Tuesday Top of the Scroll: Last dam starts to come down in nation’s largest removal project
The removal of the last of four dams scheduled to be taken down on the Klamath River began Monday as work crews descended on Oregon’s 68-foot J.C. Boyle Dam. Located about 12 miles north of the California border, the earthen dam with two turbines and a power-generation plant produced hydroelectricity from 1958 to earlier this year, when the reservoir behind the dam was drained for the historic dismantling work. The dam is being removed, like the others downstream in California, in a monumental effort to help rewild the 250-mile Klamath River, where fish, notably salmon, have been shut out of the river’s remote upper watershed since the early 1900s because of the power project. The $500 million demolition is the largest dam removal in U.S. history.