Thursday November 20, 2025
ABC10 —
KLAMATH, Calif. — A stretch of the Klamath River that was buried beneath reservoirs for more than a century is open to the public again, and the transformation is dramatic. Rafting companies like Momentum River Expeditions are among the first taking people through canyons that haven’t seen daylight in generations, where newly exposed riverbanks and rock faces mark the beginning of a long recovery.
For founder Pete Wallstrom, getting people onto the water is part of the mission.
“The reason I started Momentum, my thing is I believe the best way to protect a place in a wild area is to get a wider range of people seeing that area as possible,” Wallstrom said. He added that outfitters help people who “wouldn’t go by themselves” understand the value of the places they visit.
That access is possible because on Aug. 28, 2024, crews broke through the last of four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath, completing what became the largest dam removal project in the world. The dams were aging and inefficient, and their removal restored more than 400 miles of salmon habitat and reopened over 2,200 acres of former lakebed.
For the Yurok Tribe, the change is personal.
“The river is fiercer, it is alive, it is swifter and running faster and clearer than I have ever seen it in my whole life,” said attorney and conservationist Amy Bowers Cordalis.
She grew up watching the river decline, including the warm, algae-filled conditions that once caused a large fish kill.
“It is our life force, our lifeblood that united us,” she said. With the dams gone, she believes healing can finally begin “all the way up to Upper Klamath Lake… all the way down to the ocean.”
But the return to a free-flowing river hasn’t erased the past. Rafting guide Tyler Pohle said it’s easy to see the layers of reservoir sediment left behind. “There’s about 2 or 3 feet of dirt that would have been reservoir sediment,” he said.
Floating past the former lakeside community of Copco, dead trees rise from the water and abandoned docks cling to the hillsides — reminders of the reservoir that once covered the canyon and a point of tension for property owners who’ve seen values drop.
“I think it’s been difficult and contentious,” Pohle said. “There’s people on all different sides of this.”
Among the skeptics is resident Lisa Mott, who regularly documents restoration work on her Facebook page. Mott said she visits once or twice a month to monitor changes and worries that sediment is being moved only to wash back into the river.
“Like, they’re trying to solve a problem moving the sediment out, but yet you’re creating another problem because you basically just move the dirt and it’s going to wash right back in to what you’re quote unquote, restoring,” she said.
Restoration crews say those concerns stem from what people saw at Jenny Creek, a tributary and former salmon spawning habitat. Jenny Wallgren with Resource Environmental Solutions said many residents believed equipment was pushing sediment into the water.
“What I’ve heard most recently is folks having a concern about construction and this material specifically going back down into the water,” she said.
Wallgren said crews were working only during the dry “in-water window” and stabilizing soil with vegetation to prevent runoff. “You see equipment in the water and you think they’re not supposed to be there. I would think that too if I didn’t know what was going on,” she said.
Wallgren said the machinery people saw was removing barriers to fish passage, clearing debris, and reconnecting the floodplain — not adding sediment.
“We’re pulling fish passage barriers out of the water,” she said. “We’re sculpting areas to reconnect the floodplain, but we’re not scooping mud into the water.” She added that in some cases sediment had to be moved to remove those barriers, but “we are not pushing sediment into the water.”
As of November, heavy machinery work in the water has finished, and crews have planted native grasses and vegetation around former dam sites to stabilize soil.
“We still think in 20 years it’s going to look better. In 50 years, it’s going to look better,” Wallgren said. “We needed to get to a place where it’s healthy, and then we need to get out of the way.”
Recovery is already visible in the return of salmon. Wildlife crews recently worked on a salmon gate as fish were spotted swimming into Oregon just weeks after the dams came down — a surprise even to biologists. California Fish and Wildlife environmental supervisor Morgan Knechtle called the early signs promising but said it will take far longer to understand the full impact.
“Definitive? No, I would say that it takes more time than that,” Knechtle said. “We’re talking about a 12 to 15 year time step to allow for multiple generations to return.”
Since 2018, salmon numbers have been below average, and Knechtle hopes the new fish hatchery will help boost the population. He also pushed back on rumors that fish were being trucked upstream to inflate counts.
“These fish are pioneers in terms of trying to find new habitats to distribute and lay their eggs in,” he said.
The final stretch of whitewater ends near the old power station — the last visible reminder of the hydroelectric era. Pohle said it will remain as a symbol of how much the landscape has changed. “Now, it’s an amazing place… like with sites like this, you don’t see in many other places in this area,” he said.