news story / By Japhet Weeks

Dammed if you do …

Why is PacifiCorp bending the truth about settlement talks?

(Jan. 24, 2008)  Early last week, stakeholders in the Klamath settlement talks went public with a water deal that was immediately hailed as “historic” and a “breakthrough” in the press. That deal, the product of three years of closed-door meetings between myriad interests including environmental groups, farmers, commercial fishermen and tribes, comes with a $1 billion price tag over the next 10 years and promises to restore fish populations and fish habitat in the Klamath river as well as ensure agriculture and cheap energy to Upper Basin farmers for decades to come.

But — as many have noted — it doesn’t provide for the removal of four controversial dams owned by the Portland-based utility PacifiCorp. What those same folks fail to mention is that the Restoration Agreement doesn’t purport to tackle the dam issue. A subset of the Klamath Settlement Group is already at work on an agreement with PacifiCorp, which they hope to finalize in February. If an agreement is reached, it will set in motion the largest peacetime dam removal project in history.

Klamath River. Photo by Hank Sims.

GALLERY >

Of course, for many of the stakeholders involved in the settlement talks and their constituents, signing onto the Restoration Agreement — now open for public comment — is contingent upon dam removal.

“The agreement that was released would die on the vine if we don’t negotiate a successful agreement with PacifiCorp [to remove the dams],” said Troy Fletcher of the Yurok Tribe last week.

For many, the Restoration Agreement represents an incredible compromise among people who, just three year ago, could hardly stand the thought of being in the same room with one another.

But others are less copacetic. The Hoopa Valley Tribe has already condemned it as “… an old West irrigation deal — guarantees for irrigators, empty promises for the Indians.” The Oregonian ran an editorial last week titled, “A Klamath settlement that isn’t,” in which they recommended holding off on the celebratory champagne: “It’s not really a settlement,” the paper explained. “It’s more like a real estate agent declaring he’s got a great deal on a house for you, but the current owner doesn’t know about it yet.”

The message: PacifiCorp doesn’t want dam removal. The even subtler message: PacifiCorp has been kept in the dark. And that mantra is one that — to the surprise of many stakeholders — the power company itself has adopted since the agreement was released last week and fed to the press.

“One questions what was settled,” PacifiCorp spokesman Paul Vogel told the Klamath Falls-based paper Herald and Newslast week. “When the license holder and several hundred thousand customers didn’t have a seat at the table, that is irresponsible. We initiated settlement talks three years ago. To have no part in crafting of this document, it really makes you ask yourself what substance there is to it.”

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