In January 2008, the negotiators announced the first of two breakthrough Klamath pacts: the 255-page Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement. In it, most of the parties ā farmers, three of the four tribes, a commercial fishermenās group, seven federal and state agencies, and nine environmental groups ā agreed to a basic plan. It includes measures to take down the four dams, divert some water from Project farmers to the river in return for guaranteeing the farmersā right to a smaller amount, restore fisheries habitat, reintroduce salmon to the upper basin, develop renewable energy to make up for the loss of the dams, and support the Klamath Tribes of Oregonās effort to regain some land lost when Congress āterminatedā its reservation in 1962.
This was a seminal moment, a genuine reconciliation among tribal and agricultural leaders who discovered that the hatred theyād nursed was unfounded. āTrust is the key,ā says Kandra, the Project farmer who went from litigant to negotiator. āWe took little baby steps, giving each other opportunities to build trust, and then we got to a place where we could have some really candid discussions, without screaming and yelling ā it was like, āHereās how I see the world.ā Pretty valuable stuff. The folks that developed those kinds of relationships got along pretty good.ā
Still, one crucial ingredient was missing: Unless PacifiCorp agreed to dismantle the dams, river restoration was impossible, and the pact was a well-intentioned, empty exercise. But PacifiCorp now had compelling reasons to consider dam removal. Not only was relicensing going to be expensive, but Klamath tribespeople were becoming an embarrassing irritant, in two consecutive years interrupting Berkshire Hathawayās annual-meeting/Buffett-lovefests in Omaha with nonviolent protests that won media attention. Also, the Bush administration, customarily no friend of dam removal, signaled its support for a basin-wide agreement. Negotiations between PacifiCorp and mid-level government officials began in January 2008, but made little progress until a meeting in Shepherdstown, West Virginia four months later, when for the first time Senior Interior Department Counselor Michael Bogert presided. As Bogert recently explained, President Bush himself took an interest in the Klamath ābecause it was early on in his watch that the Klamath became almost a symbolā of river basin dysfunction. To Bush, the decision to support dam removal was a business decision, not an environmental one: The āgame-changer,ā Bogert said, was the realization that because of the high cost of relicensing, dam removal made good fiscal sense for PacifiCorp. That fact distinguished the Klamath from other dam removal controversies such as the battle over four dams on Idahoās Snake River, whose removal the Bush administration continued to oppose.