Op-Ed: An epic victory in the battle for free-flowing rivers

The Iron Gate Dam on the lower Klamath River is one of four dams that will be torn down. Yet on Thursday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission gave final approval to taking down the dams, setting in motion what will become the nation’s — and probably world’s — largest dam removal and salmon restoration project. The Yurok played a leading role in the long effort to, in James’ words, protect “the fish that have sustained our people since the beginning of time.” Removal of the dams, whose combined height is 411 feet, will open up more than 400 river miles of spawning habitat. It’s a painful irony that despite the tea party’s efforts, the one part of the 2010 agreements that survived is dam removal, which will now proceed, but without specific river restoration plans in place and without guaranteed water for farmers that the scuttled provisions included. Said Craig Tucker, a Karuk tribe consultant and veteran dam removal campaigner, “If in five years fish are swimming and spawning 50 miles upstream from the dam sites and the river is cleaner and the fish are healthier, it’s going to convince people that this works.” Jacques Leslie is a contributing writer to Opinion and the author of “Deep Water: The Epic Struggle Over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment.”