What Does the Bureau of Reclamation Actually Operate in the Klamath Project?
Moss Driscoll, Klamath Water Users Association
After fourteen months of convoluted and often contentious meetings with stakeholders, including tribes and members of the Klamath Water Users Association (KWUA), the Bureau of Reclamation recently completed its consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service over ongoing operations of the Klamath Project.
Such a consultation is required under Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1972, to address “discretionary” federal actions that have a detrimental impact on fish and wildlife listed as threatened or endangered under the ESA.
This consultation process was documented in a series of technical reports that together totaled 976 pages, excluding references and appendices, attempting to analyze the ongoing operations of the Klamath Project. But reading between all that bureaucratic speech – what does the Bureau of Reclamation actually do?
Historically, Reclamation was responsible for constructing and then delivering water from canals and other facilities to ranchers and farmers of the Klamath Project. But Reclamation long ago handed that responsibility over to local irrigation districts. Those districts also fix and maintain the delivery infrastructure. So, Reclamation does not actually “deliver” water to anyone or any entity in the Klamath Project.
Link River Dam
Today, what Reclamation does is largely confined to Link River Dam, at the lower end of Upper Klamath Lake, where six separate cast-iron gates – each five feet wide and seven feet tall – can be raised or lowered, to adjust the rate of water flowing out of the lake. When fully opened, each gate has a maximum release capacity of approximately 500 cubic feet per second (cfs).
Along with these gates, larger sets of stoplogs in the dam’s bays – all 25 of them – can be removed, to increase the amount of water that can be released through the dam. Between the gates and the stoplogs, the technical answer is somewhere between zero and about 10,000 cfs can be discharged from Upper Klamath Lake through Link River Dam.
Prior to the dam, the lake’s outflow was controlled by two natural rock reefs at the head of Link River, which were excavated and lowered during the dam’s construction in 1921.
Thus, human control has replaced natural forces. By adjusting the gates and stoplogs on Link River Dam, the releases can be regulated, thereby manipulating water levels in Upper Klamath Lake and flows in the Klamath River.
Link River Dam was originally built by the California Oregon Power Company (Copco), under the arrangement that title to the dam be held by the United States and that it be operated to provide water for the Klamath Project. For 102 years, the dam was generally operated in this manner by Copco or its predecessors.
In 2024, in coordination with the removal of hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River, the Bureau of Reclamation for the first time ever assumed responsibility for operating and maintaining Link River Dam.
Keno Dam
In addition to assuming operational responsibility for Link River Dam, last year Reclamation also accepted title to Keno Dam, as a donation from PacifiCorp. Keno Dam controls the flow in the Klamath River approximately 21 miles downstream from Link River Dam.
Keno Dam also occupies the general location of a natural rock reef, which historically functioned as a natural dam. Like at Link River Dam, this reef was excavated and lowered when the power company built the original and now current dam.
Through Keno Dam’s six massive floodgates – each 40 feet wide and 17 feet tall – the flow of the Klamath River is subject to human control.
The Significance of Gate Operations
The matter of the flow in the Klamath River at the Oregon-California border is inherently a question of federal law, being an interstate and navigable (at least in part) waterway.
Upper Klamath Lake is one of the largest natural freshwater lakes in the Western United States. Like the Klamath River, for a period the lake was used for commerce by the timber industry. More recently, companies have harvested blue-green algae from the lake for sale as a nutritional supplement.
The Klamath Tribes – whose former reservation bordered Upper Klamath Lake – claim water rights to certain water levels in the lake(along with certain flows in tributaries to the lake). These determined rights are for the purpose of supporting the tribes’ reserved hunting and gathering treaty rights. Along with the U.S. Department of Justice, the Klamath Tribes are adjudicating these rights in a legal proceeding in Oregon that has been ongoing for more than half a century.
Beyond being an interstate waterway, the Klamath River is the third largest stream flowing into the Pacific Ocean in the continental United States. While there is no major industrial port, navigable commerce, or population center on the lower Klamath River, there are two large federal reservations for the Yurok and Hoopa tribes. These tribes have historically fished the lower river for subsistence and commercial purposes. Their reservations also include certain – although still unquantified – water rights to water in the river.
In the Pacific Ocean, a commercial fishing industry – including tribal fishers – historically has relied on salmon originating from the Klamath River and its tributaries for a significant portion of their catch. Fish stocks – particularly fall-run Chinook salmon – have been struggling in recent years, leading to several annual closures of the fishery.
Given these various interests in water levels in Upper Klamath Lake and flows in the Klamath River, the matter of releases from Link River and Keno dams is an acutely legal and political matter. These operations necessarily have ecological significance, but that consideration has always been viewed through (and influenced by) the legal and political context.
Legal Origins
While Reclamation has only recently taken direct physical control of both dams, this notion that the agency can control water levels in Upper Klamath Lake and flows in the Klamath River is not novel; it’s existed since the Klamath Project was first authorized.
In 1905, prior to the Klamath Project being approved by the Secretary of the Interior, Congress passed a law that gave Reclamation the authority to “change the levels” of Lower Klamath and Tule lakes “or any river or other body of water connected therewith…”
At the time, it was believed such a law was necessary for Reclamation to drain two large interstate waterbodies on which there was some level of commercial navigation. But as later demonstrated after the power company first built Link River Dam and later Keno Dam, the necessary implication of this law was the authority to regulate water levels in Upper Klamath Lake and flows in the Klamath River.
Conclusion
As explained, the Bureau of Reclamation’s day-to-day work does not involve actually delivering water. Instead, Reclamation’s present operations are functionally limited to changing the gates on Link River and Keno dams – and managing the related parts of these two dams, like fish ladders. The gates and associated infrastructure must always be managed in some manner, so long as the dams exist.
Being subject to human control, that management is necessarily subject to debate and contest – legal, political, or otherwise.
This point was amply demonstrated in December when shortly after accepting title to Keno Dam, Chinook salmon apparently began appearing in the dam’s fish ladder for the first time. After various tribes objected over the reports, Reclamation scrambled to modify the facility to accommodate the larger fish. Reclamation has now committed millions in federal funding for further modifications and more studies on this dam that PacifiCorp “donated” to the United States just months ago.
Although it is tempting for many to draw a big circle around the Bureau of Reclamation’s operations (and influence), the agency’s operations effectively consist of that simple action – raising or lowering the various gates and operating the related parts of Link River and Keno dams.
Any ESA consultation or related science initiative should begin and end with this “action,” because as a practical matter, it is all that Reclamation directly controls. As acknowledged, that action is inherently politically and legally complicated, which is all the more reason the scope of Reclamation’s discretion should be carefully and narrowly drawn.
¹Act of February 9, 1905, 33 Stat. 714.