Near the California-Oregon border, reservoirs that once submerged valleys have been drained, revealing a stark landscape that had been underwater for generations.
A thick layer of muddy sediment covers the sloping ground, where workers have been scattering seeds and leaving meandering trails of footprints. In the cracked mud, seeds are sprouting and tiny green shoots are appearing.
On a spring day more than 300 years ago, the people of the Lenape tribe gathered in their homeland along the Brandywine Creek in Delaware.
Hundreds of fish had just begun to make their way from the Atlantic Ocean, up the Delaware River and into the Brandywine to spawn in the creek’s upstream headwaters in Pennsylvania.
After a long, lean winter for the Lenape, these fish — now known as the American Shad — were greeted as relatives and the first source of fresh food for the Lenapes every year. But when Samuel Kirk built a dam in 1720 near where the Brandywine Creek meets the Christina River — which bridges the Brandywine with the Delaware River in the city of Wilmington — the shad could no longer swim to their ancestral spawning grounds upstream.
The largest-ever dam removal is underway, a milestone in the nation’s reckoning over its past attempts to bend nature to human will.
It was a small moment, with little fanfare, in one of the most remote patches of northern California. Just the rat-a-tat of three Caterpillar excavators gnawing through concrete signaled the beginning of the largest dam removal project in the history of the country, and perhaps the world.
There was no ribbon cutting or ceremonial dynamite detonation. But the demolition on that June day arrived only after decades of argument and activism.
The state’s top legal gaze will fall on the Union River dams after Brookfield Renewable on Dec. 6 filed a notice of appeal in Maine Supreme Court. Brookfield owns and operates Black Bear Hydro Project’s two dams on the river but in March 2020 was denied a water quality certificate by the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). Brookfield needs a state-issued water quality certificate before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approves renewing its license to operate the dams.
“Our organization remains very disappointed by Brookfield’s refusal to comply with Maine’s water quality standards,” DSF Executive Director Dwayne Shaw said. “Their delay tactics and appeals run counter to their self-described sustainability standards. DSF stands ready to enter the Supreme Court proceedings as an Intervenor to assure Brookfield is held accountable for the horrendous water quality and ongoing fish kills for which they are solely responsible.”
On a hillside above the Salmon River, Kyle Smith, his setter, and I stood there and panted. Still catching our breath from the climb, we looked down to see a fish break the water’s surface. The big Chinook rolled in a deep pool, a fine place to rest during her long trip home from the Pacific. Swimming more than 500 miles up the Columbia and Snake Rivers before taking a left up the Salmon, this fish dodged predators, avoided gillnets, and fought through walls of concrete to carry the next generation upstream.