Just two years after the removal of the last dam on the Klamath River, a new water management plan could threaten hard-won salmon restoration efforts and tribal water rights in Northern California.
Tribes and environmental advocates warn that California Gov.Gavin Newsom’s Bay-Delta Plan could divert water from the Trinity River, the Klamath’s largest tributary, into the Central Valley for agriculture. Those diversions could reduce the cold-water flows that help control the water temperature and protect salmon.
The threat comes from 300 miles away in the Bay-Delta, where the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers converge into San Francisco Bay and where Newsom is proposing major changes to water management rules to allow for greater flexibility in water use for cities and farms while protecting native species. Advocates say the plan, along with Newsom’s recent veto of a critical water rights bill, puts the Klamath Basin at risk.
“People don’t realize that all of those decisions in the Central Valley on water decisions do impact the Klamath through the Trinity River and these water releases for salmon,” Regina Chichizola of Communities United for Water Protection told Native News Online.
Newsom’s plan lacks protections for the Trinity River. The 165-mile-long river snakes through the Trinity Alps before meeting the Klamath River in Weitchpec, Humboldt County, near the Yurok and Hoopa Valley reservations. The Klamath is nearly 100 miles longer, flowing from Oregon into California before emptying into the Pacific Ocean. The Yurok, Karuk, Hoopa, Shasta and Klamath tribes have lived in its watershed since time immemorial.
In 2000, a federal directive called the Trinity River Record of Decision restored flows to the Trinity River that had been diverted into the Central Valley to irrigate crops. In 2002, the Klamath River suffered a massive fish kill—a sudden, widespread death of fish in a body of water—caused in part by warm water temperatures, killing an estimated 34,000 salmon. The loss prompted a movement to remove dams along the river to restore the salmon population and improve water quality. Federal regulators approved the removal in 2022, and the last dam was removed in 2024.
In just two years, the river’s Chinook salmon population has surged, with nearly 20% returning. Earlier this year, the Klamath Tribes Ambodat Department reported that, for the first time in more than 100 years, wild salmon were hatching in its waters.
The Trinity River is essential to the salmon’s survival. When fish show signs of disease, a harbinger of a fish kill, the Lower Klamath Project management plan allows Trinity water to be released into the Klamath to cool it and prevent a mass die-off.
“The Trinity River breathes fresh oxygen into, and feeds clean water to the Klamath,” Yurok tribal fisherman Jamie Holt said in a statement. “Without its life-giving influence, the lower Klamath would struggle to survive. We truly are one system.”
Last week, Newsom vetoed Assembly Bill 2218, which would have bolstered protections for the Klamath and Trinity rivers by establishing policies to address water-related inequities. The bill would have required disputes between tribes and state water agencies over water projects in tribal ancestral territories to undergo mediation led by the Governor’s Office of Tribal Affairs.
Without the bill or other protections, Trinity River water could be diverted back into the Central Valley to offset water allocations from the Bay-Delta. While the state says there will be no adverse impacts, Chichizola said tribes and advocates have been asking the State Water Resources Control Board to protect Trinity River flows into the Klamath for eight years, to no avail.
“That’s why a lot of people feel like the Newsom veto had a lot to do with the Bay-Delta Plan and voluntary agreements and things like building sites, reservoirs,” Chichizola explained. “People don’t realize that Central Valley water does impact the Klamath through the Trinity River, including water releases for salmon. If they put those protections in place for the Trinity as part of the Bay-Delta Plan, like we’ve been asking, we would be fine.”
Tenayah Gewsaw, a Yurok mother, fisherman and organizer for Communities United for Water Protection, said in a statement that the Bay-Delta Plan threatens Native lifeways in the Klamath Basin, especially after the return of salmon.
“Policymakers in Sacramento must not adopt a Bay-Delta plan that ignores the impacts to the Trinity River,” Gewsaw said. “The Trinity River and Lower Klamath are irreplaceable lifelines for salmon, wildlife, and Tribal villages — not a slush fund for the Central Valley.”
An adoption hearing for the Bay-Delta Plan and Voluntary Agreements will be held Oct. 29 at the California Environmental Protection Agency building in Sacramento.
Leading up to the hearing, tribes, local communities and Communities United for Water Protection are holding events to educate the public about the risks to the Trinity River.
Events are listed below.
Oct. 16, 6 p.m. — Brewing Change: What’s Next for the Klamath River, The Fight for the Trinity, Froth, 420 California St., Arcata, California.
Oct. 28-29, 9 a.m. — California State Water Resources Control Board Bay-Delta Plan/Voluntary Agreements adoption hearing, CalEPA Building, 1001 I St., Sacramento, CA 95814.
Oct. 29, noon — Rally for Our Rivers and public comment, CalEPA Building, 1001 I St., Sacramento, CA 95814.
