The world’s largest dam removal will touch many lives in the Klamath River Basin
… hundreds of miles of salmon spawning habitat are blocked by four dams on the lower Klamath River. But an historic decision made on Thursday in Washington, D.C. holds the promise to change that. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s approval of removing those four dams should set free a huge stretch of one of the West’s most important coastal rivers for salmon and reopen 400 miles of habitat — much of which salmon have been unable to reach for more than a century…. Next year, deconstruction work will begin at JC Boyle, Copco 1, Copco 2 and Iron Gate dams, with the biggest dams scheduled to be removed in 2024. Getting to this point has taken decades of negotiation and planning, and removing the four dams will be a massive, $500 million undertaking that many in the surrounding communities still oppose.
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