Since January, residents living along the river have watched as the 100-year-old Copco Lake disappeared after the state began drawing down dams along the bi-state waterway. The state’s plan to remove four dams along the river is part of its strategy to restore salmon fisheries and habitat.

The county’s board of supervisors approved the emergency declaration resolution at a special meeting Tuesday on a 4–1 vote. Officials said they hoped state assistance could help them monitor the effects of sediment released that has sent algae and chemicals downriver into communities and affected fish.

“This is a proactive move,” Board Chair Michael Kobseff told residents at the special meeting. “The proclamation is to get attention from the state of California and hopefully somewhere from the federal agencies. … It’s just to provide assurance to the community.”

After samples tested showed high levels of arsenic and other metals, county residents were warned this month not to drink or touch Klamath River water that has already killed scores of fish and some wildlife.

Supervisor Ed Valenzuela voted against the resolution, saying the river’s problems are getting “plenty of spotlight” and questioned what the emergency declaration could add.

County leaders said they are hoping the declaration will raise alarms with the state to monitor the changing river conditions.

“This decision marks a pivotal moment in our county’s response to the evolving landscape, emphasizing the importance of preparedness and collaborative action,” county officials said in a press release this week.

The Governor’s Office of Emergency Services told The Epoch Times the county’s request for an emergency declaration “has been transmitted to the state and will be evaluated on its merits,” according to the office’s spokesman, Brian Ferguson.

Rick Dean, director of the county’s community development department, said since the start of the dam removals, the look of the river water has varied. Some days it resembles the color of chocolate milk and on others it’s black, depending on its flow and how much sediment has been dumped into it, he said.

“There will be times where it’s worse,” Mr. Dean told The Epoch Times. “All in all, it’s not good.”

After the Siskiyou County Environmental Health Department’s safety alert this month saying residents should avoid the river, due to high levels of arsenic, lead, and aluminum, one mother told county supervisors, also this month, her son was having nose bleeds. She said tests of their water showed high levels of chromium present.

Earlier this month, the Siskiyou County Department of Natural Resources released a report stating about 4.3 million tons of sediment had accumulated in the reservoirs over the past 80 years, with more than half of it in Copco Lake. The sediment is expected to eventually flush downriver after the dams are removed.

The state has proposed planting vegetation to stabilize the sediment, according to the report, but such is not yet in place, causing public health concerns, the report said.

The county’s environmental health division collected water quality samples which show there are “higher than baseline concentrations of arsenic, lead, and aluminum,” and nickel, according to the report.

The levels are above federal and state water quality standards, and may cause harmful health effects if consumed, the county reported.

“Therefore, it is not safe to consume the Klamath River surface water,” the county said in the report.

The county additionally advised residents in January not to attempt to rescue animals in the river for their own safety and well-being.

“Going into the mud can pose serious risks to your safety and well-being,” the county said in the alert.

Matt St. John, an environmental program manager with the state’s North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, which oversees the area in question, brushed off the county’s concerns at Tuesday’s meeting.

“The water board does not believe the Klamath River water quality conditions pose any public health risk associated with potential well contamination, recreational water contact, or to drinking water systems,” Mr. St. John said.

The state anticipated water quality to diminish during the dam removal project in the short term, he said. The only drinking water affected was a system that fed a state rest stop, according to Mr. St. John.

However, no one should be drinking surface water from the river without treating it, he said. The water board also told county supervisors it believes metals from sediment would not affect the area’s groundwater wells located near the river.

Some residents who spoke at the county’s meeting, however, said they remained concerned.

William Simpson, a rancher in the area, said he supported the proclamation and state of emergency.

“We need to err on the side of citizens,” Mr. Simpson said. “There’s a lot of things going wrong. There’s a lot of unintended consequences here. The people up and down the river are exposed to what’s going on in that river.”

Longtime Copco Lake resident Chrissie Reynolds held back tears as she talked about the animals trapped in mud after the lake drained in January. She said she heard gunshots Jan. 27 when the first two deer stuck were euthanized by the state. Then, eight more were killed, she said.

“I have not had proper sleep, proper rest,” she said. “Today’s [my] wedding anniversary and I haven’t had time to even think about that. Or my daughter’s 16th birthday, or Easter or anything.”

Resident Holly Hansard also said the community has suffered an extreme loss.

“It’s devastating, and it is shocking,” she told supervisors. “The full extent of the emergency hasn’t really come to surface. But we need a victory. We need a little bit of love.”

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American Rivers — an organization that has received millions of dollars from left-of-center environmentalist grantmaking organizations in recent years — was “the orchestrator of the Klamath dams removal project,” according to Siskiyou News, a local outlet in Northern California. The drawdowns of several reservoirs pursuant to the scheduled removal of four dams in the river preceded the deaths of “hundreds of thousands” of young salmon in the waterway, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting.

The push to remove the dams is often marketed as beneficial for salmon, as proponents of the plan — including American Rivers — have argued that the dams obstruct the natural movements of salmon as well as their access to habitat. However, weeks after beginning the process to remove one of the systems scheduled for deconstruction on the river, a large number of the 830,000 young salmon released into the river on Feb. 26 had died as of March 2, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW).

CDFW officials attributed the mass-death to gas bubble disease, which is caused by changes in water pressure, and stated that the changes in pressure driving the deaths was attributable to old dam infrastructure that is slated for removal. The agency further stated that water turbidity and dissolved oxygen levels do not appear to have contributed to the mass-death.

The young salmon that died travelled through a tunnel involved in the dam infrastructure that had previously not been accessible to the fish before officials altered the flow of water through the system as part of the removal process, Peter Tira, an information officer for the CDFW, explained to the Daily Caller News Foundation. The deaths were primarily a function of where the fish were released into the water, and the outcome, though unfortunate, is a learning opportunity for stakeholders who remain committed to making the Klamath River a free-flowing cold water river system again in the long-term, Tira told the DCNF.

American Rivers is also closely involved with the Klamath River Renewal Corporation (KRRC), a nonprofit coalition that is playing a key role in the removals in accordance with its stated mission to “remove the Klamath hydroelectric dams and restore a free-flowing river.” Along with other organizations involved with the KRRC, American Rivers has appointed several officials to the group’s board of directors.

However, some officials and environmental policy experts are not buying the government’s explanation for the mass-death of salmon, asserting instead that it is clear that the removal of the dams set conditions for the mass-death.

“The risk of gas bubbles is well known, so the fact that one million salmon were killed is a failure of government staff to prevent their death. Rather than act as this is the fault of the dam, government staff should acknowledge their mistake and learn from it,” Todd Myers, the director of the Washington Policy Center’s Center for the Environment, told the DCNF. “It is unfortunately typical that when government actions harm the environment, agencies spend more time deflecting blame than addressing the problem or being held accountable.”

Regardless of whether or not dam removal is the right decision, poor planning or execution of the removals should not be excused, Myers emphasized.

Republican California Rep. Doug LaMalfa, whose district includes the river and a is a longtime opponent of removing the dams, agreed with Myers’ assessment of the causes for the deaths.

LaMalfa has been warning removal proponents “from day one” that moving to hastily remove the dams without a comprehensive plan to handle second-order effects could be catastrophic, he told the DCNF. He believes many proponents of removing dams are mostly interested in adding metaphorical “trophies” to their shelves rather than devising and implementing effective plans to remove the dams responsibly.

“This is about political scores. People like me and others have been warning them for two decades that when you do this and you have no plan for the silt — and they don’t have one — they have been exposed that they have no plan. They’re just doing it, doing it on the fly,” LaMalfa told the DCNF. “We see the destruction with the flume that has gone down the whole river and out in the ocean. I understand it’s even moved all the way up towards Crescent City, which is many miles up the coast.”

American Rivers, meanwhile, does not appear to have publicly addressed the high volume of salmon deaths in the river, despite having advocated for the removal of the Klamath River dams for years. American Rivers did not respond to requests for comment.

“I’ve been around natural disasters all of my life, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Siskiyou County Supervisor Ray Haupt told the California Globe. “The river is essentially dead, as is everything in it.”

American Rivers has received at least $3.6 million from left-of-center grantmaking and environmentalist organizations — including the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the Resources Legacy Fund, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundationand the Water Foundation — since 2020, according to a review of tax filings. The New Venture Fund, one of the grantmaking nonprofits overseen by left-wing dark money behemoth Arabella Advisors, gave American Rivers nearly $400,000 between 2020 and 2022, according to tax filings.

There are still several other dams on the river that are set to come down as part of the removal project. Many property owners are seeing the values of their property along the water drop because of changes driven by the dam removal, LaMalfa told the DCNF.

“People with homes in the area are seeing their home values drop, even in one case their actual house might drop into the canyon because the water table has shifted,” LaMalfa told the DCNF. “And people with loans on their homes no longer have the value to keep their equity up.”

For its part, KRRC has established a mitigation fund to pay locals who may be adversely impacted by the consequences of dam removal.

“The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) manages the Fall Creek Fish Hatchery,” which is the facility that released the ill-fated salmon into the waterway, a KRRC spokesperson told the DCNF. “The Department determined the mortality of salmon fry was caused by remaining dam infrastructure, not by dam removal. Fortunately, that infrastructure will be removed along with the rest of the dam this year. In the meantime, CDFW will be trucking fish around the dam to avoid this occurring with upcoming releases from the hatchery. “

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