In ‘momentous’ act, regulators approve demolition of four Klamath River dams, but water levels will not be restored until at least 2028
This article is more than 3 years old
This article is more than 3 years old
More than a million people in California’s Klamath Basin are in the midst of a massive civil rights struggle, and the US government is doing nothing to help them.
Dams on the Klamath River have forced people for thousands of years to grow water from the river to irrigate land.
Now, thanks to the passage of a federal regulation approved by the National Dams Conservation Act of 1978, the Klamath River’s dams are to be demolished, and the water will be restored in a series of “transition” projects under way.
But in the meantime, the water supply is not guaranteed. The Klamath River basin, which measures about 550,000 square kilometres, has almost 4m acre-feet of water stored in its reservoirs, but the system contains several critical dams, including ones that are under construction elsewhere in the state.
The US dams programme is considered one of the world’s most ambitious water management projects, but the only dam on the Klamath that could be affected by the regulatory change has been under construction for about 50 years when the federal regulation was enacted.
The regulatory change allows the federal government to force the state to rebuild dams on the Klamath that are at least 40 years old, and it’s a major step towards the goal of restoring the flow of the Klamath River by the year 2028.
Despite the regulatory change, the number of Americans under federal food stamps has increased by 6.8% in the past year, to about 1.34m. California is one of the largest recipients of food stamp benefits in the world.
With no signs of any political will to solve the problem, Klamath River residents have begun a campaign to stop construction of the first phase of the Klamath River project, known as Three Rivers.
The Klamath River’s population has grown fourfold since 1970, when the population reached 6.4m, and the area has been significantly urbanised since then, with over half of its inhabitants