The Klamath: A river dying for movement

The Oregonian editorial board wonders how the Klamath dam deal will deal with water.

Signs recently went up at access points along much of the Lower Klamath River warning the public of yet another outbreak of toxic algae caused by the low, slow, overheated flow of what was once one of the West's great salmon rivers.

Those all-too-familiar warning signs, which have followed toxic algae outbreaks now for three straight summers, ought to inspire the federal and state officials, utility executives and others struggling to negotiate a sweeping plan to remove Lower Klamath River dams and restore the river's health.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is trying to broker a historic deal on the Klamath that not only leads to the world's largest dam-removal project but also settles decades of dispute over water rights in the upper Klamath Basin. The parties are meeting in private negotiations after shifting a June 30 deadline to September. Now the date is near for a final agreement on one of the most complex and far-reaching environmental and economic deals in the history of the West.

The stakes are huge. The once mighty and crowded Klamath is starved for flow and choked with algae. It's been the scene of everything from bitter disputes over irrigation for upper river farmers around Klamath Falls to a major die-off of returning salmon in the lower river. This is much more than a local issue: The collapsing salmon runs on the Klamath have caused the repeated curtailments of offshore salmon fishing, damaging the economies of coastal communities up and down the Oregon and California coasts.

The Klamath dams are up for relicensing, and the federal government has required that their owner, PacifiCorp, spend hundreds of millions of dollars on fish passage if it wants to continue to operate them. Nearly everyone connected with the Klamath Basin now agrees that it makes more sense to remove the dams, replace the power they generate and begin returning the Klamath, and its salmon runs, to better health.

Yet any agreement will be enormously complicated, especially if the states of Oregon and California and the Interior Department are determined not only to remove the dams but also to resolve the myriad issues around the allocation of water for agriculture in the upper reaches of the Klamath. The risk is that the negotiators will agree on dam removal but also write into law heavy upriver irrigation withdrawals that would still leave the river without adequate flows for fish and other wildlife.

We're still hopeful that the negotiators will work out an acceptable agreement to remove the dams, restore 300 miles of spawning habitat and balance the future use of the scarce water in the Klamath Basin between farmers and fish. The talks are secret, and there's been no recent public indication of their progress.

But if the parties need any further inspiration to reach an agreement, they should take a walk together along the Lower Klamath, and read the newly posted signs warning that exposure to the overheated river and its algae could lead to skin rashes, liver poisoning and tumor growth. It's time for an agreement to bring this sick, damaged river back to health.