Indians Take Fight Against Klamath Dams to Scotland

Along with environmentalists and North Coast commercial fishermen, the 18 tribal representatives plan to dramatize their concerns at the July 23 annual general stockholders meeting of ScottishPower. A U.S. subsidiary of that company owns and operates the Klamath River dams that have cut off the fish -- on which the tribes have depended for generations -- from their upriver spawning grounds.

The dams, tribal leaders contend, have kept migratory fish out of 350 miles of upriver habitat while producing oxygen-robbing algae and unnaturally raising and lowering the river to the detriment of the fish.

The tribes, which filed a $1-billion lawsuit against ScottishPower this spring asking for compensation, hope to use the trip to publicly pressure a firm that bills itself as environmentally responsible.

Members of the Karuk, Yurok, Hoopa and Klamath tribes plan to dig a fire pit near the corporation's Edinburgh headquarters, smoke Klamath salmon over the embers and share it with stockholders.

"We're going to take this fight right to the boardroom, right to the corporate headquarters, right to their shareholders," said Leaf Hillman, vice chairman of the Karuk Tribe of California. "We will go to the ends of the earth for the fish."

The tribes and their allies have lobbied PacifiCorp for two years to do something about the dams -- install fish ladders so salmon can crest the smaller of the dams, and perhaps even demolish the biggest of the six, the 173-foot-tall Iron Gate Dam.

But officials at Portland, Ore.-based PacifiCorp, ScottishPower's U.S. subsidiary, say that removing any of the dams could backfire, because they help improve downstream water quality by letting upriver particulates and farm pollution settle in the reservoirs behind the structures. The company warns that fish moving upstream of the dams could face hazardous water conditions.

"The challenge of the Klamath River is: There really isn't one silver-bullet solution," said Jon Coney, a PacifiCorp spokesman. "The tribes and their allies are free to go to Scotland. Our senior management is paying close attention. But the negotiations are here in the U.S."