U.S. Acts to Help Wild Salmon in Klamath River

The owner of the dams, PacifiCorp of Portland, Ore., could face a costly decision: Should it spend up to $175 million to erect very long fish ladders, or should it abandon the dams and undertake the nation's largest removal project?

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries Service and other federal wildlife agencies presented their demands in response to PacifiCorp's application to renew its operating license for the dams.

The structures -- combined with diversions for irrigation, polluted runoff from ranching, logging and other factors -- have caused Klamath fish populations to plummet. Salmon runs have fallen so low in the last three years that federal regulators next week will decide whether to recommend that the annual fishing season be canceled.

PacifiCorp, owned by billionaire financial guru Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., has in recent years agreed to demolish three other hydroelectric dams, including a 150-foot-tall concrete structure on the White Salmon River in southwest Washington.

But that undertaking would be dwarfed by the scope of removing PacifiCorp's four dams on the Klamath, where worries over salmon have hurt farmers, whose irrigation supply was slashed in 2001. Also, commercial fishermen could lose this year's prized chinook catch.

"Something of this magnitude in terms of the number of dams and the sheer size is unprecedented," said Kelly Catlett, a policy advocate with Friends of the River in Sacramento. "This would be in a league of its own."

Company officials said they would consider appealing the demands of the wildlife agencies but remain optimistic that an agreement could be reached in talks that have been underway for more than a year with government agencies, Native American tribes, fishermen, farmers and other groups with a stake in the health of the Klamath River.

"We think the settlement process is a better way to go," said Dave Kvamme, a PacifiCorp spokesman. "You can get creative. You can take risks."

Steve Thompson, U.S. Fish and Wildlife's state operations officer, said those negotiations -- conducted biweekly in closed-door sessions -- are looking at potential remedies to the Klamath's myriad environmental problems, from its Oregon headwaters to where it pours into the Pacific north of Eureka, Calif.