Upon first reading the title of this article, and the first few paragraphs, I was a little upbeat, but then, as usual, it was because I was not well-informed enough to properly evaluate the content of this article. The alarm bells started to go off, though, when I saw that the Bush administration was encouraging this deal, and happy with it. Oh boy, this means something bad is afoot, only, what is it? Well, the devil is in the details, and in this case, it boils down to the government getting certain parties to sign off on the deal (meaning give up their rights), because the government promises to do something for them.

In detail, their are lots of dams on the Klamath River that have been blocking the natural migration of Salmon up the river for the past century. Now, due to this, over-fishing, the lumber industry and a bunch of other things, Salmon numbers have plummeted to the point where fishing for Salmon had to nearly be completely shut down off the coast of California and Oregon. In other words, this is very serious business. Now, what else is serious business? The power companies that use the damns to generate power, and profit. The farmers that use the water for agriculture. Many groups lay claim to the waters of the Klamath, and they are all ahead of the salmon. One big player in the equation is PacifiCorp, which is a unit of MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., which in turn is controlled by Berkshire Hathaway Inc., owned by Warren Buffet. This new deal is supposed to involve the removal of four dams, used for generating hydroelectric power for PacifiCorp, which they claim they are willing to do, if the cost isn’t passed on to their customers. At the same time, they are interested in obtaining a new operating license, which may last as long as 3-50 years, which would involve spending $300 million dollars on fish ladders for the salmon. Meanwhile, the government in turn, is promising a bundle of money toward the project of rebuilding salmon population on the river. Sounds great, right? But wait…

The Hoopa Indian tribe would have to sign away its water rights on behalf of the salmon, which means that the farmers would be free from lawsuits, and the deal does not guarantee that the dams will actually be removed. It is also not clear how beneficial the removal of only four damns will be, with regard to the salmon. Skeptics think this is just a trick to get the Indian tribes and environmental groups to give up their rights to the water or to discourage lawsuits, respectively, while the funding from the government will never materialize and the dams will ultimately never go away.

The following link is an in-depth explanation of the state of the Klamath river basin, and the issues involved in the rather dubious deal that the Bush administration is trying to ram through before its final term is over:

Oregon Wild

Here is another article on the subject, this time from the Oregonian:

The Oregonian

A link to a water habitat environmental group in Oregon, also advocating for Klamath river restoration:

Water Watch

A MSM article published on CNN, from the AP:

Klamath River Salmon