purpose of the dam and their water rights were dependent on irrigation,
which could be replaced by the pumps. While there was a great deal of local push back,
including petitions that garnered tens of thousands of signatures, they were met with the
difficulty that they had no legal claims to the dam or the water. This lead to a public
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campaign to frighten local residents that this was a first step in some vast conspiracy to
destroy property rights and force locals to change their way of life (Gregory, 1994).
GPID attempted to push back on some of these arguments by pointing out that the water
would still flow through the canals, even without the dams, and would keep the area
artificially green and lush, although this idea was not well understood by the greater
public who feared losing the dam would make the area brown and arid (Brewitt, 2019).
All this local conflict lead to an unusually contentious GPID Board election and saw the
ousting of those who had voted for removal.
Luckily for those who were fighting to keep the dam, this coincided with the
conservative power shift lead by Newt Gingrich, which helped elevate Brady Adams,
Republican of Grants Pass to President of the Oregon State Senate. From this new
position of power, he attempted to help save the locals from what he saw as excessive
government overreach, and attempted to push bills through protecting GPID’s water
rights and lessening the power of state agencies to make decisions and rule changes
(Brewitt, 2019). However, Adams position could only do so much and he quickly ran into
issues with Governor John Kitzhaber, who was a staunch environmentalist. Finding
themselves at an impasse, the governor and senator created the Savage Rapids Dam task
force (Bender, 1997a).
S. Task Force
The task force was appointed in December of 1995 and included a wide coalition
of agency staff, citizens of Grants Pass, environmental advocates, anglers, and members
of GPID’s board. This broad coalition was an attempt to bring together all the
stakeholders of the issue, making sure that both pro- and anti-removal voices were
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present in an effort to overcome the political and cultural divisions that had sprung up
around this issue. The formation of these large and diverse coalitions was a common
theme among all three case studies, a diverse alliance, especially one that brings together
the advocates as well as the dam owners and operators, helps achieve progress. Dam
removal decisions are complex, and often get decided through court decisions or
regulatory processes; nonetheless, getting a large group of stakeholders to work together
is often key to having a successful removal. This process also requires compromises,
where no one group typically gets everything they want, but it can be a way to break a
deadlock around removing a dam. This strategy of assembling large coalitions of
stakeholders has become more common throughout the West, as expanding population
has led to conflicts between traditional industries and environmental protections
(Thomas, 2003; Walker, 2006).
While the coalition intended to come to a unified conclusion, there was a great
deal of disagreement among members of the coalition about the amount of damage being
done to the salmon by the dam, and there were concerns over trapped sediment, even
though there was no indication the sediment posed any danger, many in the community
had heard about other removals with contaminants in the sediment and used this as an
argument against removal (Foley, Bellmore, O’Connor, et al., 2017b; Grant & Lewis,
2015; Palanques et al., 2014). These themes and disagreements are illustrated by the
quotes below, from a local journalist and a former staff attorney for WaterWatch:
They always brought up the fish, even though a study showed that fish runs were
better than ever. And they tried to say that that dam was harming them and there
was no, there was no data whatsoever that proved that, but he kept harping on
that. And that the pumps would do the job just as well.
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-Interview with local journalist who covered the removal decision
But the idea of removing dams for the sake of removing dams is not what it's
about. It's about river restoration, fish restoration, and also an acknowledgement
that you know, some dams are still providing a lot of societal benefits and they're
not really subject to removal. But there are many, many hundreds out
there…throughout the Rogue basin we have these small old irrigation diversion
dams or diversion dams for mining activities and many of them are abandoned or
could be better served by pumping system.
-Interview with former staff attorney for WaterWatch
I mean, if you want to do restoration that has immediate impacts and long term,
permanent benefits, especially when you're on streams with anadromous fish, but
even streams that don't have an anadromous fish, because fish move up and down
most systems dam removal is just a very, very good way to provide multiple
benefits. I mean, dams caused so many different impacts on a system…besides
delaying the adults and killing adults coming upstream and affecting juvenile fish,
or blocking juvenile fish from getting back up into a…habitat during the warm
summers, or flooding spawning areas, or stopping gravel recruitment, or all these
things. Well, with a removal you return a river back to natural river processes and
you can get the benefits. If you couple some of these removals with riparian
restoration and other good things, you can provide some very productive and high
quality habitat.
-Interview with former staff attorney for WaterWatch
When the task force released its first report in October of 1996, it was unclear and
contained a messy mix of recommendations. They recognized that the dam was an issue
for fish, but instead of removal, favored retention with improved fish passage (Task
Force, 1996). This recommendation was not agreed on by many, with several agencies
signing on only after assurances they would not be bound to the recommendations, and
many environmental advocates and anglers disagreed, saying removal was the only
option to save the fish. These recommendations were not legally binding, and the
governor eventually rejected them. This task force had little impact on changing the
deadlock around the dam, and in some cases only inflamed the already contentious debate
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around the dam, police were called to one GPID board meeting, and another meeting
ended when the audience began throwing chairs (Brewitt, 2019). The political deadlock
continued, and the dam continued operating under the status quo.
T. Listing of Salmon on ESA
Something that offered a new leverage point for those looking to remove the
Savage Rapids Dam came in 1997 when the Southern Oregon Northern California coho
salmon (SONCC) was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (Stout et
al., 2012). This was something that agencies had been warning as a possibility for years,
and changed how GPID would have to deal with fish passage. It also allowed
environmental activists and anglers some additional legal weight to their arguments about
how bad the conditions on the Rogue were. Some locals argued this was unnecessary, as
many of the coho runs were some of the largest on record, but these were more related to
released hatchery fish, rather than the endangered species.
The first thing is the main driver where people have been looking at these dams or
main reason is because of the tremendous adverse impacts they have been having
and the potential tremendous benefits you can gain from removal. Now, having
said that, the other driving forces you have to have some trigger or leverage, just
start a discussion.
-Interview with former staff attorney for WaterWatch
Even with this listing, many anti-removal activists were emboldened by the task
force decision, which they mistakenly viewed as a legally binding document. In 1997,
GPID reversed themselves and officially voted against dam removal, but the Water
Resources Department reminded GPID that they had to show progress toward removal to
keep their water right, making the vote fairly inconsequential (Brewitt, 2019). GPID
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found little support, and more importantly no funding, both from political allies and their
own patrons, so in August the board formally rescinded their July decision. While they
had little legal power and few technical or scientific defenses, those trying to save the
dam had a deep well of local support, much of it based on conspiracy theories and
warnings of vague outside threats that were coming to take away a traditional way of life.
This anti-government, anti-regulation ideology is a fairly common theme when looking at
dam removal, and other environmental issues, and is becoming increasingly heated
throughout the West, especially when considering the changing populations,
demographics, and economies of many Western states.
In the next election, GPID’s patrons recalled the board chair and elected several
staunch supporters of the dam to replace the board members who had voted for removal.
This led to a contentious period where under the leadership of Dennis Becklin, GPID
tried to make the argument that the non-irrigation aspects of the dam were essential to the
way of life in Grants Pass (Buck, 1998). The board attempted to demonstrate it was still
doing due diligence in pursuing removal, however in 1998 OWRC denied GPID’s water
rights, finding that they were not complying with the deal to work at removal, GPID
appealed this decision up to the Oregon Court of Appeals (Brewitt, 2019). This fight was
further complicated because now endangered coho were traveling up the fish ladders,
bringing in a new set of regulations, and while GPID commissioned a study that claimed
there was low fish mortality, this study has been widely criticized for shoddy
methodology (Long, 1998b). This new federal involvement further angered many of the
locals, as they feared government overreach and the perceived threat of their liberties and
rights being taken away by the federal government.
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This lengthy fight between GPID and both state and federal agencies continued
throughout 1998 with anti-removal activists bringing up their unproven fears of sediment
and attempts to find funds to improve fish passage to preserve the dam. These conflicts
eventually lead to a federal injunction being placed against GPID. The dam was raised
for the 1998 irrigation season, even though it was well understood they were likely
violating the ESA (Long, 1998a). Irrigation was briefly halted by an injunction and
orders from the Ninth Circuit to find a solution for the rest of the season. After all of this,
Earthjustice decided it had seen enough and announced its intention to sue GPID over
violations in the ESA, they were joined by several other fishing and environmental
groups (Brewitt, 2019). This fight was becoming increasingly expensive for GPID, who
had to significantly raise the rates on their patrons and still faced a steep budget shortfall.
Many patrons began to voice their concerns over possibly losing their water rights and
the increasing prices, and while many locals were deeply opposed to removal, they were
not willing to pay their own money to keep the dam (Bender, 1997a). By late 1998 facing
an angry group of patrons and increased budget issues, the board began to back down
from their full-scale attempt to save the dam.
U. A Final Decision
In 1998 all the parties involved in the Savage Rapids case were forced into
mediation, rather than letting it play out in the courts. This was somewhat similar to the
earlier task force, but the threats to the irrigation district were more significant, and the
stakeholders here were deeply involved in the issue, and more committed to making
negotiation work to come to a consensus to solve the long-standing issues. There were
several months of closed-door negotiations and relative calm, but Becklin decided to take
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the opportunity to introduce his own, rather unrealistic, proposal for dam removal. This
was likely not made in good faith, but instead to be used to score political points against
environmental groups, and a district judge ordered him to comply with the gag order
(Duewel, 1999). GPID patrons were also stressed with several pump failures and issues
with fish screens, which began to make the dam look like a serious financial liability and
further weakened the arguments around keeping the dam. The board presented a plan for
dam removal to the patrons in 2000, and it was approved (Brewitt, 2019). One of the final
nails in the coffin came in 2000 when one of the turbines broke, leaving patrons without
water and with an incredibly expensive replacement bill. The patrons were angry about
the costs that had been put into saving the dam.
With agreement between the majority of the stakeholders finally coalescing
around removal, federal and state agencies began studying pump designs and funding
became available. Senators Smith (R-OR) and Wyden (D-OR) unveiled the Savage
Rapids Dam Act of 2000 (G. Smith & Wyden, 2000; G. Smith, Wyden, & Walden,
2005). This bill was marked with public cooperation between GPID, WaterWatch, and
Trout Unlimited. While there was still distrust and unease among many in the area, the
realization that the dam had to be removed was finally becoming a widespread sentiment.
V. Removal Goes Forward
In July of 2001 saw the board voting to join a consent decree with all the other
stakeholders, both a formal and legally binding statement, to approve of dam removal.
Several vocal anti-removal board members spoke against this measure, but the rest of the
board approved. This deal ensured that their water right would be protected, all litigation
would be dropped, and they would no longer be in violation of the ESA (Brewitt, 2019).
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August 27, 2001 all the stakeholders, NMFS, OWRD, GPID, BOR, and WaterWatch
signed the consent decree, which allowed the stakeholders to present themselves as a
unified coalition seeking the best for the irrigation district, the residents of Grants Pass,
and the Rogue River. This also gave them a strong position to pursue federal legislation.
National environmental and sport fishing groups began to give assistance and funding,
and the coalition grew to be a mega-coalition of highly varied groups, all seeking
removal of the dam. This is often a key feature in successful removal cases, once a large
and robust coalition comes together and begins working toward a common goal, it is
more likely to have a successful removal project.
This coalition did run into some issues, especially when members of Congress
began fearing this would be a slippery slope to lead to removal of larger dams. According
to a former staff attorney for WaterWatch, this is quite often a stumbling block for
removal decisions, as some members of Congress will be unwilling to vote for any
removal decision that might be seen to threaten dams in their districts:
So I think we're making some big progress and making it easier to remove more
dams. But at the same time, it's still, the politics around dam removal are still
very, very intense. And for a lot of people too, it's kind of well, if you remove this
dam, it'll put pressure on removing other dams that we don't want removed.
Bigger dams.
The support of the entire Oregon delegation helped to push the legislation
forward, but funding was difficult to find. Eventually Senators Wyden and Smith
removed the words dam removal from the legislation, and instead framed it as protecting
irrigation water for farmers and restoring the Rogue River, to appeal to both
conservatives and liberals (Duewel, 2002). The legislation passed in 2003 as part of an
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Energy and Water Development bill (Energy and Water Appropriations, 2003). The last
hurdle was to find the funds. Funding came in bit by bit throughout the early 2000s, but
the majority of it came in 2006 when GPID received $13 million, followed by another
$15 million the next year (GPID, 2019). The last of the funding came through in the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which also included funding to
remove another Rogue River dam, Gold Ray (Brewitt, 2019).
The summer of 2008 was the last Savage Rapids Lake would exist, and for many
of the local residents it was filled with nostalgia and some remaining anger about the
upcoming removal. The dam was removed on October 9, 2009 in a fairly standard
deconstruction project. Two days post removal, a flotilla of removal advocates came
down the newly freed river. Salmon quickly returned to the river, and the runs seem to be
doing well with abundant and healthy returns (Learn, 2010). There have been some
issues, sediment has been slow to redistribute and there have been some issues with the
pumps, including paying for the electricity to run them. This issue about needing to pay
for power has become a common problem brought up by those opposed to removal, and
in an ironic twist they often frame it around issues of climate change, as illustrated by a
journalist who covered the case:
They’ve got those pumps now that use so much megawatts of energy, whereas in
before when they had the dam they were producing, they were producing
electricity. And now they're consuming it. So that's great. That's great for global
warming. And yeah, they had they had something that just was gravity fed and
then produced electricity. And they had, they had a plan to fix the dam. So we're
not harming the fish. The fish would be able to get through and cheaper plan to do
it than what those pumps costs. And now they'll produce I don't know how many
megawatts of electricity you have to use to keep those pumps going.
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While there are some issues, the catastrophic ideas projected by many antiremoval activists have not come to pass. Water continues to flow through the canals,
irrigators have their water each summer, while the Rogue now flows free and presents no
impediments for fish. The relative success of this project has given WaterWatch a good
relationship with the community and has allowed for the removal of several other dams
along the Rogue, as a former staff attorney for WaterWatch explained:
I think what we're finding out from the fact that now we've there been many dam
removals successfully completed across the country and including here, the
science on one how to do dam removals, how to manage sediment, the quick
recovery we're finding in river systems, and the benefits that can accrue and the in
the fact…we've got a country with thousands and thousands of dams and many of
them are very old. There's aging infrastructure. Some of the dams are abandoned,
some of them are safety hazard. Some of the functions of these dams can be better
served and other means. So there's a lot of things coming together. So I think at
least within the, it's not such a new thing anymore, and we know more, a lot more
about it and we know it can be done safely and that it can create that the short
term impacts are well outweighed by the long term benefits from these removals,
at least in terms of achieving benefits for healthy rivers and fish populations and
things like that, and recreation and so on.
W. Conclusions
The Savage Rapids Dam was a complex case, showing the interplay between a
privately owned dam and water rights that regulate a public good. It was a case that
showed the necessity of specific leverage points to attempt to change the status quo, in
this case GPID’s shaky water claims, and the listing of the coho under the ESA. Both of
these allowed coalitions to force change and challenge preconceived notions and ideas.
This case also showed how the public can be deeply involved, and how these decisions
can quickly go beyond simple policy and environmental issues and become part of the
larger culture and political struggles in society. Dam removal is likely going to continue
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to be contentious going forward, but the Rogue showed how quickly an ecosystem can
come back when the impediments are removed. Water rights are a major issue for most
dam removal, but it was especially key on the Rogue. The initial leverage point that
allowed the dam removal discussion to begin was GPID’s water right claim. This set up a
somewhat familiar fight between the needs of agriculture for water and the needs of a
free flowing river for fish. This was a constant source of conflict throughout the
discussion around the Savage Rapids Dam, but it was further complicated by fears over a
changing West.
Figure 7: Images of the dammed river and post-removal
The Savage Rapids Dam, raised for
the summer irrigating season,
prior to removal.
WaterWorks
Boaters float past the former dam
site after removal was completed.
Associated Press
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Klamath River
Figure 9: Map of dams on the Klamath River
The tribes around the Klamath River have long been advocating for the removal
of several dams in the river. However, in the late 1990s and early 2000s there were
several crises that showed the deep issues on the river and gave advocates ammunition in
their arguments for removal. At the root of many of the issues on the Klamath is
entrenched in its odd combination of an irrigated economy in the driest section of the
watershed and a large commercial and recreational fishing economy in the wettest section
of the watershed (Doremus & Tarlock, 2008). These two industries have vastly different
needs for water management and allocation and lead to many of the conflicts on the river.
Throughout interviews completed for the Klamath case, these themes were consistently
mentioned as key concerns, from all sides involved in the decision. Water rights,
economic impacts, concerns over fish runs, tribal concerns, agricultural concerns, the
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need for power, and worries over infrastructure were consistently the key points of
contention and concern.
X. Water Rights, Irrigators, and Fish
The Klamath Project is a water-management project under the Bureau of
Reclamation. It supplies water to farmers, but also to several wildlife refuges in the
basin. Through a system of dams and canals, the Project supplies irrigators with water
and the power produced by the hydroelectric dams. This project has benefitted the
farmers who got both water and power incredibly inexpensively, an agreement signed in
1917 set the irrigators rate at 0.6 cents per kilowatt hour, this rate was not increased until
2004 (Doremus & Tarlock, 2008, Interview 8). In 2004 PacifiCorp, the company that
now owns and operates the dams, sought to end this subsidy, and increase the rates to be
on par with what other consumers were paying. This rate increase did eventually happen,
but was wildly unpopular in the basin. While the concerns about losing hydropower
capabilities is common in many dam removal decision, in the Klamath it was an added
point of contention due to the changing subsidies and the uncertainty about how
removing the dams may affect the status quo of the people who have relied on this
relatively cheap power source for generations. This was explained by an employee of the
Pacific Coast Federation and Fisherman Association, one of the groups pushing for
removal:
But in any event, so things were changing in the Upper Basin. The other thing is
this. Remember that the irrigators have to pump water from place to place. And
they had for more than…almost 100 years. They had a low subsidized very, very
low power rate for irrigation water. Their power rate was set in 1917 at a fraction
of a penny per kilowatt hour…So they were frozen in time and their rates were
grandfathered in license renewal in (19)57. So that right up to 2006 they had 1917
power rates, a fraction of a penny, when the standard rate was about seven cents a
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kilowatt. So they had a super deal, virtually free water…They had a tremendous
unfair advantage competing with their neighbors who are not on the project that
went away in 2006 when the license expired, their subsidy disappeared. A huge
shock to them…Under modern law, those kinds of discriminatory power rates are
illegal. But they were grandfathered in from 1917. So all these things changed
right underneath the farmers then, so I sort of feel sorry for these guys, but they
were living in a fool's paradise to all along. Highly subsidized federally
subsidized fool’s paradise.
The demand for water for irrigation in the upper portion of the Klamath basin has
had negative impacts on the rich salmon and steelhead fisheries of the lower Klamath.
When the Copco Dam was constructed in 1918, there were initially plans to add a fish
ladder, but the company refused to build more than one. This would likely be an
ineffective solution given the dam’s height of 132 feet, and the lack of screens to protect
outgoing young fish from the turbines. A hatchery was built instead, but even with this
salmon and steelhead populations declined after the dam became operational (Doremus &
Tarlock, 2008; Hamilton, Curtis, Snedaker, & White, 2005). The construction of the Iron
Gate Dam downstream of Copco Dams 1 and 2 in 1964 created another barrier to fish
passage, as it was also constructed without fish ladders but did include another hatchery.
Y. Tribal Treaty Rights
The indigenous tribes of the area, the Klamath, Yurok, Kuruk, and Hoopa have
fought many legal battles to protect their rights to fish the river, as well as their claims to
water rights. The claims of the Klamath Tribe have been complicated, as they are a tribe
with no reservation due to the Klamath Termination Act, passed in 1954, which
essentially dissolved the tribe and split the tribal land up among the members of the tribe.
This was disastrous for the tribe, and while they were restored to tribal status after
decades of work with the passage of the Klamath Restoration Act of 1986, this only
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restored their status, not the land or reservation (Haynal, 2000; Ulrich, 2010). While
termination ended the federal relationship between the U.S. government and the Klamath
Tribes, their treaty rights to water and fishing were protected, and the courts have upheld
the tribe’s claim to the senior water rights in the basin, with a key decision in United
States v Adair (Sudbury, 2004; United States v. Adair, 187 F. Supp. 2d 1273 (D. Or.
2002), 1983). In the lower basin, the Yurok and Hoopa both have federal treaties that
recognize their rights to fish and water to support a healthy fishery, and while the Karuk
do not have any explicitly protected treaty rights, they are fighting to be similarly
recognized as the other tribes in the basin are, but the lack of a ratified treaty makes their
legal claims more difficult to prove.
The Yurok and Hoopa fishing rights were explicitly recognized when, in 1993 the
Secretary of the Interior got agreement from the Secretary of Commerce that the two
tribes were entitled to 50% of the fish harvest (Solicitor, 1993). This was then challenged
in court by commercial fisherman, who argued that the tribes could not claim these rights.
This was decided when the Ninth Circuit issued a sharp order in Parravano v. Babbitt
stating that it did not matter if the water and fishing rights were derived from treaties or
executive orders, they are legitimate rights held by the tribe (Parravano v. Babbitt, 861 F.
Supp. 914 (N.D. Cal. 1994), 1995). Due to prior rulings, the tribes and many legal
scholars believe the claims should carry the priority date of rights held since time
immemorial, although this is heavily contested by irrigators. While all of these rights
have been upheld in the courts, using them to affect the water flow and fish passage on
the Klamath has been a difficult and complex process. These tribal treaty rights and the
demand of agriculture were another theme that was common when interviewing those
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involved in this decision. There is a great deal of conflict between the demands of
farmers, who have been accustomed to plentiful water, and the tribes who are attempting
to enforce their treaty rights to protect salmon runs. The quotes below illustrate the
disagreement over who has claims to the water rights on the Klamath:
Many attorneys and the common knowledge is that this isn't even a legal thing
because in Oregon water law, they don't allow what's called a subordinating water
right. Which means you can't split it up. And you have first in time first and right.
So what this did was it allowed the tribe to make a call on the upper basin water,
which to many have 1864 water rights and not make a call on the 1905 project
water rights, that’s against Oregon water laws.
Interview with farmer/rancher anti-dam removal activist from the upper
basin
But the interesting thing is this, this is a bit of a side issue, but the Klamath tribes
never ceded their fishing rights they kept that and when they were reinstated,
those fishing rights were enforceable in court as the law of the land because there
were federal treaties. Those fishing rights imply water rights. And so they had the
senior water right now, per federal court order. Federal law and as a matter of
state laws, people, water rights are primarily a state law issue now senior water
right was adjudicated and after 46 years, a few years ago, decided, indeed that
they determined in doing that they do have the senior water rights. So they're a
holder of the senior water rights they essentially own all the water and the upper
basin. Interesting, and that's a big fight because the irrigation system is right
below that. And the irrigation is a federal project and the federal contracts and
water rights impinge on the state water rights and tribal water rights. It's a big
fight that has to do with water.
Interview with employee of Pacific Coast Federation and Fisherman
Association, pro-removal
All of these battles over water quality and fishing rights came to a head in the
1990s and early 2000s. The Endangered Species Act first came into play in the basin with
the 1988 listing of the Lost River sucker and shortnose sucker, which went by relatively
unnoticed by the public. However, water management had been increasing complex and
adversarial with the 1997 listing of the Southern Oregon-Northern California coho
salmon and the designation all accessible river reaches in the range of the coho to be
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critical habitat (Doremus & Tarlock, 2008). This included the Klamath main stem up to
where it is blocked by the Iron Gate Dam. This listing had led to several complications,
one being that since the ESA prohibits taking any listed species, fish runs can be shut
down to commercial finishing anytime a listed coho may be present. Even if there are
abundant other runs, this sometimes prohibits fish from being harvested due to the poor
strength of the Klamath runs, as was explained by an employee of a commercial union
representing fishermen.
The runs from the runs in Sacramento were among the record to record top runs,
but we couldn't catch them. And we were closed, all the way down to Monterey,
where we had one Klamath fish per 50 to 60. Others all the way up to the OregonWashington border where we had about 1 fish per 70. Because we were in a zero
high risk regime, whenever there was any possibility of incidental catch of the
wrong fish and the weak stock, we were closed.
This has led to cooperation among the tribes and the commercial fisher, even
when they were on opposing sides in the Parravano v. Babbitt case to come together to
work on strengthening the runs on the Klamath and supporting dam removal as a possible
solution. This listing also had impacts on the Klamath Project, while federal irrigation
projects are under contract to deliver water, the courts have upheld that it is still subject
to consult with ESA requirements which has been applied to both fish and migratory
birds in the upper basin lakes (Wilson, 2002). This shows how many of the prominent
themes in the interview intersect with one another, and sometimes compete with one
another. The cooperation between tribes and commercial fishers shows concerns over
fish, and while both groups have an economic reason to want to protect the runs, for the
tribes there are additional motivations. The tribes, fishers, and farmers are all concerned
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over water rights, but often for competing reasons, which leads to the complexity of the
debate.
Z. Trouble in 2000
After several above-average water years that did not stress the water allocation on
the river, with an exceptionally dry year in 2000 all those plans fell apart. There were
serious disagreements among officials at the Bureau of Reclamation, trying to balance the
needed fill in the reservoirs for the suckers, the minimum flows required downstream for
the salmon, and the demands of the irrigators. The Bureau completed a draft biological
assessment in November, long after the plan had gone into effect with the final
assessment not complete until January 2001. This lead to litigation of violating the ESA
in Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations v. U.S. Bureau of Reclamation,
citing the Bureau for violating section 7 of the ESA, by not ensuring their plan would not
jeopardize listed fish or harm critical habitat (Doremus & Tarlock, 2008).
An exceptionally dry winter of 2000-2001 pushed the already strained water
allotments to a breaking point. On recommendations from wildlife agencies, water
allotments for irrigation were severely limited in some cases and completely denied in
others. Water was delivered to the wildlife refuges to support the sucker species and to
maintain flows for the salmon but no water was allotted from Upper Klamath Lake for
irrigation, farmers and local officials appealed the decision, at the director of Vice
President Dick Cheney 70,000 acre-feet of water were released to some farmers, but the
majority within the Project were allotted no water (Clarren, 2001). Irrigators went to
court, but while the court recognize the economic harm this would cause them, the
damage done to the listed ESA species was seen to be more severe, and the water rights
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of the tribes were superior to the irrigators. The closing of the Klamath Project headgates
immediately fanned the flames of controversy, with the plight of the irrigators finding a
great deal of sympathy throughout the West, becoming another front in the culture wars
that encompass so many environmental issues (Clarren, 2001). The farmers set up a socalled “bucket brigade” to pass water into the canals, as well as setting up irrigation lines
that bypassed the headgate in symbolic protests (Staff, 2001).
The fall of 2002 brought another challenge to the basin. Initially, winter rains
were heavy and water rose in the reservoirs, making many believe that water would be
abundant this year. The headgates were opened in March, with the Interior Secretary Gale
Norton claiming there was plenty of water for fish and farms (Interior, 2002). However,
by the end of April it was becoming obvious that there was not enough water to supply
all the requests. Irrigation deliveries had not reached the maximum, but already the water
below the Iron Gate Dam was so low, biologists were having to rescue juvenile salmon
from puddles. Where the previous year the farms had lost out to the fish, this time the fish
paid the price. The irrigators were provided with water and the flows below the Iron Gate
Dam were reduced in the midst of the fall chinook run (Doremus & Tarlock, 2003). This
species is unlisted, but the effects on the fish were catastrophic, a massive die-off
occurred where more than 30,000 salmon died in the lower Klamath in September of
2002 (Levy, 2003). The fish were killed by crowding into the warm, shallow water and
the spread of two common parasites (Belchik, Hillemeier, & Pierce, 2004). This
infuriated fishers, tribal members, and environmentalists who gathered some of the dead
fish and sent them to the Interior Department’s headquarters.
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All this started coming back in 2001, in 2001 the water crisis hits the upper basin;
they lost a third. Not all they would like to portray it, but they lost a third of their
annual allocation. The trouble is their whole system was geared on a full
allocation. So they had to fallow lands, lands went idle. They had to scramble for
water, it was a big mess. 2002 the Bush administration came in vowing to help the
farmers out. So they forced the water to be open that year, even though the
scientists and their own agency was saying it was a bad idea, and it would kill
fish. And indeed, it did kill fish. We had the worst we had the worst fish kill adult
fish kill in the whole history of the basin, possibly the whole history of the United
States. And some 70,000 spawners as they were headed up to a lay their eggs died
in a river of poor water quality caused by too little water in the river. And disease
was rampant and epidemic throughout the population. And they were fish
covering the sides of the river all the way up from the mouth all the way up to the
dams. It was a mess. I was down there and the whole place stank like dead fish
thousands and thousands of dead fish everywhere.
Interview with employee of the Pacific Coast Federation and Fisherman’s
Association
Figure 10: Image of fish kill of 2002
JOE CAVARETTA / AP PHOTO
This fish kill continued to ripple impacts throughout the salmon fishing industry
in the following years. Nearly an entire generation was lost before they could
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successfully spawn, so in 2005 and 2006 when the fish born in the fall of 2001 and the
survivors of the 2002 fish kill returned, the runs were so weak it forced shutdowns up and
down the coast, even when other runs were some of the strongest on record. This lead to
a disaster declaration from the government and support for the struggling fishing industry
(Wyden, 2007). These constant crisis situations led to discussions about how to fix the
larger problems throughout the watershed. These issues were obvious in the interviews,
where the concerns over water rights were clearly connected with economic concerns,
although the solutions to those problems was often dependent on who was being
interviewed, farmers would argue the water was necessary for the crops, while tribal
members, environmental activists, and fishers would argue that it was more important to
protect the salmon runs. Eventually, after years of attempting to patch together a solution,
there was a consensus throughout the watershed that there needed to be some sort of
agreement formed.
AA.
Coalition Forms
Talks began in 2005 to try and craft an agreement that would create a legal
structure around water rights and use of the Klamath River. This was a large group that
included all involved stakeholders, the tribes, the counties, private individuals,
companies, the states of California and Oregon, irrigation districts, and environmental
groups. The formation of this coalition coincided with another important regulatory
process that had serious implications for the Klamath. The Iron Gate Dam, the lowest
dam on the river and the largest barrier to fish passage, was licensed in 1956, the initial
50-year license officially expired March 2006, but has been extended on a one-year basis
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while the FERC proceedings occur (Spain, 2007). This has given activists and tribal
interests a tool to pursue removing the four dams on the Klamath River.
The array of stakeholders involved in the negotiations was mammoth and
complex. It included the states of Oregon and California, several counties in both states,
the Klamath and Yurok Tribes, seven non-governmental organizations that included
environmental organizations like California Trout and Trout Unlimited, and private
individuals and companies. Any time an agreement is trying to be reached by such a large
and multifaceted coalition, it takes time to come to an accord. By 2009 a draft had been
assembled that proposed solutions for restoring fish runs and habitat, while also
protecting the water and power needs of irrigators, local communities, and wildlife
refuges in a sustainable manner (USFW, 2009). This agreement stated that dam removal
was necessary for the restoration, and the company who owned the dams, PacifiCorp
agreed with this. Several different companies had owned the dams over the years, and
initially had not been in favor of removal. Activists staged several protests to push the
company toward removal, by showing up at shareholder meetings to show the impact of
the fish run declines on the tribes, as well as pointing out the economic problems this
could cause the company, this process was explained in several interviews by individuals
involved in the protests:
The dam owner PacifiCorp was owned by a Scottish multinational energy
company so 30 of us went to Scotland three years in a row and crashed the
shareholders meeting. They sold PacifiCorp to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Energy
so we into Omaha, Nebraska and crashed their shareholders meeting three years
running, and it took a lot of grassroots organization and strategy and a lot of
volunteers. So I would say thousands of people have participated in protest
demonstrations and written letters Just for Klamath dam removal.
Interview with natural resources advisor for the Kuruk Tribe
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We sent two trips to Scottish Power… Scottish power was considered the greenest
company in Europe in terms of power, electrical that they really had a reputation
for being a really green environmentally conscious company. It was a shock to the
investment community in Europe when we lead a coalition of tribal people and
commercial, recreational fishing and farmers to their shareholders meeting and
picketed them. The tribes in full regalia with the drums and the dancing, ourselves
and farmers, there was our little implementation, and hats and stickers and
banners….Keep in mind this Scots are well familiar with, with economic and
cultural genocide they suffered at the hands of the English for a long time. The
Scots were really sympathetic to the Indians because there was cultural and
economic genocide. The Indians you understand the Indians in the lower basin
were…their salmon, which they live on, that's the main source of their livelihoods
were gone more and more every year and 60 to 80% of the reservation has no
electrical power, so they get absolutely no benefit for the loss of their salmon…the
Scottish Parliament actually passed a resolution condemning Scottish Power for
owning dams had no fish passage for salmon.”
Interview with member of the Pacific Coast Federation and Fisherman’s
Association
The agreement became known as the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement
(KBRA) and was officially signed on February 19, 2010 with a deadline for the U.S.
Congress to pass legislation to implement the KBRA by January 1, 2016. The process of
bringing this coalition together is explained by an employee of the Pacific Coast
Federation and Fisherman’s Association:
And we started collecting people together for the first time, all across the basin up
and down. tribal, farmers, fisherman, NGOs, local folk, City, County, everybody
was there to talk about how we can solve these problems…(eventually reaching)
two agreements. One was the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement, KBRA, that
dealt primarily with the water and river restoration, a 50 year aggressive river and
habitat restoration program. It was tied to dam removal because, again, dam
removal was a condition precedent to be doing anything in the river that made any
sense. And the Shepherd agreement became the KHSA, Klamath Hydro Power
Settlement Agreement. And the idea was to get those approved by Congress and
funded through Congress. And that was attractive to the company.
While this agreement had broad support from many of the stakeholders, it was
deeply unpopular among many of the residents of the Upper Basin. While many in the
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Upper Basin would like there to be salmon in the river, dam removal is an intensely
unpopular idea, especially given the deep conservative, rural identity that is a part of the
watershed. To many in the area, dams are seen as a powerful tool we used to tame the
West, and they have been integral to the lives and livelihoods that families have built
over generations in the area. Many deeply resent those they see as outsiders wanting to
come in and take away their dams. This is illustrated by the quotes below, one from a
farmer and rancher in the upper basin, who is deeply opposed to removal and another
from an employee at PacifiCorp:
So far to date, the citizens of Klamath County and the citizens of Siskiyou County
where all four these dams are located are adamantly against dam removal. There
is no way you can get around that. Siskiyou County had, I think it was…I think
the number on that ballot they had 80% of their citizens voted against dam
removal. I put an advisory ballot measure on the ballot when I was in
Commissioner seat. And we had the same results, but it was 73%, if I remember
correctly, said no the dam removal.
I was asked by Senator Wyden and I, later on as a commissioner in 2013 to testify
in the committee hearing on the Senate side, Wyden and McClintock are pretty
much on opposite sides say 90% of the issues back in Washington. And at that
hearing and after the hearing, I met with Senator Wyden and his staff and quite a
few other folks there and I literally begged him to, because he was trying to put
together a water settlement outside of KBRA, and I begged him to not put dam
removal in there because that would kill it, no matter what they put in. And that's
exactly what happened. It killed that deal that’s called the Upper Basin
Agreement. And I didn't really agree with the Upper Basin Agreement either it
was better than the KBRA by far, but it didn't go far enough.
Interview with farmer/rancher from the area who is opposed to removal
And so…just, it's a symbol. So, you know, in the in the conservative areas….dam
removal is just another is just another instance where the state governments in
Sacramento and Salem, in Washington, DC are, you know, teaming up with
environmentalists and tribes to, you know, give another blow to their way of life
is kind of how they see it.
Interview with employee of PacifiCorp
The KBRA required approval from Congress, but they failed to pass the
legislation by the time required in the agreement. Politics began to play a large role in the
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fight over this issue, as dam removal became another proxy war in our polarized political
scene, as was illustrated by an employee of the Pacific Coast Federation and Fisherman’s
Association:
We structured it so that there was no federal money in the end for dam removal.
And although we were going to the Fed to try to short circuit the very long,
tedious FERC process…we wanted to short circuit that and get just signed on by
the Feds…The problem is that the whole political dynamic in the country changed
the tea party revolt came in the house switched to Republican dominated by the
Tea Party people. They were not prone…they don't like government. And the idea
is that government coming in and approving dam removal when dam removal is
itself not popular in those counties that is dominated by conservative Tea Party
types. It was a big problem. And so we couldn't get it through Congress…they
were playing to that crowd so they were opposing dam removal, even though
there is no viable option to keep the dams, even though keeping the dams would
cost…far more than removing them.
Since the deadline had passed without approval, the involved parties renegotiated
the deal which became known as the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement
(KHSA). This agreement is avoiding dealing with Congress, instead using the FERC
relicensing process. The KHSA calls for the transfer of the dam’s licenses from
PacifiCorp to the Klamath River Renewal Corporation (KRRC). KRRC is a non-profit
organization created by the KHSA, to remove liability from PacifiCorp for the dam
removal process. The settlement was agreed to by the stakeholders in 2016, but is caught
up in the FERC process. Initially the Obama Administration supported the agreement, but
the Trump Administration has been much less enthusiastic (Arthur, 2019). This back and
forth nature of the decision and current uncertainty is explained by an employee of
PacifiCorp:
I think that's the main point. It's just some people kind of assume this is all done.
So…I often have to relay…there's some uncertainty there. I mean, the
administration changed. Well, that was new FERC commissioners. So we, you
know, we don't know which way it's going to go…I guess that would be my only
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kind of caution is to not, not assume that it's very much still in in the process. And
I'm sure…the other people you will talk to, you know, probably like the KRRC,
he talks more as if this is this is done.
So there's two components of it. They, the first thing they have to do is approve
transferring the license from PacifiCorp to the KRRC, but then they would still
have to approve the KRRC is planning to remove the dams. So there's, there's two
steps, and neither one of them's happened.
Interviewer: So if they say no on both is it just you to go back and make a new
agreement?
Well, that that would be the hope is…the company would certainly prefer to have
a settlement that…our preference would be to go tweak the settlement, to try to
get it over the finish line. But…the other party's that would be up to them…who
knows, the tribes may say, you know, what, we've waited long enough, we’re
done. We're going to just show up at your door and, you know, demand you do it.
So it could become a protracted battle again…if that kind of thing happened.
And this is where the Klamath dams issue is. The stakeholders directly involved
in the decision have agreed to this plan, but it is awaiting approval from FERC. While
people I spoke to at KRRC were hopeful that approval would be coming soon, and dam
removal would be able to begin in 2022. However, others were more cautious that it is
not a foregone conclusion that it will proceed. While the dams do remain highly
controversial, especially in the Upper Basin, some in the process are beginning to see a
slight lessening of the opposition. But there are still many who fiercely object to the
removal, but their legal ability to hold up the process may not be significant. This deep
divide over the future of the dams on the Klamath are illustrated by a staffer for Rep.
Jared Huffman, who represents a district in the Lower Basin, and a farmer/rancher
activist from the Upper Basin:
Well, it certainly was controversial…especially up in the in the Upper Basin, kind
of as things move toward that…the dams are private assets…the PacifiCorp can
decide to decommission them if it wants, and I think that was a hard pill for a lot
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of people in the Upper Basin to swallow. But it's…it's reality. And that's, what's
allowed under the Federal Power Act. So I think, in fact…much of the
controversy is kind of past us. Not that there isn't still people who want to see the
dams remain, and all that. But I mean…you're not seeing the same level of
controversy, as you were…6,7,8,9 years ago, when…that was really, that was the
plan and when the agreements were signed, so I think most of its behind us, not
that all of it is but the most of its behind us in terms of the controversy.
Congressional staffer for Jared Huffman
I think it'll stay very controversial. Because especially the way it's been done, it's
been done behind closed doors. People, the citizens were not represented well.
We had a county commissioner here before I was in office that was supposedly
representing the citizens in Klamath County. All three of the current, at that time,
all three of the county commissioners that supported this were voted out, all three.
And it was mainly because of dam removal and the KBRA.
Farmer/rancher from the Upper Basin, anti-removal activist
BB.
Conclusions
The decision on the Klamath shows how complex and multi-layered dam removal
decisions can be. This is a complex watershed, with many competing interests and
demands on a stressed watershed. The prominent themes throughout the interviews
revolved around water rights, and how those affected the other industries and related
economic concerns. Due to the competing water rights, many of the decisions have been
dragged through court cases, and when agreements have been crafted they have been
derailed by competing political concerns. There is a deep social divide in the basin,
evident in the interviews, whereby people are working off almost completely opposite
concerns, and sometimes even opposing facts. The fights over water rights and
allocations were further compounded with worries over an aging infrastructure and
possible loss of, relatively, cheap hydropower. For many years, residents of the upper
basin were fortunate to have a cheap source of power, however they were not the ones
dealing with some of the downsides of the dams. The tribal members of the lower basin
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did not benefit from the hydropower produced while dealing with the disruption to their
traditional ways of life that the dams caused. All of these competing concerns over water,
economic security, hydropower, and fish were prominent throughout interviews and show
why this issue has been so contentious and complex.
Figure 11: Image of the Iron Gate Dam
Image of the Iron Gate
Dam, which is the
closest dam to the
mouth of the river. It
and three other dams
upriver are being
considered for removal.
Gillian Flaccus Associated Press
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VI. Discussion
By examining these three case studies, we can see that each dam removal case is a
complex mix of environmental, social, political, and economic issues. While each case
has its own unique characteristics, there are some themes and ideas that are commonly
found throughout these cases which are useful to try and understand dam removal
decisions more broadly. This section will seek to compare and contrast these cases to see
what topics were shared among them and how that impacted each decision. It is also
useful to consider these ideas and how they may come up in future dam removal
decisions.
This thesis evaluates what had more of an impact on removal decisions: the specific
policy differences or the strength of the coalitions that formed around the process. In
looking at this question, several theories are useful to examine and analyze these case
studies, including social movement theory, advocacy coalition framework, and
environmental justice. These theories are useful to examine how movements form around
environmental issues and dam removal decisions specifically, as well as how coalitions
can function to force change in policy and in a bureaucratic structure.
When examining the Elwha, it quickly became evident that a strong coalition had
formed between environmental groups and the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe. This was
important and became the base of the expanding coalition. The FERC relicensing of the
dam allowed this coalition to begin attempting to push for removal in a serious and
sustained way. By being committed to the same goal, it allowed the coalition to function
as a united front and affect real policy change within the system. While this was a lengthy
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process, spanning over two decades, in the end the coalition was able to reach their goal,
with both dams being removed and the river fully restored.
In the case of the Rogue, another strong coalition formed but this time the core
groups were environmental groups and anglers. The Rogue has long been known for
strong salmon runs, however these were threatened by numerous dams being constructed
on the river. The Savage Rapids Dam was well-known as a threat to fish, which was why
the coalition targeted it for removal. The coalition was able to bring removal into serious
consideration because they were able to challenge Grants Pass Irrigation District’s water
right. While the area had been heavily based in agriculture when the water right was first
granted, the demographics had shifted, with far fewer households relying on irrigation. In
this case a coalition heavily based on the local residents also formed to try and save the
dam. Both these coalitions worked to push the policy decisions toward their goal. After
decades of conflict, the environmentalist and anglers eventually succeeded in removing
the dam, and the irrigation district preserved their water right.
The decision along the Klamath shows a sharp political divide between the lower
and upper basin. At the root of this problem is the conflict between the anglers who rely
on the salmon and steelhead runs in the lower basin, and the farmers who rely on
irrigation in the upper basin. There is a large coalition that has come together, with the
core groups being the Yurok and Kuruk Tribes and commercial and recreational anglers.
This coalition has expanded and come to several formal agreements around removal,
making sure that the interests of everyone are protected. However, it has run into issues
getting approval at a federal level. There is broad agreement, including from the dam
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owners, that removal is the best option, but it is still highly contentious and on uncertain
footing.
CC.
Leverage Points
Each of these three removal decisions had their own unique characteristics and
problems. Comparing and contrasting how the policy decisions were made, what paths
were taken, and how coalitions formed around the issue, it gives light to the broader
context of dam removal decisions. Dam removal has become a powerful tool for river
restoration, but it also comes along with many complicated issues (Foley, Bellmore,
O’Connor, et al., 2017a; Ryan Bellmore et al., 2017). Each one of these cases relied on
advocates finding leverage points where they could force the system to change, rather
than simply continuing to operate as they had for decades. In the cases of the Klamath
and Elwha, the FERC relicensing process was key. Both these rivers contained dams that
were federally licensed, and when those licenses were up for renewal it allowed a closer
look at the environmental damage that was created by the dams (Doremus & Tarlock,
2003; Hammersley et al., 2018; Mauer, 2020). This process also allowed the indigenous
tribes of the area to bring legal challenges associated with their treaties with the federal
government (Guarino, 2013; Saulters, 2014b). There was no strong tribal advocates
present on the Rogue River in Oregon, nor was the dam a federal licensed property, so
the FERC process was not involved in this decision. However, advocates, which included
a strong coalition of environmental groups and anglers, were able to find a leverage point
around the water right granted to the Grants Pass Irrigation District from the state of
Oregon (Mcdermott, 2016).
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Finding a leverage point was key in discussions around all three removals.
Systems, especially highly bureaucratic policy agencies, typically do not want to
challenge the status quo (Meadows, 2008; Roxas, Rivera, & Gutierrez, 2019). These
leverage points are places that allowed outside activist groups to have a voice in the
decision, and the ability to push changes in policy. These interventions were key in the
removal decisions in all three cases. In the Elwha and Klamath the relicensing process
under FERC presented a leverage point for interested groups; in the case of the Klamath
this process is still ongoing. In the Rogue case, the leverage point was an outdated water
right that activists could challenge based on the changing demographics of the area. All
three cases illustrate how complex a dam removal decision is, often involving huge
numbers of stakeholders with high varied objectives and desires. There is also the added
complexity of the layers of bureaucratic and administrative jurisdictions that are
involved. All three of these decisions involved local, state, federal, and tribal
governmental organizations. They all ended up being challenged in both state and federal
courts, and all required some form of federal legislation. This is likely why most dam
removal decisions take decades to move from initial inquiries into removal to actually
removing the structures. It’s somewhat ironic that the social and policy side of the
argument can take decades to resolve, when studies have shown that restoration of the
rivers when the dams are removed is actually incredibly swift (Grabowski, Denton,
Rozance, Matsler, & Kidd, 2017; Ritchie et al., 2018).
DD.
Common Themes
When looking at these three comparative case studies, there were certain themes
that were more prevalent throughout the interviews. Unsurprisingly, every interviewee
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brought up concerns over fish and power. Especially in the Pacific Northwest with our
numerous anadromous fish species and our reliance on hydropower, these are likely
always going to be concerns for any dam removal decision. The decisions often come
down to balancing the risks and rewards of removing the dams. With the Elwha, the
power produced was quite low and could easily be replaced and the reward of restoring a
pristine watershed helped push removal as a preferred option. The Savage Rapids Dam
on the Rogue River was primarily used for irrigation, it only produced enough power to
run the pumps, but replacing that power was a concern for people who did not want the
dam removed. However, the dam was also known to be one of the most dangerous dams
for salmon on the Rogue. This reputation as the “salmon-killer of the Rogue” helped to
make removal a better option, especially when considering the cost of improving fish
passage (Bender, 1997b; Brewitt, 2019). The dams on the Klamath River are a mix of
power producing and irrigating, which is further complicating that process. The Klamath
also has a species of salmon listed under the Endangered Species Act, which adds to the
legal argument for removal.
Concerns over fish were common in all three case studies, which is hardly
unsurprising in the Pacific Northwest. All of these rivers have well-known runs of
anadromous salmon and steelhead, which have all been impacted by the construction of
dams. However, these concerns were often points of contention that were used by groups
involved in the decisions to push their own narratives. Scientific studies and data were
often cited, sometimes in manipulative ways, to further political narratives. Many who
oppose dam removal would often claim that the dams had no impact on fish, instead
arguing that the indigenous tribes were doing more harm by harvesting salmon. This lead
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to a common point of tension, between non-Native locals and the tribes. In both the
Elwha and Klamath, the tribes have been heavily involved in seeking to remove the
dams, using their tribal treaty rights to lend weight to legal arguments (Mauer, 2020;
Saulters, 2014b). Fish runs have long been incredibly important to the Pacific Northwest,
they are deeply woven into the history, traditions, and mythologies of the indigenous
people, most of whom were completely ignored when the dams were constructed. On
both the Klamath and the Elwha, tribes have guaranteed tribal rights to gather fish from
their usual and accustomed areas, but the dams blocking the rivers made it impossible to
collect salmon since the fish cannot access the river. Courts are beginning to side with
tribes, most clearly and impactfully seen in the Boldt decision which granted
Washington’s tribes 50% of the yearly harvest and made them co-managers of the
fisheries, along with the State of Washington (Brown, 1994). While this decision only
directly impacted Washington State and not other states, courts are beginning to take
upholding treaty rights more seriously, which is often helpful for activists attempting to
remove dams.
This concern over fish can also lead to some unexpected partnerships. On the
Rogue the main advocates pushing for removal were a combination of angler and sportfishing groups and environmental groups (Bender, 1997b). While these two groups may
have different reasons for wanting healthy salmon runs, their overlapping concerns over
the declining runs on the Rogue allowed them to build a strong partnership that lasted for
decades as the removal decision worked its way through the courts and legislative
processes. On the Klamath, there is a strong relationship between a union that supports
commercial fishermen and the Klamath and Yurok Tribes (Gosnell & Kelly, 2010).
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These two groups are often in opposition with one another, even filing filed court cases
against one another arguing about how to allot the salmon harvest. However, their
overarching concern for the endangered fish runs has allowed them to work together to
try and remove the dams and restore the river.
Hydropower is another common concern that came up in every interview done for
this thesis. Hydropower is a relatively clean energy source, when compared to other
carbon-intensive sources like coal or oil, although it is not completely carbon-neutral and
there are other environmental concerns (Song, Gardner, Klein, Souza, & Mo, 2018).
These environmental concerns can include but are not limited to, degraded water quality,
trapping sediment and organic material upstream, and blocking fish passage (Townsend,
2014). Players in each three case studies shared concerns over power, but this was not an
overwhelming priority. The dams on the Elwha were relatively small, the power was
being used run a timber mill, the power needed by the company could easily be
purchased from the grid for less than keeping the dams would cost. Along the Rogue,
those who oppose dam removal were concerned that they would have to buy their power
from another source to run the irrigation pumps. While this is an increased cost as
opposed to producing power from the dam, it is a relatively small amount of power. The
dams on the Klamath are a bit more complicated, as several of them do produce
hydroelectric power. Any deal to remove the dams must include how the communities
will continue to have access to power. Locals who are against removal often believe that
it will cause a large spike in their electricity rates. However, due to grandfathered laws
and agreements some of these customers had been paying artificially low rates for
decades, so while there may be some increases, all the removal agreements have had
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provisions to make sure that the power lost from dam removal will be replaced for the
residents of the upper basin (Doremus & Tarlock, 2008). PacifiCorp is a massive energy
company, producing large amounts of power with their holdings throughout the West.
Their dams on the Klamath only contribute about 2% of the power produced by the
company yearly nationwide. Replacement power alternatives, including renewables, are
readily available to the company (Aschibrenner, 2012). While players in the three case
studies expressed a small concern around power production, it is likely to be a much
more complex and prominent issue if larger dams are ever considered for removal, such
as the dams on the Columbia River.
Water rights were another deeply interwoven theme in all these case studies.
Water law is complex, and in many portions of the West, it is highly contentious. It is
common in dam removal for nearly every stakeholder to have some claim to a water
right, often for competing interests. There are also complications when those with legal
water rights are in conflict with locals who maybe have benefited from the dams in the
past, but have no legal claim on the water. This was seen in the decision around the
Savage Rapids Dam on the Rogue. The dam was built to provide water specifically for
the Grants Pass Irrigation District, so the water right only applied to those who were
members of the district. However, the local town of Grants Pass had benefited greatly
from the dam, from the leaky canals making the area artificially green, to the lake that
was created when the dam was raised each summer and allowed for tourism and
recreation (Brewitt, 2019). This created conflict between many of the locals who deeply
opposed dam removal, but had no real legal weight in the decision. It also lead to conflict
between members of the community who were irrigators, who looked at the expensive
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and drawn-out process as a threat to their water, and those community members who
were not, but wanted to keep the lake and the other benefits without being willing to pay
for the upkeep. Along the Klamath River water rights are also incredibly complex and
even more contentious with a huge amount of conflict between irrigators and the tribes
and fishermen. When the Klamath Project was created, irrigators in the upper basin were
promised water, and for decades their needs were often prioritized by the government.
However, in recent years the tribes and the anglers have found success in the court
system. These cases have likely been bolstered by the listing of one of the salmon species
under the Endangered Species Act, as well as a greater recognition of tribal claims to the
water rights. Most tribal treaties claim that the tribes hold these rights “from time
immemorial” which would give them the superseding claim to the water rights (Osborn,
2013). This is still highly contentious and likely to be a key argument going forth in the
decision. The Elwha had relatively few arguments over water rights, as the majority of
the watershed is protected by Olympic National Park, although there were some concerns
raised by both the Lower Elwha Kallum Tribe and the city of Port Angeles over drinking
water quality, which has created a few issues continuing to this day. It is likely in every
dam removal decision that water rights are going to be a key component of any decision
or agreement, and if larger dams are being considered, it likely to be ever more
contentious, especially in more arid regions.
Concerns about changes to local industries and businesses were a common theme
among interviewees. From concerns about impacting the timber industry on the Elwha, to
agriculture, tourism and fishing on the Rogue and Klamath. Economic arguments are
often used by both sides of the debate. Balancing the value of a restored river ecosystem
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is complex when looking at the more traditional values associated with dams, such as
power production or irrigation capability. However, as more dams are being removed and
more evidence is being shown as to how quickly a river can be restored, with relatively
little outside input, the value is being seen as more valuable by larger portions of the
population (Grabowski et al., 2017; Hammersley et al., 2018; Ryan Bellmore et al.,
2017). It is also becoming evident with our aging infrastructure, that many of these dams
have outlived their usefulness. In many cases it is more expensive to upgrade the dams to
meet safety and environmental standards, especially since they often do not provide the
benefit that they once did. This was very evident in the Elwha removal, where the dams
had long outlived their purpose and the cost to upgrade them vastly outweighed their
usefulness. It also bolstered the argument that given how pristine and protected the
watershed was, these dams were the only man-made impact on the river and removal
would allow it to be a completely free-flowing river once again. In many cases, this made
the Elwha the perfect first test case of how a river would respond to removal and
restoration. Most other rivers will have added economic concerns and complications.
Both the Rogue and the Klamath have competing economic interests. In those cases the
key argument is between people who would benefit from restored fish runs versus the
farmers who rely on the water for irrigation. Through a great deal of negotiation and
compromise, deals can be made that balance the interests of these competing groups, but
it is often something that is highly controversial and quite often ends up being litigated.
As mentioned tribal interests and concerns were incredibly important in the cases
on the Elwha and Klamath, but this can be highly variable depending on where the dams
are located. Both the Elwha and Klamath have a strong involvement of the local tribes,
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and they have both been incredibly important advocates for removal. However, along the
Rogue there was little involvement of tribal members because there was not a local tribe
that had any strong legal or historic claims to the area. Tribes have a long, complex, and
difficult history and relationship with the government. Many of the tribes strongly
opposed the dams when they were built, but their concerns were overlooked by the
government in favor of the white settlers in the area. As time has passed, the courts have
begun to more actively seek to protect the treaty rights that were guaranteed to the tribes,
though these rights were often ignored from the initial signing of the treaties. The Boldt
decision in Washington State was incredibly important to give legal weight to the
arguments of the tribes, and allowed the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe to push for removal
of the dams on the Elwha. Even though the process took decades, in the end the
involvement of the tribes was key to pushing removal ahead (Guarino, 2013; Mauer,
2020). In the Klamath River case, the Yurok, Karuk, Hoopa, and Klamath Tribes have
been deeply involved in pushing for removal, at various points in the process. They were
involved in the two agreements that have been created between all the stakeholders, and
have been involved in the court cases and bureaucratic processes that are continuing to
this day. Their treaty claims, along with the protections of the ESA, give a great deal of
weight to seeking removal of the dams. The involvement of tribes in removal decisions
also allows those who are interested in river restoration to bring in new sources of
traditional knowledge. Many of these tribes have lived along these rivers for centuries,
and they have passed down the traditional ecological knowledge that can be a boon to
modern scientists seeking to understand these complex ecosystems. These decisions can
also involve aspects of environmental justice, as the needs, concerns, and rights of the
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tribes were ignored. Restoring these rivers allows for a renewal and restoration of the
tribal members as well (Mauer, 2020).
EE.
Political Polarization and Anti-Government Alt-Right
Conspiracy Theories
While at first glance environmental issues may seem like an odd place for political
polarization and culture wars, these decisions often become mired in larger political
battles with starkly drawn lines, typically pitting the usually more liberal and urban
environmentalists against the more conservative and rural locals. There is a long history
in the environmental movement of disagreements sparking between the urban/rural divide
that is becoming more prominent in our larger political environment (Gimpel, Lovin,
Moy, & Reeves, 2020). From the spotted owl wars to larger issues such as climate
change, many environmental issues have become deeply partisan (Antonio & Brulle,
2011; Bonnett & Zimmerman, 1991). We are even beginning to see some overlap
between the extreme alt-right and militia movements with environmental issues, as seen
in the takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in 2016 (Inwood &
Bonds, 2017). Dam removal is another environmental issue that has become staunchly
involved in these partisan battles, which often makes the process even longer and more
difficult to move along. In all three case studies, there was clear evidence of these
political tensions and the friction it often created between the coalitions that formed
around efforts to remove the dams. This conflict over dam removal often ends up pitting
environmentalists, tribal members, and other activists, against the locals, who tended to
be more rural and conservative communities.
135
These decisions showed evidence of conflict between the locals, who tended to be
more conservative and rural and the activists, who were often seen by the locals as
outsiders attempting to force them to change their world view and way of life. There was
somewhat less conflict in the case of the Elwha, since the dams were relatively removed
from the community and they were on land that was federally owned. The debate over the
Elwha dams reignited resentments and conflicts between many of the locals on the
Olympic Peninsula that had been common during the spotted owl wars and the
disagreements with outside environmental activists (Brewitt, 2019; Loomis & Edgington,
2012).
By comparison there are deep and highly contentious relationships between the
locals and the coalitions pushing for dam removal of the Savage Rapids Dam on the
Rogue and the Klamath dams. Much of the opposition in the Savage Rapids case was
based on locals being deeply unhappy about those they perceived as outsiders coming in
and forcing them to change. In some cases this involved buying into conspiracy theories
about dam removal being the first step toward federal takeover of rivers and lands,
forcing people off the land and into cities, and ultimately surrendering to the United
Nations (Brewitt, 2019). Many of these rather outlandish ideas fit neatly into the distrust
of government that is becoming more prominent among conservatives. This makes fertile
ground for politicians who oppose dam removal to create problems and slow down the
process, whether it is at a state or federal levels.
In many respects, both side of this argument illustrate how social movements
evolve from collective behavior and ideals can create change in policy and to political
structures (Pyrozhenko, 2018; Saulters, 2014b). The environmental movement has been
136
studied through the lens of social movement theory, with how quickly it gained
recognition and made real change throughout the 1970s (Coglianese, 2001; Diani, 1992).
Researchers now are beginning to look into the alt-right and conservative ideals around
distrust of government and how these new social movements are seeking to change
policy and politics (Forchtner, 2019; E. Hodge & Hallgrimsdottir, 2019; Salazar, 2018).
The Klamath clearly shows this divide as well, with the more conservative and
irrigation-dependent communities of the upper basin firmly against dam removal, while
the more liberal communities downriver much more supportive of removal. This can be
seen when looking at the actions of the two congressmen who represent the districts of
the upper and lower basins. Congressman LaMalfa who represents District 1 in
California, has been extremely opposed to any movement to remove the dams, and has
done everything in his power to stop the process. On the other side of the aisle,
Congressman Huffman of California’s District 2, has been an outspoken advocate for
removal and has allied himself with the tribes who are seeking removal of the dams.
Many researchers and analysts believe that the current political polarization is
growing deeper, and is being seen in a variety of issues and venues. It is likely one that
we will continue to see impact dam removal decisions going forward, especially as many
dams are located in areas that are more likely to be rural and conservative, and it could be
an area of increasing tensions and issues for future removal decisions.
FF.
Coalitions are Key to Sustaining Change
The key factor often cited in interviews was having a strong and diverse coalition of
groups working together. To better understand how these coalitions work, advocacy
coalition framework (ACF) is a useful concept. ACF examines how coalitions work
137
together to impact policy, typically by treating the coalition as a single unit that is
pushing toward a shared goal. This is true of the coalitions that formed both to remove
the dams and to save them. These coalitions were made up of different individual groups
with differing ideals, but they banded together to push toward a commonly shared goal.
This allowed the coalitions to get involved in the lengthy, complex, and heavily
technocratic policy process. This is especially important given how lengthy the process
was, from initial consideration of removal to making a final decision. Some of this is due
to the complex nature of these decisions. Dam removal often involves overlapping
jurisdictions, including local, state, and federal laws and regulations, tribal treaties and
governments, private companies who own the dams, and the many other stakeholders
who have an interest in the decision. This can create a highly contentious environment,
especially given the political polarization that is becoming more prominent in these
decisions.
Dam removal is also complex because of the many layers of approvals and studies
that must be done. Removal projects basically go through the same permitting process
that would occur if you were building a new structure. A former lawyer WaterWatch
explained, “Dam removals…even though they are restoration projects, you still have to
go through the same type of permitting, as you would if it was a developmental project.”
These regulatory processes are quite complex and slow, and one feature that was key to
moving removal forward, especially on the Elwha and the Rogue, was a large coalition of
diverse groups who were all willing to work together to push the issue forward. These
mega-coalitions are complex due to the wide range of ideals and desired end result, and
can often include stakeholders who have opposed one another at other times. Coalitions
138
also form for those attempting to oppose removal, typically focused around local
organizations that attempt to build around the ideas of saving the community and banding
together against outsiders. These can also include organizations like the local Chamber of
Commerce or irrigation districts.
Considering how complex these coalitions are and how important they are to the
dam removal process moving forward, it is useful to analyze how they function and how
they interact with multiple levels of government to help push policy decisions. Advocacy
coalition framework is a method of studying coalitions by looking at them as one unit and
seeing how many actors can come together to affect change in policy (P. Sabatier &
Jenkins-Smith, 1993), particularly large-scale policy decisions, which many dam
removals are. These coalitions can typically function because there is an overlapping goal
that all the organizations share, even if they have other differing ideals. This shared goal
allows these groups to form a flexible and strong group that can affect real change, even
when dealing with corporations with many more resources and institutional barriers. The
larger and more diverse the coalition is also allows for intervention at different points,
depending on the skills and backgrounds of the differing coalition members. For
example, the tribes were able to intervene in court cases due to the treaty rights, while
environmental groups were able to leverage laws like the Endangered Species Act, and
regulatory agencies were able to provide input and recommendations during
Environmental Impact Studies.
All three of these case studies highlighted a mega-coalition that had formed, but
typically the core groups were involved from the beginning and often remained the center
of the coalition until the end of the process. Each case had a unique coalition, dependent
139
on the specifics of the case, for instance, in the Elwha and Klamath decisions the tribes of
the area are heavily involved and allied with other groups who are interested in river
restoration, such as environmental groups or commercial fishers. In the case of the
Rogue, there was not a strong tribal presence, but there the core groups were
environmental groups and commercial and sport fishers.
These core groups alone likely could not have sustained the coalition over the
decades that each of these decisions spans, so including other groups that are impacted by
the decision become key to building a successful coalition. This includes reaching out to
wider audiences, such as nationwide environmental groups, but also involving
stakeholders who may not share ideals, such as the corporations that own the dams.
Throughout the interviews, multiple interviewees brought up how key it was to get the
company onboard, while it is not a guarantee, once the coalitions found agreement with
the owners the process often began to move much more smoothly. Including as many
stakeholders as possible in the coalition is also important because often these decision
require federal legislation, which necessitates a great deal of effort and sustained
lobbying to push forward.
Building large coalitions to work to a common goal is a complex and messy
process. It is something that can be challenging to put together, but also to keep together
over the long time spans it takes to move through the policy process of a dam removal
decision. However, it is likely the only way that groups will be successful in pushing the
policy in the direction that they want. Attempting to force change on a system, not only
requires a leverage point that allows the change to begin, but also a large and committed
group that will continue forcing the system to move.
140
GG.
Challenges of Failing Infrastructure and Climate Change
While dam removal is a relatively new idea in environmental restoration, it is
likely to be one that continues to be prominent in the coming decades. In the United
States, we have a problem of an aging and failing infrastructure. Many of the dams in the
U.S. were built decades ago and are reaching their life expectancy. With this comes
safety risks, as we have seen from the near-failure of the Oroville Dam spillway in
California in 2017 and the complete failure of the Edenville Dam in Michigan in May
2020 (Einhorn, 2020; Koskinas et al., 2019; Nagourney & Fountain, 2017).
With climate change shifting temperatures and weather patterns in the West, the
stresses on these structures is likely to increase. Longer, hotter summers will lead to
lower water flows, while heavier rainstorms could lead to increased flooding events and
strain on the dams. This is leading to exploration about how to best to manage the
infrastructure, due to the oftentimes prohibitively high costs of completing repairs and
upgrades. While increased monitoring and inspection may help to alleviate some
problems, removals are often seen as another useful tool to deal with the problems
(Beatty et al., 2017; Choi, Jun, Liu, Kim, & Moon, 2020). But others are looking at the
likely water shortages which may be caused by climate change and proposing that more
dams should be built to increase water storage capacity (Perry & Praskievicz, 2017).
All of these environmental concerns are likely to intersect with infrastructure
issues, water management, and safety concerns in the future. The United States has
hundreds of thousands of aging dams across the county. There is likely not one decision
that is right for every dam, so the process of deciding on whether to remove the dam or
141
keep it in place is likely going to be one that continues to be incredibly important going
forward.
142
143
VII. Conclusion
Humans have long sought to bend nature to our needs and desires, and our
manipulation of rivers through dams is a prime example of this behavior. However,
damming up rivers has had huge impacts on the related ecosystem that rippled out farther
than initially understood. As we began understanding our impact on the ecosystems,
removing dams has shifted from a radical to acceptable idea in environmental policy.
While dam removal is becoming more understood and recognized as a method of river
restoration, it is still highly controversial and the social impacts are less well understood.
This thesis analyzed three case studies of dam removal for common ideas, themes, and
overlapping narratives that may relate to dam removal more broadly. While each dam
removal is unique, there are some themes that seem to be prominent in most decisions.
Not surprisingly, most people involved in these decisions brought up concerns over
power, fish, water rights, the economy, and tribal rights. There were also broader
concepts that became evident in all three cases; the increased political polarization and
urban-rural divide, concerns over climate change, and failing infrastructure. What
became most evident was the importance of strong and broad coalitions to actually force
policy change to occur.
Dam removal is an inherently policy-heavy subject, there are many overlapping
jurisdictions and bureaucratic processes involved the process. However, these systems
inherently favor the status quo and are unlikely to shift without outside pressure. In each
of these three dam removal decisions, finding leverage points and using the power of a
strong coalition was key to creating policy change. Dam removal leverage points could
be relicensing as was the case on the Elwha and the Klamath, or a change in water usage
144
and therefore a challenge to the water right claims as was seen on the Rogue. Both of
these leverage points allowed the coalitions to begin influencing policy and shaping
changes within the system. Managing these broad coalitions can be complex, especially
since the groups will often have different ideals or backgrounds, but if they share a
common goal it allows them to band together to exert pressure on the system. While
policy decisions around dam removal is important, policy does not appear to be the
primary force that is driving the decisions. The coalitions and the pressure they can apply
have much more influence on altering policy and making the decision go forward.
The common themes found in all three case studies are somewhat unsurprising,
and likely to be serious concerns for most dam removal projects. Hydropower is
widespread throughout the Pacific Northwest, and is seen as relatively green way to
produce power, although it does have some drawbacks as previously discussed. Any
removal of hydropower dams will have to address how that power will be replaced.
These three case studies involved relatively small amounts of hydropower, but it will
likely be a much more prominent question if larger dams are considered for removal. Fish
passage was one of the key concerns for all of these dams, and was often related to
concerns over tribal rights. This relationship is an important one as tribes have a unique
legal power in using their treaty rights to attempt to protect fish runs. Increasing concerns
over threatened fish runs, especially in the Pacific Northwest, could be an important
factor in future removal decisions. Water rights are almost always contentious in the
West. This is likely to becoming increasingly difficult as pressures from climate change
mount. Many of these conflicts over water rights also come down to economic worries.
Many dams were built to irrigate and provide power to towns, so when removal is
145
proposed many people worry about what the impacts will be to their way of life. That
was the case especially in the Rogue and the Klamath. In both those cases there is a deep
conflict over who has the right to use the water, and often a clash of culture and identity
between opposing communities.
While much of these dam removal decisions are bureaucratic and technocratic,
there is also a deep social engagement in this process. Dams are a complex symbol that
mean quite different things to people. In many more rural and conservative areas, dams
are seen as a symbol of taming nature and using the resources to better human lives. In
many of these areas the dams are used for irrigation and are deeply linked to the wellbeing and livelihoods of the people in the area, so the dams essentially become a part of
the community. This leads to a great deal of conflict then when removal is proposed. As
was seen with the Savage Rapids Dam, as well as along the Klamath, many locals feel
deeply connected to the dams and worry that removal will harm their community. But for
many removal advocates, especially environmentalists and tribal advocates, dams are
seen as something that is disrupting a natural process and harming the broader ecosystem,
not to mention for some tribes their ability to practice their legal rights to harvest fish. To
these advocates, removing the dam is restoring balance and allowing the ecosystem to
repair itself from the damage that has been done. To many people there is an inherent
value in a restored ecosystem and a free and wild flowing river. This is especially
powerful in the Pacific Northwest where removing dams allows anadromous fish to
return to spawning grounds that have been long blocked. It is especially meaningful for
Native activists, and can be seen as a way to not only restore the natural ecosystem but
also the cultural and historical traditions that have been suppressed.
146
Dam removal is likely going to continue to be an important issue in the coming
years. The aging infrastructure, challenges from climate change, and shifting societal
ideals around environmental issues are unlikely to go away any time soon. The increasing
polarization of our politics is evident in these three case studies, and is likely to continue
to have an impact in any future removal decision. By understanding how previous
decisions were made and the importance of broad coalitions, it may be possible to resolve
these issues more quickly, rather than the decades that each of these case studies spanned.
Dam removal can be a powerful tool when it comes to restoring river ecosystems, but we
must also consider the complex interconnected nature of the ecological and human
realms. People often like to believe that we are separate from nature, but this is not true,
we are deeply interconnected with our environment and our decisions can ripple out in
unintended and unexpected ways. Understanding how we impact the world around us
will allow for better environmental policy decision making and hopefully a more
symbiotic relationship.
This thesis analyzed into what factors were more important in dam removal
decisions, and it quickly became evident that a strong, diverse coalition dedicated to a
single goal was key to pushing for changes in policy and for a definitive decision. In the
interviews, it became clear that dam removal will continue to be an important issue,
especially in the Western states. It is likely to remain a contentious issue, but one that will
be critical both with concerns to infrastructure as well as ecological restoration. For
advocates who are seeking to remove future dams, it is important to consider how the
communities identify and how differing political views could make for a combative fight,
as was seen in all three case studies. It is also important to realize that these complex
147
policies do not change easily, and advocates need to find leverage points that allow them
to get involved in the process. Environmental policy is a complex realm of overlapping
goals and desires, with decisions often taking decades to be reached, understanding the
human side of this equation allows for better decisions to hopefully protect the
environment and the people.
148
149
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