As readers of this blog know, I am a frequent critic of the Deschutes River Alliance. But, I have to acknowledge the extremely rare occurrence of the DRA getting something correct. As they point out in their latest blog post, Portland General Electric has changed the way in which they report steelhead returns. PGE no longer differentiates between natural origin steelhead and hatchery stock passed above the Pelton Round Butte project. As I wrote about last May, it is disingenuous for PGE to lump these together when reporting total steelhead returns. There is a huge difference between returning fish that were naturally spawned in the Upper Deschutes Basin and those spawned in a hatchery.

Of course, I remain a critic of the DRA (aka the tin foil hat crowd) and their typically unsound claims. The Klamath River Renewal Corporation is the entity managing the removal of the dams on the Klamath River and its restoration. As you are aware, this effort has been a fantastic success. The KRRC’s latest newsletter includes a discussion of water temperature improvements, copied below. One of the goals of the Selective Water Withdrawal tower was to mimic more natural temperatures in the Lower Deschutes which is beneficial to resident and anadromous fish.

Removal of the Iron Gate, Copco and JC Boyle reservoirs had an almost immediate positive effect on temperatures in the Klamath River. The reservoirs acted as huge heat sinks, creating abnormally cool conditions in the river in the spring and abnormally warm conditions in the fall. Temperature regulates almost all chemical and biological processes in a river and is one of several cues that can affect when salmonids migrate upstream, spawn, and out-migrate. Pre-project modeling predicted that below Iron Gate the warming cycle in the spring and the cooling cycle in the fall would shift about 18 days, and we were able to document this benefit in the first year of drawdown and dam removal, which you can see in the graph below:

In 2024 and 2025, water temperatures warmed at the Iron Gate station earlier in the year than prior to dam removal (2023). These warmer spring temperatures can be beneficial for increased growth in newly emerged salmonids rearing in the river during this time. In 2024 and 2025, average daily water temperatures reached 50 degrees Fahrenheit about one month earlier than in 2023. In 2024, water temperatures cooled at the Iron Gate station earlier in the year than prior to dam removal (2023). Temperatures dropped to 50 degrees in 2024, about a month earlier than in 2023. Earlier cooling reduces potential disease and thermal stress on salmonids and can act as a cue for migration and spawning to begin. Not only were seasonal fluctuations in temperature more natural, but daily fluctuations, which are beneficial to fish health, also saw improvement. In 2023 on average, the water temperature fluctuated by only 1.75 degrees Fahrenheit each day. In 2024, with the drawdown of the reservoirs and removal of the large heat sink, that was increased to over 5 degrees Fahrenheit in average daily fluctuation. We expect the full dataset of 2025 to show similar results.