The State Water Resources Control Board, which regulates water quality and could veto a renewed license, blames warm, sluggish reservoirs behind the dams for "horrible" algae blooms in the river, said Russ Kanz, a staff scientist for the board.
In addition, the National Academy of Science and local officials in Humboldt County agree that dam removal is an option that should be examined to bring salmon back to the Klamath.
In October, Ron Reed fished in the Klamath River. The tribe's catch last fall was fewer than 100 chinook salmon.
(Karuk Tribe)
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But PacifiCorp, the company that owns the dams, did not list dam removal as an option in its application last year for a new long-term license.
In the Clinton era, when tribes and environmental groups used the relicensing process to force utilities to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to retool or remove dams, PacifiCorp agreed to remove a hydro dam from the White Salmon River in Washington state -- at a cost of $20 million. The company, which is owned by Scottish Power, has 1.6 million electricity customers in six western states.
As part of its relicensing application for dams on the Klamath, PacifiCorp is trying to negotiate a separate settlement with the Karuks and other stakeholders along the river. Dam removal is now "on the table" in those talks, said Jon Coney, a company spokesman, adding that the tribe's health argument is part of the negotiations.
Coney, though, said that the tribe's health claims are difficult to substantiate in a scientific or legal way.
"How do you separate the health problems out from all the other societal things that have happened to the tribe?" Coney asked.
To make their case, the Karuk Tribe offers tribal health statistics and stories of its people who have grown ill in the years without salmon.
Diabetes and heart disease were rare among tribal members before World War II. Part of the reason was the super-abundance in their salmon-rich diet of omega-3 fatty acids, which research has linked with reduced risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes.
"We do know that the nutritional values of subsistence fish are superior to processed foods and convenience foods," said William Lambert, an environmental epidemiologist at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland.
With subsistence fish all but gone from the Karuk diet, the percentage of tribal members with diabetes has jumped from near zero to about 12 percent, nearly twice the national average, according to the tribe. The estimated rate of heart disease among tribal members is 40 percent, about triple the national average.
A number of studies of Native Americans across the United States have shown that the loss of traditional foods is directly responsible for increasing rates of obesity-related illnesses.
Steve Burns, a physician for three years in the tribal clinic in Happy Camp, said that diabetes and other obesity-related illness are "a huge and growing problem."
"What is happening to the Karuk people is like something you would read about in a book on the destruction of a minority group in the old Soviet Union," he said.
The change in the tribe's diet in the past generation has been so great that many Karuk concede that it will be difficult -- even if the dams are knocked down and salmon runs are revived -- for them to return to their traditional healthful diet.
"Of course, we won't be able to eat salmon all the time like we did," said Ron Reed, a traditional fisherman and tribal representative to FERC hearings on the dams. But he said everyone in the tribe would eat vastly more than they do now and that children would once again be able to grow up with the staple food that has traditionally kept the bodies and spirits of the Karuk healthy.
Last year, because of the record-low catch, tribal elders did not have enough salmon for religious ceremonies. So they bought some.
