The nation’s largest dam-removal project is reaching a major milestone this month as work crews release the water behind three dams on the Klamath River, leaving the storied waterway in Northern California and southern Oregon to flow freely for the first time in a century. The drawdown of the reservoirs and the unleashing of the river, which began Thursday at the 189-foot-high Iron Gate Dam, is a necessary – and hugely transformative – step before the three hydroelectric facilities in the remote Siskiyou Mountains are fully removed. Last fall, workers took out a smaller, fourth dam on the river. The deconstruction effort, about a six-hour drive from San Francisco, is the culmination of a decades-long push by Native Americans, environmentalists and fishermen to bring the 250-mile Klamath River back to its natural state.

Related articles: 

• American Rivers: Dam removal on the Klamath: reflections on how we got here 
• Cal Poly Humboldt: 2023 Klamath dam removal science collaboration workshop summary report