A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
May 3, 2007
3. Watersheds
Klamath River people challenge dam owner - Eureka Times Standard
Editorial: Clean environment vs. clean environment -
Group files suit against Pacificorp for alleged toxic blooms - Associated Press
EEL RIVER PROFILE:
The Eel River; A tour through a critical system - Ukiah Daily Journal
By
The
The suit filed in U.S. District Court in
The plaintiffs are members of the Yurok and Karuk tribes, a commercial salmon fisherman who runs a boat out of Half Moon Bay and a riverside business owner, as well as the nonprofit group Klamath Riverkeeper.
They claim that Pacificorp and regulators have failed to reverse deteriorating water quality in the river and its reservoirs.
Operation of the dams warms water and accentuates toxic algae blooms, they claim, which have crushed the river's fisheries and pose a serious threat to public health.
”We've been doing our due diligence trying to get authorities to deal with the issue,” said Leaf Hillman, vice chairman of the Karuk Tribal Council and a priest who spends long periods of time in the river for religious ceremonies each year. “As time has gone on it's gotten a little more frustrating.”
Hillman spoke by cell phone from
Pacificorp spokeswoman Jan Mitchell said it's the company's policy not to comment on pending litigation. She said Pacificorp has been working with a group of stakeholders to come up with a resolution of the dispute over the river's hydropower dams, and has been working with federal regulators on a parallel course to relicense its operations.
The Karuk Tribe recently asked the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board to impose restrictions on the discharge of toxic algae from Pacificorp's reservoirs. The board turned down the request last month, saying its authority is trumped by the Federal Power Act.
Board Executive Officer Catherine Kuhlman said mandatory closures of lakes or water bodies -- like those the state of
The suit says the dams unnaturally heat water in the reservoirs, prompting algae blooms and delaying cooling of the river as fall run chinook salmon begin their run to spawning grounds. It also claims that the reservoirs slow water from warming in the spring, stunting the growth of young salmon which can make them susceptible to parasites and predators.
In 2004, the U.S. Geological Survey found the dams do the same thing, and suggested that removing the dams might make the river more friendly to salmon in the fall.
Well-known trial lawyer Kevin Madonna said in a phone interview that the case is about standing up for people who are politically powerless against a company who has diminished the resource it profits from.
”It's a fundamentally undemocratic situation,” Madonna said.
Madonna wouldn't comment on why the suit was brought by individual litigants instead of as a class action.
Cotchett's firm is well-know for its huge lawsuits against corporations, savings and loan organizations, and even against Vice President Dick Cheney over the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's name. #
http://times-standard.com/local/ci_5808211
Editorial: Clean environment vs. clean environment
For years, as the debate over the
It was probably inevitable, given that the overwhelming evidence of global warming has convinced everyone except the most diehard carbon-emission lovers. It's now politically correct for PacifiCorp to claim that even though the dams provide power to only a small fraction of its customers, the only viable alternatives to the river are building plants using coal or natural gas.
Thus, the long tug of war -- clean environment vs. jobs, or vs. the automobile, or vs. urban sprawl -- takes on a whole new dimension: clean environment vs. clean environment.
The Klamath has been sick for decades because of the dams. They block several hundred miles of potential spawning habitat for salmon. Low water flows cause the water to become too warm, causing thousands of salmon to die from disease. Reservoirs pollute the river by prompting toxic algae blooms, which can also be dangerous to people. The salmon fishing industry in the
PacifiCorp proposes to trap fish and haul them up above
The trucking argument seemed ridiculous, but the global warming rationale takes the cake. Give it up, PacifiCorp -- take down the dams. #
http://www.times-standard.com/allopinion/ci_5808212
Group files suit against Pacificorp for alleged toxic blooms
Associated Press – 5/2/07
By Sarah Skidmore, staff writer
PORTLAND, Ore.- A group of Klamath River tribal leaders, commercial salmon fishermen, recreational business owners and the Klamath Riverkeeper Group sued in federal court in Northern California Wednesday claiming two PacifiCorp dams on the river cause massive toxic algae blooms.
The lawsuit contends the reservoirs behind Iron Gate and Copco dams in
The suit wants Portland-based PacifiCorp to stop operating the dams in a way that causes the blooms.
PacifiCorp spokeswoman Jan Mitchell said the company does not comment on pending litigation.
PacifiCorp is seeking a new operating license for a number of its dams. But numerous Indian tribes, commercial fisherman and conservation groups want the dams removed rather than relicensed—saying the dams hurt water quality, wildlife and cause other problems.
The company contends removal would eliminate a source of renewable, low-cost power.
PacifiCorp serves 1.6 million customers in six Western states.
A collapse of wild salmon returns to the Klamath River triggered drastic cutbacks in salmon fishing off the coasts of
The summit was delayed so the various parties could try to reach an agreement.
PacifiCorp began settlement talks with 26 other parties affected by the dams as part of the relicensing process.
Regina Chichizola with the Klamath Riverkeeper said none of the individuals named in the lawsuit are involved in the settlement talks.
The individuals involved are part of a larger effort to draw attention to their concern and are headed for
PacifiCorp, is owned by MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., which is controlled by billionaire Warren Buffet. Berkshire Hathaway is his investment group.
They hope to capture Buffett's attention.
"We believe Warren Buffet really does care about health issues and poverty issues, what PacifiCorp is doing is hurting the health and viability of (others)," Chichizola said. "By talking to Warren Buffet, we are hoping to appeal to those concerns." #
http://www.contracostatimes.com/search/ci_5802774
EEL RIVER PROFILE:
The
Ukiah Daily Journal – 5/3/07
By Ben Brown, staff writer
Editor's note: This is the first of two stories by Ben Brown on his two-day tour of the
The
The river is home to at least 30 species of fish and the watershed supports a large number animals. It runs through mountains and forests, into and out of lakes and is joined by at least two major rivers and countless streams and tributaries on its way to the
To say that it is big would be an understatement.
For the last three years, the Mendocino County Farm Bureau has taken people on a two-day trip through the
Among the early stops on the tour is the small town of
On the way to Dos Rios, forester Bill Smith, who was lived and worked in the forests around the
The bridge, which must have been easily 60 feet above the bed of the river, was carried away in the flood of 1964.
Looking at the river now, it can be hard to believe it was that high.
Both forks are running low this year and even to an untrained eye it is easy to see that the Eel is usually a much wider river than it is on this day.
The water is running only in the deepest parts of the river, often in channels no more than a dozen feet wide .
The Middle Fork of the
From a vantage point further down the road the snow-capped peaks of the Yolla Bolly Mountains were visible in the distance, but rain and snowfall in
Not far up the road from Dos Rios, the tour stopped at a steep and narrow canyon that was once the proposed site of the Dos Rios Dam in the 1960s. The dam would have created a massive reservoir in the
The people of Covelo, whose town would have been flooded to create the reservoir, objected and politics eventually forced the entire project to be scrapped.
This seems to be a microcosm of human interaction along the Eel. What will be helpful to one group of people is often harmful to another.
Further up the road, in
Burgess was one of the more important people the tour met up with. He and his family have lived in along the North Fork of the
Burgess said it is the trees that surrounded Kettenpom that have so thoroughly changed the watershed. In his father's time, Burgess said, there were an average of between eight and 10 conifers per acre, now they are so densely packed that walking through the forest is difficult and seeing more than a dozen feet impossible.
Conifers affect the watershed because they store water, Burgess said. If the trees store the water it doesn't make it into the river.
Less water means fewer fish.
Lumberjacks and homesteaders once harvested the trees, and lightning fires killed all but the tallest and strongest specimens.
Various federal agencies now own most of the land around the North Fork of the
Without those two factors to keep the trees in check, Burgess said the conifers simply out-compete everything else.
The transition between the North Fork of the Eel in
Dry red soil gives way to green grass and the tall skinny conifers are replaced with the massive iconic trunks of redwood trees.
Smith said the South Fork of the
That doesn't tell the whole story though, Smith said. The South Fork also has a different climate, with more rain and mist blowing in from the nearby coast, as well as an entirely different ecology.
The mouth of the
Both the salmon and steelhead that populate the
This provides food for the seals, sealions and otters that live in the estuary, as well as countless birds and other fish.
The tour, though extensive, barely provides a snapshot of the size and complexity of the
http://www.ukiahdailyjournal.com/ci_5809252
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