Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The death of a river

It happens that Warren Buffet owns Pacificorp which owns the hydro dams on the Klamath River, Through age, pressure from Injun tribes, and the enthusiasm of environmentalists... the dams would be removed gradually...the land and river would recover...salmon and steelhead runs would be restored. Not much was said about where 60 to 100 years of clay sediments would be handled...other than a staged plan was in place to control the amount of sediment and water released. The US Geological Survey was to monitor turbidity, water quality, nitrates, phosphates and our friends...heavy metals ongoing as water was released.
Welp, a week before the first USGS report was due to be made public, the corporation formed to do the dam removal scrapped the controlled release timetable and opened the floodgates of hell and cut her loose. (note the timing, before the USGS report on heavy metals and contaminants was due to be released) 250 miles of wild river turned into liquid muck...fishkill by the ton, maybe the entire food chain destroyed, enough mud to kill crawdads, a silt plume visible from space out into the Pacific. At least 11 deer have had to be shot, hopelessly mired. Dozens of people living in the Klamath canyon downstream are suffering from well contamination, a few people near the dam sites are being supplied domestic water from water trucks.
Not even one word from the media. If anyone is interested at all, there are some chilling photos and a narrative on Youtube...I believe the title is "Dam Removal part 3." You most likely are not interested...but it would be good to have this lesson in what not to do if the govt is talking about dam removal near you.

The river will fix itself quickly, just like the Elwha did.

You enviro twits love to quote the Elwha...the difference is the Elwha is 45 miles long...55 inches of rain a year. The Klamath is 263 miles long, 29 inches of rain. The Elwha sediment bed was sand and coarse alluvials....only 2 to 3 feet deep. The Klamath reservoir beds average 3X that and are the very finest of clays, the kind that suffocate life...impermeable clay when dry.
Stick with airplanes.

Sad stuff that is. Most people in the USA haven't a clue about water resource management and its impact on all aspects of our lives.

IMO, the contractor should be hung.

If the general public had a clue, they would clamor for the elimination of all the protected feral horses ruining so much rangeland out west. The protection of these vermin is completely idiotic.

+1 on the feral horses and add those burros/donkeys too.

Well, this is an interesting take on it.

https://www.opb.org/article/2024/02/18/klamath-reservoir-drawdown-water-quality-discussion/

The claim that dam removal would help salmon is now completely voided by the fact that no young salmon can survive the suspended silt now in the river. It's likely that none will make it alive to the ocean, and thus none will ever return. They've killed the Klamath. LINK

So, who are the geniuses that thought that this method of dam removal was wise.

Just makes me shake my head...

Somebody didn't want to pay for the removal/treatment of contaminated silt built up behind the dam. Buffet comes to mind.

He doesn't know airplanes either.

If you can't trust Warren Buffet, who can you trust??

L.W.

The river will self correct lots sooner than the lake area that was dammed up with heavy metal in it's bottom.

If the heavy metals are that concentrated...wanna bet they mine it under environmental reclamation?

Just a thought.

Exactly, videotape of excavator operator throwing muck into the river instead of the dump truck to haul to a neutral site...as the contractor was paid to do. Not that a few hundred buckets of muck a day would make that much difference to 2,000 acres of reservoir bed.

Guys, truly, I hope the environmentalists are right....and this all works out well in the end, but given all the factors...international fishing, pinniped protections, Injun netting, years of droughts, ag chemical runoffs...I fear the salmon is going the way of the buffalo.

jetjockey, you're going to have to define your use of "quickly". And then put your money where your mouth is. Because "quickly" in this case might be measured in geologic terms.

A few months, or even a few years? Not a chance.

The bigger question is what of the heavy metals etc are soluble in water.

Is it true the Colorado is dry before it gets to the ocean?

Maybe they shouldn't have screwed it up in the first place.

Man being man.

Cheap green energy.

What does that have to do with the topic at hand?

Start a new thread.