Supporting Klamath River Restoration

For more than a century, farmers and ranchers, Native American Tribes and conservationists have battled over how to allocate the Klamath Basin’s limited water supplies. After devastating drought in 2001-2002 brought clashes between local communities to new heights, a broad coalition of more than 40 stakeholders negotiated the terms of three companion Klamath Agreements. After Congress failed to pass legislation to implement the Agreements in full, key players regrouped to find a way forward to remove four aging Klamath River dams to help restore the river and the communities that depend on it to ecological and economic health.

In the fall of 2022, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved a plan to demolish the four lower Klamath Dams. In what will be the largest dam removal and river restoration project in the world, the four dams are expected to come out and the river returned to its free-flowing state by the end of 2024.