by John Menke, Fort Jones 10/25/16

For 22-years I studied the flawed arguments on supposed benefits of Klamath River dams removal.  I told USDI rep. John Bezdek at his first public meeting in Yreka, CA:  “the Klamath River watershed is the poorest possible situation to consider removal of dams in North America”, maybe worldwide.

This river frequently dried up in summer prior to construction of the first of the dams.  The high-phosphorus content of parent rock, soils, water and sediments have always created naturally very poor water quality, even long before Indians and later white man settled in the Upper Klamath Basin (UKB).

Couple that with California and Oregon agendas including carbon credit accounting for electricity production, a switch-over to natural gas will provide the means for high pricing of electricity beyond an affordable level for everyone.

UC Davis Professor of fish biology Dr. Peter Moyle’s Ph.D. student Dr. Ken Gobalet, Professor of biology at CA State Univ. Bakersfield, would long ago have identified Chinook and coho salmon bones in Indian middens in the UKB if those species of fish ever frequented the UKB.  Gobalet is the expert on that subject.  The reef barrier near the site of the current Keno water diversion disallowed fish to migrate past that point most years.

Dr. Moyle and his colleagues including me have stated that slowing down the water passage rate in the Klamath River by the dams allows natural bioremediation of the high phosphorus levels in the water by blue-green algae sequestration into reservoir sediments—dead algae muck.  Water quality below the dams is better with the dams than without.

Reservoir sediments can be harvested economically and supply phosphorus for food production on a sustainable basis.

John W. Menke. A.A. Mathematics (1966), B.S. Range and Wildlands Science (1969), M.S. Agronomy (1970), Ph.D. Range Systems Ecology and Management (1973), professor UC Davis and Berkeley (1973-98).

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