Wednesday January 8, 2025
KOBI 5 —
U.S. Congressman Cliff Bentz announcing a law to protect Klamath water users from costs related to certain dam removals, has gotten the president’s signature.
The bill, H.R.7938, passed the U.S. House and Senate late last year and was penned into law by President Biden on January 4th.
The new law directs the Bureau of Reclamation to operate the Link River and Keno dams without imposing any costs upon water users.
Congressman Bentz called it a just result for farmers and ranchers who have sustained Klamath communities for the past century, emphasizing that promises made by the bureau when it took control of the dams more than ten years ago must be kept.
He told NBC 5 News, “This bill appropriately says, hey government if you’re going to take out four dams on the Klamath and expose these upper dams, the two upper remaining dams, to all kinds of requirements concerning fish passage and the like, that needs to be paid for by the folks that took the dams out. The environmental interests and the government and that’s who needs to be paying for those retrofits.”