TU is a national leader on hydropower reform, working to ensure that thousands of electricity generating dams conserve and protect wild trout and salmon. In California alone, 50 federal licenses for 150 dams are up for renewal by 2020, and these licenses will govern their operations for 30-50 years. The dams often divert 95 percent of the river's summer flow and have inadequate or absent fishways. Most will continue to operate, only better. A few no longer serve a useful purpose, and will come out. Either way, this is literally our once-in-a-lifetime-chance to bring them up to date. And TU's leadership is making it happen. On the Klamath River, to take one very important example, we are geared up to return salmon and steelhead to hundreds of miles of lost habitat that these remarkable fish have not been able to access since 1918 because of dams.
Chuck Bonham
TU California Director
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