[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 20 (Monday, February 5, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H425-H428]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           KLAMATH RIVER DAMS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 9, 2023, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from California 
(Mr. LaMalfa) until 10 p.m.
  Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to talk about an extremely 
important project, really a tragedy, that is happening in the very 
northern part of my district.
  This evening, I am joined by my colleague, Cliff Bentz, to discuss 
the Klamath River and the hydroelectric dams that have been around for 
at least 60 to 100 years providing low-cost, reliable hydroelectric 
power for many, many residents and up to 70,000 homes.
  Now we see the initiation of the destruction of these dams due to 
filling out the dreams, or what have you, of a handful of environmental 
groups that have enlisted efforts up there to destroy these dams, 
ostensibly, to establish a fish population of what is known to be a 
very warm lake with a lot of FOS feed in it on a very warm river.
  Indeed, some of the things that happened to make this system up there 
work was over 100 years ago an original

[[Page H426]]

reef up in the area there was blown up, and a pathway was carved so 
that water that would never have gone down the river now it does go 
down the river.

  So there are a lot of facts that we can point out that show this 
system has actually benefited the river, as well as agriculture and 
hydroelectric power in the area.
  Now there is this major push in this country and in my home State of 
California to electrify just about everything: Electric vehicles, 
electric stoves, electric appliances, electric yard equipment, leaf 
blowers, lawn mowers, everything. They think we are going to electrify 
all of that at the same time that we are destroying the ability to 
generate electricity and to deliver it, especially in my home State 
with these dams being removed, as well as precariously the nuclear 
power plant, Diablo Canyon. They gave it just a 5-year extension 
recently; that is 9 percent.
  So there is a lot of hypocrisy, talking out of both sides of their 
mouths, really on the issue.
  Mr. Speaker, the area that Mr. Bentz and I represent will be deeply 
affected negatively by these removals.
  My side of the California-Oregon line has three of the dams, and Mr. 
Bentz represents the area that has the one largest dam, the JC Boyle.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Bentz) to talk 
about some of the effects he is seeing in his district, as well as what 
that means for agriculture and other things.
  Mr. BENTZ. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman LaMalfa for allowing me 
time to address this important issue.
  The destruction of the Klamath Dam is a classic case of misdiagnosing 
the problem and then applying the wrong remedy.
  Destroying the dams on the Klamath will not save the salmon. 
Returning more river habitat to its natural state will not save the 
salmon. Stealing all the water from farmers and ranchers and putting it 
in streams will not save the salmon.
  Why not?
  Because the main problem facing salmon is not the dams. The main 
problems facing the salmon are the conditions salmon face in the ocean.
  There may be, someday, a modest benefit to these fish after the dams 
have been removed, and when millions upon millions of tax dollars are 
spent on habitat recovery, but these misplaced efforts will not bring 
fish runs back.
  Whatever the modest improvement might be, it will not be worth the 
loss of the clean electrical power that has been created by these dams. 
Certainly, the few additional fish that return will not justify 
increased flows of water taken from farmers.
  Why?
  Because, again, habitat is not the issue.
  There are hundreds of miles of unused habitat, and the volume of 
water is not the issue. For the past 20 years, the water flows, using 
water taken from farmers, exceeded what would have been available in 
the Klamath River under natural conditions. Despite this additional 
water, these fish have not recovered.
  Again, the problems facing the fish that need to be solved are those 
found in the ocean. If further evidence of this is needed, look at what 
has happened on the Elwha River in Washington State. Two dams were 
removed over 10 years ago, and there has still been no increase in 
fish.
  Who is it really that bears the brunt of the damage occurring as a 
result of the destruction of these four dams? Who is it that actually 
suffers?
  First and foremost, the fish. They are the real losers in this 
entirely misdirected exercise. The National Marine Fisheries Service is 
being derelict in its duty to study and then protect salmon against the 
challenges they face in the sea.
  Secondly, the farmers of the Klamath Basin. These people are truly 
bearing the costs of shutting down and now removing these dams. First 
came the loss of the low-cost electrical power generated by the four 
dams that made possible movement of massive volumes of irrigation and 
bird refuge water across the Klamath Basin.
  Then came the taking of farmers' water to flush fish down the river 
to the sea, and now the stealing of even more of the farmers' water to 
clean up, by flushing to the ocean, a huge portion of the 20 million 
cubic yards of silt and mud left from destruction of the dams.
  It is the total loss of the value of the farmers' land, much of it 
being farmed by third- and fourth-generation family members, that is 
the real and unforgivable travesty.
  This inequitable and unjust consequence of the imposition of the ESA, 
the Endangered Species Act, must be and will be addressed in the 
Subcommittee on Natural Resources.

                              {time}  2140

  The third problem we face is the millions of costs in dollars by the 
electrical ratepayers of Oregon and California and the Nation. 
Remember, the dams are private property. There is a tax adjustment 
somewhere on the books of PacifiCorp that I am guessing is in the 
numerous millions.
  Finally, the millions upon millions of wildfowl that once used the 
Klamath refuges as an important part of the Pacific flyway can't. We 
will not have the thousands of acres of water that once upon a time 
supplied these birds with clean water delivered by dam-driven 
electrical pumps.
  There are many more victims of removal, but time does not permit 
further discussion. Sadly, the one predictable thing that is going to 
emerge from this billion-dollar exercise in self-destruction will be 
the ultimate conclusion that the salmons' most challenging existential 
issues are ocean trawler and predation based.
  These obvious and inconvenient facts will not be accepted until every 
drop of water has been wrung out of every farm and ranch in the 
Klamath, taking with it the livelihoods of farmers and ranchers and 
cities in the upper reaches of that basin.
  The spotted owl debacle was the last time this many thousands of 
people and businesses were sacrificed up on the altar of flawed 
science. The last time the ESA ruined this many people's lives, it was 
loggers and their communities. This time it is the ranchers and 
farmers, who, according to courts, bureaucrats, and environmentalists, 
are expendable. I assure you they are not.
  Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Bentz for his time 
and leadership on his side of the lineup there. Indeed, it is good to 
work together and spotlight and fight the fight on this.
  Indeed, it will not help the people in the area who have largely not 
been listened to. When seminars are held up there, they are excluded 
unless they are shown to be willing to go along with this, which is 
tragic and unjust.
  Pictured here is one of the still existing dams. One is gone. This is 
one of the remaining Copco dams, as well as the Boyle up north of it a 
little more and then the Iron Gate farther south.
  You can already see what they call dewatering, where they have 
drained the lake behind that. You can see--it may be hard on this 
camera here--this black plume of muck and crud that are on either side 
of the dam as the lake was drained. Eighty or 100 years' worth of silt 
have built up, and so now you see that building up all through the 
system of the Klamath River, the area they claim to be saving and 
making as a salmon habitat.
  This is not an impressionist painting here. This is actually is a 
blown-up photograph of how the river looks presently. It is this black, 
rolling--basically black water. I am not talking about the Doobie 
Brothers song either. It is not that positive. This is a very ugly 
situation, full of sediment, full of algae and other things that have 
been sitting at the bottom of the lake for a long time.
  Wherever this makes its way down to the plume--which is at least 130 
miles now; 130 miles of the Klamath River looks like this. What it has 
done to the wildlife in the area, the fish or the wildlife that would 
come down to the water and drink from it--the fish kills on this are 
just appalling. Again, what we are talking about is the whole effort to 
ostensibly save fish and create a habitat for them.
  You can see here in this photo; this is the main stem of the river. 
This is a tributary filling in here. This water is still off-color a 
little bit because it is wintertime flows, but you can see that 
greenish, bluish color there. This is the brown and black stuff that is 
coming

[[Page H427]]

down the main stem where they have done the work already. It is 
appalling. It is unbelievable.
  Yet, what do we hear from the authorities on this, from Fish and Game 
and the KRC, as it is known, the shell corporation that was created in 
order to take the liability from that? At least the FERC, the Federal 
Energy Regulatory Commission, ruled that the shell corporation did not 
have the financial wherewithal to endure what was going to be the full 
aspect of the possible cost of this.
  $450 million was put together more or less to do all this work; $250 
million from the taxpayers of California as part of the so-called water 
bond, and $200 million from the ratepayers of PacifiCorp, mostly in 
Oregon, have kicked in extra money in their monthly bill to pay for 
this.
  They are expecting cost overruns on something of this magnitude. The 
States of California and Oregon had to come in basically with a line of 
credit backing this up, so the taxpayers are going to be on the hook 
for even more as more and more of the disaster is unleashed upon the 
whole Klamath system here.
  Here is the tragedy right here. As I was starting to mention, the 
entities involved, Fish and Game, the KRC, on one hand they are saying 
this loss of wildlife--right here in this photograph are three deer 
that went out there to drink and got caught in the muck and have 
basically died this miserable death because they couldn't extract 
themselves from that. A couple of them, Fish and Game came out and 
finally just shot them, because they didn't have the facilities to go 
out and rescue these animals. This is the cost here. This is the cost.
  Now, they are claiming on one hand, well, this is unforeseen. How can 
it be unforeseen if you have a plan here? You say you have a plan. 
Well, everybody starts out with a plan, right? This isn't going 
according to plan.
  Then, on the other hand, the same groups will tell you it was 
foreseen that a lot of the yellow perch and other things would be 
casualties in this, will be collateral damage. Indeed, they tell us 
they have a plan, but if you are a farmer in the area and you 
accidentally trap one of these threatened or endangered fish that 
happens to get into your stream, even though you have fish screens and 
this and that, in order to go out and water your crops, they come down 
on you like you are a felon. You lose one fish, and everybody loses 
their minds over that, but this is an acceptable damage here. This is 
acceptable to them because the agenda really is about the removal of 
the dams. It isn't so much about the fish, because you are going to 
find in the long term, this is not going to work out.

  This tragedy you are seeing, this is really, really hurting obviously 
the wildlife but also really the mental effects to the people who live 
there, to see and hear these deer bawling out there just outside their 
homes they have on the Copco Lake area and such.
  Here we have some more of the collateral damage. You can see 
scattered through here some of the dead fish along the shore there. 
This stuff is so nasty that they can't breathe very long in that. As 
soon as that plume hits them, as soon as it hits the whole 200 miles of 
this river, all the way out to the ocean, to the mouth of the Klamath, 
it is all going to be a killing habitat for them.
  How long will it take for all this silt to--the folks involved 
estimate 6 to 7 million cubic yards. I think the number is going to be 
more like 20 million cubic yards. When you look at some of the photos 
there, there is still a lot of residual silt and stuff built up on the 
banks that has not been swept out of that initial volley when they 
blast the holes in the bottom of the dam where they had the original 
drains in construction.
  There is much more silt to still affect the system. Guess what, these 
folks are running on guesses. A lot of this has been based on 
somebody's term paper a long time ago. When we have had these 
discussions with folks, they just gloss over the silt. Is it really 
about saving fish, or is it about collecting four of these trophies, as 
they brag on and on about this being the largest dam removal project in 
the history of the country?
  They have more on the list. They have more targets. It is dominoes. 
The extremists in this environmental movement want to continue to 
topple dams. My colleagues up in Washington are seeing this discussion 
happening right now with the Snake River. As Mr. Bentz mentioned, Elwha 
has already been done, yet they are not seeing the recovered population 
of fish. Right now we are wiping out the population of fish in there. 
How long will it take for all of that silt to transition out 200 miles 
worth of river? How many years?
  The lifecycle of the salmon is about 3 years. Will they be able to 
hold off for 3 years out in the ocean, or will they come back up and 
try to spawn? Once the entire lifecycle is wiped out, then you don't 
have that fish anymore.
  The flaw in the thinking is indeed this is more about politics. It is 
political science, not actual science. These folks are hell-bent on 
removing a lot of infrastructure in this country in Oregon and 
California because they see this as a sign of progress.
  We need to build more water storage in California. We need to have 
more projects that store the massive amounts of water that right now 
are escaping to the Pacific Ocean in our so-called atmospheric rivers 
that are occurring.

                              {time}  2150

  Now we are rating them on a number system like we do hurricanes on a 
1 through 5 AR. What used to be for a big storm or tropical, pineapple 
express, now they have a scientific name in order to scare the public 
with it.
  Yes, the conditions are serious. We have high winds right now, and a 
lot of water, but it is also partly a manipulation by government in 
order to exercise more control over the water supply and the 
infrastructure and keep people in just a little bit more fear.
  Again, more of the fish they purport to be saving, preserving, and 
trying to build a population of is for how many years going to be 
damaged and destroyed by the destruction of just one dam so far?
  One of the four is the only one that has been completely destroyed. 
Others, again, they have started draining from the bottom there, and 
that is where all this material is coming from.
  It is, indeed, unscientific and much more about power and politics.
  Over here a little farther away from me, Mr. Speaker, you see many 
dead fish laying on the shoreline here all through here. There are 
probably 40 in this picture if it is discernible enough on the camera 
there.
  This is the same all the way up and down; so far about 130 miles of 
river.
  Are we really doing any good here?
  Politically, I guess we are, but as far as being real on helping 
species, I hope this is a case study because there are very few silver 
linings that we can find coming out of this. The loss of the 
hydroelectric power, the loss of the locals there, I have hardly even 
touched on the infrastructure damage locally there because with the 
drainage just so far in these lakes, people are losing their 
groundwater wells that have been supported by this water supply. We 
have wells drying up.
  We have our roads all along the edge are having sloughing now. Mr. 
Speaker, you can see a big crack like an earthquake hit it and split it 
down the middle. That is sloughing off down there.
  The KRC, as well as FERC, are overseeing them supposedly, and they 
are supposed to be mitigating this. So far, the mitigation fund has 
disappeared. It is gone. It is not that they spent the money, we can't 
find the money. We can't find anyone there to talk to. There is no 1-
800 number for people to talk about these damages.
  As far as people's homes, one lady we are talking to, her home up on 
the hillside used to overlook beautiful Copco Lake but is now 
overlooking the mud flats there. It is subject to slippage as well. 
There are folks with big mortgages there, they still have payments. 
Also, they still have to pay their taxes, and they are not going to be 
able to recoup the cost of any of this because now property values have 
been basically destroyed with the dams.
  What are they supposed to do?
  KRC and FERC are not coming back in and, indeed, they are reneging on 
some of the things that were agreed to with FERC as part of this plan. 
Indeed, it is not a plan. It is political science forced upon these 
folks. It feels like the people of Siskiyou County and that

[[Page H428]]

region up there, every time there is some great idea in Sacramento on 
species or on conservation, they are being subject to it.
  I say great idea facetiously because these are folks who have been up 
there, in some cases, six and seven generations producing for all of 
us. They are producing the food on your table and are helping to be 
part of the process of producing electricity to keep your lights on. 
All they want to do is do it honorably and do it well. These aren't 
drug dealers. These aren't people doing bad things. These are people 
trying to produce things that Americans need. They are made to feel 
like criminals, they are made to feel like subjects, and they are made 
to feel like constant victims because of some idea coming out of an 
urban area and coming out of somebody wanting to say: Oh, let's 
conserve wolves now. Let's introduce wolves to the area and we can wipe 
out the cattle growers that way.
  It is not a success so far. They say: Well, that is still to come. It 
will be better later.
  How many years is this going to take?
  How many fish generations are going to be wiped out to do this?
  As Mr. Bentz was saying: At what cost?
  Because this is still not an ideal river. This river was actually 
modified to make the flows happen down the river where it used to go to 
a different zone where there had been a refuge. It was an amazing area 
for ducks and other wildlife, the Lost River.
  So we have lost a lot with this. People actually can do good things, 
and there is a balance before government steps in at the behest of 
environmentalists and environmental groups that are manipulating some 
of our folks in the Tribal community up there to be part of this.
  So here, symbolically, this single dead fish, the thing that 
supposedly we are trying to save, is being wiped out.
  A $450 million initial price tag, the loss of electric power, the 
loss of the people locally of their water supply, their roads, their 
infrastructure as the people destroying the dams are driving hell-bent 
all over this place with equipment much heavier than the roads can 
handle, and there is no plan.
  KRC is reneging on what they told the Federal Energy Regulatory 
Commission they would do. So we need to hold their feet to the fire on 
that.
  However, in that the three dams are still existing there, I have this 
crazy idea: Why don't we just leave them alone?
  We have seen just a microcosm, just a taste, of how bad it is going 
to be for the habitat and the destruction that they are causing by the 
destruction of the dams.
  We are at a point right now that the environmental groups have a 
choke hold on Sacramento, much of Washington, D.C., the court system 
with liberal judges who have been appointed who don't listen to anybody 
and don't listen to science, instead they listen to a handful of folks 
and don't look at the balance of what it means to the entire community 
up there and other places around the country.

  I only hope that maybe the Supreme Court rulings on some other 
decisions will help put balance back into the argument on how extreme 
either the Clean Water Act has been abused, the Endangered Species Act, 
and other codes and other things that have really not been codified by 
Congress but given broad powers to these agencies to do as they see 
fit. What is called the Chevron decision, the Supreme Court will be 
looking at pretty soon in order to reevaluate just because a Federal 
agency rules it a certain way doesn't mean they are necessarily 
infallible. These are human beings too with biases.
  The way we see so many things politicized these days, how are we to 
trust them even more, especially when just common sense and science is 
showing that this ain't working?
  It certainly doesn't work for people. It certainly doesn't work for 
those who are providing.
  Where is the mitigation fund to help the folks?
  FERC needs to be helping answer that question. KRC is the shell 
corporation that was created out of thin air so the utility could leave 
town and not have the liability. Instead, the liability created was put 
into a shell corporation, and once that money runs out, the $450 
million is taken from taxpayers via the bond and ratepayers from 
PacifiCorp, and it will run out. They wasted the first $40 or $50 
million just talking about and planning for it.
  Where does it go from there?
  People of the State of California and Oregon will have to follow up 
with the disaster that will undoubtedly be seen after this with more 
money out of their pockets for something that at the end of the day was 
created by their actions.
  When this system was put in with the Klamath project which was 
dedicated to returning World War I veterans to foster agriculture in an 
area, and, indeed, it was amazing agriculture as long as it lasted, the 
water flows that come down the Klamath wouldn't even be possible 
without some of that work that was done. A lot of that water would be 
lost to basins where, again, it was good for other wildlife, but that 
water wouldn't be regulateable or getting down the river so you would 
have the luxury of year-round water flow to meet these demands of flush 
flows for fish during certain times of the year or for rituals further 
down the river. We don't have the luxury for that.
  So the Klamath Lake is tied into that, the Klamath project is tied 
into that, and the benefit of having hydroelectric power, which is the 
greenest, cleanest, and most available baseload power we could get, and 
we are seeing that slowly being destroyed right now. They want to have 
it done before the end of the year probably because maybe there will be 
a change this coming election, and maybe there will be something to 
stall some of this destruction and nonsense.
  If they complete it here, they will keep looking at other places. 
They will keep looking at the Snake River up there in Washington, 
another dam over in Mendocino County there which many people rely on in 
order to supply water to agricultural crops and give flexibility to the 
system there. They are not going to stop here. They are not going to 
stop here.
  So the timeline, again, they hope to have it accomplished by 
September, but they are going to run into some problems with that as 
well with the destruction just on logistics.
  We are basing this, again, on unproven science. Salmon populations in 
other places where dams have been destroyed have not rebounded like 
they would.
  So what is the bang for the buck on this?
  As Mr. Bentz was talking about, how much is happening down river out 
in the ocean to affect these fish populations that has nothing to do 
with what a farmer might be doing who might accidentally get a fish?
  They have spent plenty of money and made a lot of effort to put fish 
screens on their intakes or destroying these dams. We are not getting 
the bang for the buck. People have a part of this too. People are part 
of the ecology. Hydroelectric power is a beautiful thing. This 
discussion isn't over by any stretch because they are going to be hell-
bent on keeping on doing this and destroying the livelihoods, the 
economy, and the good that has been up in this area along the Klamath 
dam.
  Now, instead, as I have shown you tonight, Mr. Speaker, is the 
destruction and the pollution that has come from unleashing this.
  So with that, Mr. Speaker, we will be back, and I yield back the 
balance of my time.

                          ____________________