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The Iron Gate Dam, which is one of the four dams on the Klamath River, will be removed in 2023. According to 10News, it will be the largest dam removal in U.S. history. The Klamath River runs from southern Oregon to the Pacific Ocean in California.
According to 10News, the four dams holding back the river's natural flow were originally built to produce electricity and regulate water levels on the river. Environmentalists in the area are saying those dams harm the river's health.
“It has huge impacts. It has impacts on water quality, huge impacts on river systems and the basins where they’re placed,” Jim McCarthy, an activist working for WaterWatch, a group in Oregon that advocates for river and water health, told 10News.
Groups like WaterWatch have been advocating for dam removals in the U.S. for decades. According to the group American Rivers, 85% of the country's dams are over 50 years old, which is the average life expectancy for most dams.
The Klamath's health has been steadily declining and has negatively impacted life around it. The river was once the third-largest salmon run on the West Coast, but the dams have impacted the salmon's habitat and food supply, causing the runs to drop drastically, according to 10News. These fish were the food supply for the Yurok Tribe.
“The word for salmon in Yurok is Ney-puy. The direct translation of Ney-puy means ‘what we eat’,” Frankie Myers, the vice-chair of the Yurok Tribe, told 10News. “The lower four dams on the Klamath River—for Yurok people— are a monument to colonialism... The removal of the four lower dams on the Klamath River would have a dramatic impact on our way of life not only for our subsistence fishery but for the emotional and mental well-being of our people as well."
The four dams are scheduled to be removed starting next year. They will join the nearly 60 dams that have been removed in 2021 in 22 states. According to 10News, almost 2,000 dams have been removed over the last 100 years.