Dam Removals Are Bringing Salmon Back — and Raising the Question of Who Pays

Two years after the largest dam-removal project in history opened 400 miles of the Klamath River, fish counters have logged the strongest fall Chinook returns in six decades. Tribal biologists who spent a generation arguing that the river would heal itself if given the chance are watching the argument win.

The recovery has outrun projections. Salmon reached spawning tributaries above the former dam sites within months of removal, and juvenile survival rates in the restored reaches are running well above modeled expectations. Water quality metrics that once triggered toxic algae advisories every summer have improved measurably.

The success is sharpening an equity question downstream of the science: hundreds of aging, low-value dams block rivers across the country, and the communities most affected — often tribal nations and rural towns whose fisheries collapsed — are least able to fund removals. The Klamath project required a quarter-billion dollars and twenty years of litigation and negotiation.

Advocates want a standing federal fund for dam removal and river restoration, modeled on abandoned-mine cleanup programs, financed in part by fees on hydropower relicensing. They argue the economics are straightforward: many small dams no longer generate power worth their maintenance, and restored fisheries generate jobs that dams no longer do.

Opposition remains in irrigation districts and among some property owners on former reservoirs. But the Klamath’s returns are changing the burden of proof. The question communities are now asking, organizers say, is no longer whether rivers recover — it is why recovery should depend on which watershed can afford lawyers.