California's massive dam removal hit a key milestone. Now, there's a problem

San Francisco Chronicle​

11-06-2025

Last year, after the historic removal of four dams on the Klamath River, thousands of salmon rushed upstream into the long-blocked waters along the California-Oregon border, seeking out the cold, plentiful flows considered crucial to the fish's future.
The return of salmon to their ancestral home was a fundamental goal of dam removal and a measure of the project's success.
However, a problem emerged. The returning salmon only got so far. Eight miles upriver from the former dam sites lies a still-existing dam, the 41-foot-tall Keno Dam in southern Oregon. The dam has a fish ladder that's supposed to help with fish passage, but it didn't prove to work.
While many proponents of dam removal say they're thrilled with just how far the salmon got, most of the 420 miles of waterways that salmon couldn't reach before the dam demolition still appear largely unreachable. This stands to keep the fish from spreading and reproducing in the high numbers anticipated with the project. Other migratory fish, including steelhead trout and Pacific lamprey, may face similar straits.
The shortcoming has opened a new chapter in the decades-long effort to liberate the Klamath River, this one focused on Keno Dam. It has also left some people frustrated that the dam wasn't addressed sooner, when the other dams were dealt with.
'It's too bad that there wasn't enough forethought,' said William Ray Jr., chairman for the Klamath Tribes, who represents the native communities in the upper section of the Klamath Basin where salmon haven't been able to get to. 'The fish could have gone a lot farther, and that was the whole point. … The job just wasn't done, far from it.'
The $500 million dam-removal project, considered the largest in U.S. history, was overseen by the states of California and Oregon in partnership with tribes and environmental groups, which initiated the effort to restore the 250-mile Klamath River to its natural conditions.

The former owner of the power-generating dams, PacifiCorp, agreed to dam removal to rid itself of the river's aging and increasingly costly hydroelectric operations. The Portland-based utility and state of California paid for the work.
PacifiCorp also owned Keno Dam, but because the dam provides flood control, unlike the others, it was transferred to the federal government's Bureau of Reclamation for continued operation, as part of the dam-removal agreement.
In recent months, federal, state and tribal officials have been evaluating Keno Dam to see what might be done to make sure it's passable for salmon. The possibilities range from rebuilding the old fish ladder to removing the dam. Making changes, though, will be complicated by the facility's role in regulating river flows, and it could be years, if not decades, before there's a permanent fix.
'Restoration is not a flip-of-the-switch and everything-is-fine endeavor,' said Philip Milburn, district manager at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, which has been contracted by the federal government to evaluate options for Keno Dam. 'It took hundreds of years for the basin to get to the way it is now, and it's going to take time to modify it to suit fish.'
Above Keno Dam, where migratory fish haven't been for more than a century because of the dams, 350 miles of rivers, lakes and creeks are believed to be key for the struggling salmon population.
Salmon spend most of their short lives at sea but they need freshwater to spawn. With the warming climate, the cold-water springs, higher elevations and nutrient-rich waters of the upper Klamath Basin are particularly important for reproduction, scientists say.
The revival of the basin's salmon would be a boon for the commercial fishing industry and culinary world as well as for the many tribes that see the fish as a spiritual force in their communities.
'We haven't had the fish for a long time,' said Ray Jr. 'It harms the culture and the health of our people. We're becoming impatient.'
New fish, but an old dam
The apparent problem at Keno Dam became clear late last year, following what many federal, state and tribal officials considered an immediate success with the dam-removal project.
The number of salmon swimming in the newly opened-up waters of the Klamath River, downstream of Keno Dam, was generally more than what was anticipated so soon. Roughly 2,000 chinook salmon were counted after the last of the dams was razed in August in surveys recently released by a multi-jurisdictional team of scientists. Sonar reports suggest the number could have been thousands more.
The fish were part of the river's fall run, its most populous run. The salmon journeyed from the mouth of the Klamath River in California's redwood-filled north to the sunny rolling hills of Siskiyou County – a total of 190 miles to the first of the former dam sites.
Beyond going the distance, the ability of the salmon to enter a new stretch of river hinged on navigating cloudy waters whipped up temporarily with the dam demolition as well as resisting the urge to stay in familiar territory. Salmon are built to return to their place of birth, though they sometimes 'stray' when it's in their interest.
'A lot of people expected it would take years for the fish to show up in these numbers,' said Mike Belchik, senior fisheries biologist for Northern California's Yurok Tribe, one of the primary tribes supporting the dam removal. 'That was wrong.'
Coho salmon, steelhead trout and Pacific lamprey also have been documented in the footprint of the old dams.
The fall-run chinook, once they got above the former dam sites, spawned either in the Klamath's main stem or in a tributary, such as Jenny or Shovel creeks, according to the surveys. This spring, newly born salmon began migrating to sea. (The adults die after spawning.)
'I don't know if the fish ran out of room or not,' Belchik said. 'Some of the habitats seemed fully occupied. But we're pretty stoked that so many went up there.'
More than 500 adults were estimated to have gone as far as Oregon, with an unknown number making it to Keno Dam. At least a few were observed in the dam's fish ladder, which is a series of more than 20 step pools designed to help fish bypass the dam, but none were documented to have reached the top. While a lack of monitoring could explain the complete absence of fish above the dam, the challenges at the dam are unmistakable.
One issue is believed to be a component called the trash racks. The vertical bars at the intakes of the fish ladder, which keep logs from clogging the passageway, were too narrow for salmon, an obstruction that federal officials at the Bureau of Reclamation have since worked on.
But the larger problem, according to Oregon wildlife officials, is that the fish ladder at Keno Dam dates to when the dam was built in 1967 and simply doesn't work well. The openings between the pools where fish pass are too small. The gates controlling the flow of water are faulty. The ladder is located too far from where fish approach.
'To provide fish passage that meets current state of Oregon and federal fish passage criteria, a new passage facility would be required,' wildlife officials wrote in an evaluation of the dam in 2023.
The Bureau of Reclamation confirmed in a statement to the Chronicle that it was working on 'fish passage solutions' at the dam. The agency, however, declined a request for an interview about the details of the work and the timing.
Fixing the dam for fish
While the Bureau of Reclamation's acquisition of Keno Dam last summer meant that the agency wasn't able to address fish passage until recently, at least directly, state and tribal officials say there were other reasons the issue wasn't taken up sooner.
One was uncertainty about whether the dam-removal project downriver would ever get done after years of delays. Another was skepticism that salmon would make it to Keno Dam even if the dams below came down. Furthermore, the focus on the removal of the four dams left little time and resources to figure out what to do with potential hurdles upstream.
'There just wasn't the capacity to do everything at once,' said Milburn, with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. 'Now we're tackling the things that were sidelined during the initial project.'
With two new grants from the federal government, Oregon wildlife officials have been tasked with identifying both short-term and long-term fixes for Keno Dam.
The state recently received the first $100,000 of a $4.5 million grant for immediate repairs, such as making sure the trash racks on the fish ladder don't block salmon. State officials have also convened a group of experts to study and recommend a permanent solution over the next three years, with the second $1.9 million grant. The recommendation will be forwarded to the Bureau of Reclamation for consideration.
According to the terms of the grant, the state-convened experts will evaluate such possibilities as constructing a more effective fish ladder at Keno Dam as well as dismantling the dam entirely, which could prove even more effective for fish passage.
Oregon officials say any proposal that involves dam removal must include dam replacement, presumably with one that's more fish friendly, or building a similarly purposed structure, possibly an artificial reef to replicate what was on the river historically, as has been informally discussed.
Maintaining the flood-control features of the 723-foot-wide Keno Dam is necessary to protect the area's farms, communities and infrastructure. The dam is located 12 miles southwest of the city of Klamath Falls, Ore.
'There are so many benefits from having that dam in place right now that I can't see removing it unless there is a very, very deliberate effort to make sure we're not causing harm to the economy and local folks,' said Gene Souza, executive director of the Klamath Irrigation District, a water agency that delivers supplies to growers in the basin on both sides of the state line.
Souza and others have also pointed to the potentially huge expense of demolishing the dam and building another. A new fish ladder could be pricey, too, requiring a specialized, durable and high-maintenance facility, though no cost estimates have been worked up yet for any of the options.
While Keno Dam appears to be the biggest hang-up on the river, the challenges for salmon are not likely to end there.
Upstream is one more dam, Link River Dam in Klamath Falls. This facility, long owned by the Bureau of Reclamation, regulates giant Upper Klamath Lake, where the Klamath River begins, and provides water supplies for the agriculturally vital Klamath Project. The dam has a fish ladder that has been upgraded, unlike the one at Keno Dam, but salmon passage is not assured.
Beyond Link River Dam, Upper Klamath Lake has been experiencing bouts of algae and poor water quality in recent years that could make fish navigation difficult. Above the lake, the Williamson, Sprague, and Wood rivers offer ideal habitat, but in the century that salmon have been absent, unknown obstacles may have emerged with human development.
Restoration work in many of the basin's waterways, including reviving wetlands and reconnecting creeks, has been ongoing to help existing fish and improve water conditions as well as to prepare for the anticipated salmon.
'The last thing we want is a bottleneck in the upper watershed,' said Rob Lusardi, assistant professor of wildlife, fish and conservation biology at UC Davis, who has studied salmon reintroduction strategies in the Klamath Basin. 'I'm not saying that's the case… (but) anywhere we can improve fish passage is a goal worth pursuing.'