NEWSOM BACKS DAM REMOVAL PROJECTS TO BRING BACK SALMON
California Gov. Gavin Newsom is pledging to fasttrack more than half a dozen projects by the end of his term to remove or bypass dams that have blocked salmon from returning to the state’s chilly mountain streams and acting as the keystone of a complex ecosystem that sustains both economies and spiritual beliefs for tribes.
Newsom — now in his second term and seen as a potential Democratic presidential candidate beyond 2024 — has worked hard to stake a claim as the nation’s most environmentally conscious governor. But his record has been dogged by criticism from environmental groups who say his water policies benefit big agriculture at the expense of salmon and other fish species in danger of becoming extinct.
Millions of salmon once filled California’s rivers and streams each year, bringing with them key nutrients from the ocean that gave the state an abundance of natural resources that were important to Indigenous peoples.
But last year, there were so few salmon in the state’s rivers that the officials closed the commercial fishing season.
Frustrated by the criticism leveled against his administration, Newsom on Tuesday released his strategy to protect salmon — a plan that includes a heavy helping of projects that would remove or bypass aging dams that prevent salmon from returning to the streams of their birth to lay eggs.
“These are tangible. And so much of the work we do is, you know, you can’t see it, you can’t feel it,” Newsom told The Associated Press in an interview near the banks of the Elk River in Eureka near a recently completed project that returned agricultural land to a flood plain habitat for salmon. “But when you see a dam being removed and you come back a few months later — a year or two, five years later — and you see real progress.”
Newsom’s strategy includes a promise to complete an agreement by the end of the year to remove the Scott Dam and replace the Cape Horn Dam along the Eel River that have blocked salmon access to 288 miles of habitat. Once completed, the Eel would be the longest free-flowing river in the state, flowing north through the Coast Ranges before emptying into the Pacific Ocean near the town of Fortuna. The two dams are owned by Pacific Gas & Electric and no longer produce hydropower.
By next summer, Newsom said, he would complete plans for the removal of the nearly 100-year-old Rindge Dam along Malibu Creek in L.A. County that would give steelhead another 15 miles of spawning and rearing habitat.