Workers are breaching the final dams on a key section of the Klamath River on Wednesday, clearing the way for salmon to swim freely through a major watershed near the California-Oregon border for the first time in more than a century as the largest dam removal project in U.S. history nears completion.
Crews used excavators to remove rock dams that have been diverting water upstream of two dams , Iron Gate and Copco No. 1, both of which were already almost completely removed. With each scoop, more and more river water was able to flow through the historic channel. The work, which is expected to be completed by this evening, will give salmon a passageway to key swaths of habitat just in time for the fall Chinook, or king salmon, spawning season.
"Our sacred duty to our children, our ancestors, and for ourselves, is to take care of the river, and today's events represent a fulfillment of that obligation," Frankie Myers, vice chairman for the Yurok Tribe, which has spent decades fighting to remove the dams and restore the river, said in a statement.
The demolition comes about a month before removal of four towering dams on the Klamath was set to be completed as part of a national movement to let rivers return to their natural flow and to restore ecosystems for fish and other wildlife.
As of February, more than 2,000 dams had been removed in the U.S., the majority in the last 25 years, according to the advocacy group American Rivers. Among them were dams on Washington state's Elwha River, which flows out of Olympic National Park into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and Condit Dam on the White Salmon River, a tributary of the Columbia.
