[News] Fight of the River People

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/humboldt/fight-of-the-river-people/Content?oid=19878127
Fight
of the River People
Thadeus Greenson - March 4, 2021
------------------------------

It was a Friday in late August when four jet boats made their way up the
Klamath River under a cloudless blue sky. The boats carried three tribal
chairs. From the Karuk Tribe, there was Russell "Buster" Attebery, who'd
found pride as a boy catching salmon from the river and bringing them home
to his family, and later come to believe some tribal youth's troubles —
from suicides to substance use — could be traced back to their never having
had that opportunity, growing up alongside a river now choked with algae
and diminishing fish populations. There was Joseph James from the Yurok
Tribe, who'd come to see the river's declining health as a "slow
strangulation" of his people — "river people" — who have lived along its
banks and relied on its salmon as the bedrock of their diet since time
immemorial. And there was Don Gentry, recently elected to a third term as
the upriver Klamath Tribes' chair, whose people hadn't seen salmon and
steelhead swimming in their ancestral territory in a generation.

There were others on the boats, too. People like Craig Tucker, an
environmentalist who promised himself in school he'd never waste his career
fighting for quixotic causes, yet had now come to spend two decades working
on Klamath dam removal. There was Frankie Joe Myers, who'd come of age amid
the fight to undam the river and was now in the thick of it as the Yurok
Tribe's vice chair.

But the trip up the Klamath that day in August wasn't really about any of
the people who'd made undamming the river a central part of their life's
work, it was about about making a case to two men who'd never set eyes on
the river before but held its future in their hands.

Weeks earlier, after a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ruling had
derailed a hard-fought 2016 agreement to remove the four hydroelectric dams
choking the lower Klamath River, Myers and James had issued a plea. While
PacifiCorp, the electric company that owns and operates the dams, was
publicly musing about walking away from the agreements, Myers and James
decided to appeal directly to Berkshire Hathaway, the holding company run
by Warren Buffett, perhaps the world's most successful and famous investor,
which had acquired PacifiCorp for more than $5 billion back in 2005.

In a meticulously worded email to Berkshire Hathaway Energy Vice Chair Greg
Abel, who's believed by many to be the 89-year-old Buffett's successor,
Myers said he and James invited one of the world's most powerful men to
simply come see the river, sit and talk. Abel accepted and soon he and
Berkshire Hathaway Energy CEO William Fehrman were sitting on a jet boat
headed upriver.

It's hard to overstate the stakes that day on the river. Activists and
officials alike had long believed the best chance to fundamentally change
the dam-removal conversation was to get Berkshire engaged, a step the
company seemed entirely unwilling to take, a core tenet of its company
ethos being not to interfere in the operations of its subsidiaries. Yet
here sat Abel and Fehrman, the Klamath wind in their hair.

Tribal officials had worked hard to keep word of the visit close, concerned
an ill-timed protest or demonstration could jeopardize this show of good
faith. They'd mapped out the day carefully to showcase the Klamath's beauty
and potential, planning to give the executives a meandering tour of family
fishing holes and camps on the river until eventually landing where Blue
Creek enters the Klamath — a scenic spot filled with biological diversity
and spiritual significance for the Yurok Tribe — where they'd lunch on
traditional salmon cooked on sticks over an open flame. But as the boats
rounded a sweeping bend in the river, it became instantly clear some had
other plans. A floating blockade — a few boats and dugout canoes, with
large nets stretched across the river — came into view, dotted with signs
calling for the river's undamming, some punctuated by red fists.

Myers, who said he'd personally assured Berkshire representatives they
would be safe coming to Klamath, said his heart quickened a bit when he saw
the blockade, unsure what was to follow.

"It was risky," Myers said. "There were a few moments when I was like, 'I
have a couple of the richest men in the country on a jet boat and I don't
know what [the protesters] were going to do.' ... Everyone in the boats
felt very vulnerable."

The blockade, which comprised a couple dozen of the Klamath River's most
ardent activists, ordered the jet boats to stop. Then, the activists took
turns addressing the representatives of one of the world's most powerful
companies.

One of them presented the men with a plastic jug of water pulled from
behind one of the dams, where the water is choked with bright green algae
and pressed them to open the jug and smell the toxic brew. Another noted
that an entire generation of water protectors had been raised in this fight
under the oppressive weight of a sick river. Jon Luke Gensaw pulled off his
COVID-19 facial covering, telling the men to take a good look at his face.

"If this doesn't end, you're going to see more of us," he said. "I want you
to remember my face because you'll see me again."

Chook-Chook Hillman, who joined the effort to remove the dams when he was a
teenager and whose dad would take him to the meetings with upriver
irrigators and ranchers that led to the 2010 dam removal agreement that
died in Congress, started by asking his son to present the executives with
a gift.

"Thank you — very kind," one of them can be heard to stammer in a recording
of the exchange.

 [image: Berkshire Hathaway executives talk to Klamath Justice Coalition
activists who stopped them on a trip to the river. - MAHLIJA FLORENDO]
<https://media2.fdncms.com/northcoast/imager/u/original/19878124/news1-02-4c0ab5e3c936180e.jpg>

   - Mahlija Florendo
   - Berkshire Hathaway executives talk to Klamath Justice Coalition
   activists who stopped them on a trip to the river.

The gift, Hillman later told the men, was a small white flag affixed to a
wooden stick. Hillman said he and his fellow water protectors would be
waiting when the executives and tribal officials returned downriver. If
they waved the flag, it would be a sign that an agreement had been
restored. But if not, Hillman warned, Berkshire Hathaway should brace for
protests like it had never seen.

"If you guys ain't waiving that flag when you're coming down the river —
it's on," he said.

Annelia Hillman told the executives that the health of the river is their
responsibility — their problem — and one that's going to effect their
children and grandchildren, their futures.

"It's affecting you, too," she said. "Don't think this is an Indian
problem. It's your fucking problem, too."

After a tense 15 or so minutes, the blockade moved to the side and the
boats headed on. When they came back down again some hours later, Hillman
said no one aboard would make eye contact with him or the other water
protectors.

The flag was nowhere to be seen.

*About six weeks* before that day on the river, the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission had issued a ruling that put the groundbreaking dam
removal deal — itself a resuscitation of a more ambitious deal reached in
2010 that was dependent on Congressional approval that withered on the vine
— in serious jeopardy.

Under the terms of the 2016 deal, the Klamath River Renewal Corporation had
asked FERC to transfer the licenses of the four dams to a newly created
nonprofit, which would then oversee and assume liability for the removal
process, allowing PacifiCorp to step away cleanly. The dams would then be
removed using $450 million already raised for the purpose — $200 million
from PacifiCorp ratepayers and $250 million in water bonds authorized by
California's Proposition 1.

But FERC ruled the company couldn't simply walk away from the dams it built
and the situation it had created, and would need to remain attached to the
dams as their co-licensee until their removal.

Regina Chichizola, the policy director at Save California's Salmon who has
been involved in Klamath dam removal and other watershed restoration
efforts for more than a decade, said she had mixed emotions watching the
FERC hearing. On the one hand, she said, she personally understood the
ruling and why a private company shouldn't be allowed to permanently alter
a river for profit and then simply walk away. She also knew it would mean
trouble.

"I know how PacifiCorp is and I knew they would demand more because they
always demand more," Chichizola said.

Within days of the ruling, PacifiCorp began publicly hedging, saying it had
undercut some of the main "customer protections" that had brought the
company to the table for the deal. This was a foundational shift, it held,
and the deal would need to be re-negotiated.

But any sizeable delay would cut sharply against the chances of reaching a
new accord and seeing the dams removed, as the pot of money for the project
was unlikely to grow and cost projections would escalate with every month
or year that passed.

In the days that followed FERC's ruling, pockets of dam removal
stakeholders met quietly, plotting paths forward. Chook-Chook Hillman said
he and a handful of longtime river advocates got together on the banks of
the Klamath with a whiteboard and started brainstorming. Chichizola held
conference calls with environmental groups and other stakeholders. Tucker
and tribal leaders pondered their next move. And North Coast Rep. Jared
Huffman readied to throw all his weight as a member of Congress at the
problem.

They all settled on a single target for what would be a months-long,
multi-pronged campaign the likes of which the Klamath had never seen:
Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett.

Since Berkshire purchased PacifiCorp back in 2005, many dam removal
advocates had felt Buffett was the key to getting the company on board. He
wasn't simply one of the world's richest man, but the Oracle of Omaha, an
almost mythical business figure famed for down-home sensibilities and
philanthropy.

Advocates had long sought to turn his attention to the Klamath. For
consecutive years, Tucker had bought up as many tickets as possible to
Buffett's annual shareholders' meetings — known by some as the "Woodstock
of capitalism" — schmoozy affairs more focused on symposiums and cocktail
parties than balance sheets. They'd successfully bombarded question and
answer periods with Buffett with inquiries on the Klamath, staged die-ins
in front of black tie events and even had Native women flood a cocktail
party at a diamond store wearing traditional regalia to talk to revelers
about the Klamath and what it means to them.

"I have no idea how somebody like Warren Buffett thinks," Tucker said of
the rationale for the approach. "It's hard for me to put myself in the
shoes [of someone] who has more money than God. But I do know he's 90 and I
do know he has Native grandchildren. These shareholder meetings of
Berkshire Hathaway are big parties. There's not that much business but a
lot of cocktail parties. And I don't think he wants them to be dominated by
talk of the plight of Native people."

But publicly anyway, none of these efforts seemed to get through to the man
who'd built an empire at least on the image that he purchased good
companies and let them operate as they saw fit.

This time had to be different. And the effort also had to break through
amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which made mass demonstrations — and even
traditional organizing strategies — dangerous and impractical.

On the banks of the river, Hillman and other Klamath Justice Coalition
members decided they would use personal connections to write heartfelt
letters appealing to people close to Buffett.

Chichizola and others, meanwhile, plotted a massive social media push. They
found Gates scholars willing to post messages in support of dam removal,
hoping to catch the ear of Bill Gates, a longtime friend of Buffett's. And
they'd work toward a large scale day of action that would feature an online
event as well as on-the-ground protests.

Meanwhile, Myers and James got to work on their letter to Abel, the man
many expect to succeed Buffett at the helm of Berkshire Hathaway and its
quarter of a trillion dollars in annual revenue, imploring him to come see
the Klamath River and its people for himself.

*Ten days prior* to the blockade on the river, Huffman convened a special
virtual hearing of his Water, Oceans and Wildlife Subcommittee on dam
removal and Klamath River conditions. The hearing featured tribal leaders
who spoke of the river's importance to their people; environmental
scientists who detailed its dire condition and the dams' impacts on water
quality and fish populations; and North Coast State Sen. Mike McGuire and
State Water Resources Control Board Chair Joaquin Esquivel, both of whom
indicated the state had taken a light hand with permitting PacifiCorp's
Klamath dams — a practice that would end should the company walk away from
the deals.

Berkshire Hathaway sent to the forum PacifiCorp Vice President Scott
Bolton, whom Huffman, an environmental lawyer prior to entering politics,
seemed to relish questioning.

click to enlarge [image: Chris Weinstein, a GIS and drone operator for the
Karuk Tribe, holds a jar full of Microcystis cyanobacteria from the Copco
Reservoir on the Klamath River. The algae produces a carcinogenic liver
toxin called microcystin, which is harmful to humans and animals, including
salmon. - STORMY STAATS]
<https://media1.fdncms.com/northcoast/imager/u/original/19878125/news1-03-aaf23434cdeca491.jpg>

   - Stormy Staats
   - Chris Weinstein, a GIS and drone operator for the Karuk Tribe, holds a
   jar full of Microcystis cyanobacteria from the Copco Reservoir on the
   Klamath River. The algae produces a carcinogenic liver toxin called
   microcystin, which is harmful to humans and animals, including salmon.

"Mr. Bolton, I think it's pretty clear that you and PacifiCorp are at a
crossroads," he said. "You have a choice. The river is dying. The fishery
is dying. Your dam is causing a toxic concentration of algae that's the
worst in the world. ... But you're not powerless to protect your
ratepayers. We can work shoulder to shoulder, get this done on time and on
budget, or you can blow this thing up."

The comment struck back to something Huffman said in his opening statement,
laying the Klamath River's future squarely at Buffett's feet.

"Warren Buffett has the chance to be a hero in Indian country," he said.
"Or he has the potential to be remembered as someone who perpetuated a
grave injustice just to make a little more money."

The ensuing weeks would see a bevy of action. Huffman introduced
legislation that would have essentially given downriver tribes a voice in
FERC's re-licensing processes, ensuring they would be unpleasant affairs
for PacifiCorp moving forward.

Meanwhile, as Chichizola and others pushed toward the day of action in
October, protests began to pop up — in San Diego, where PacifiCorp was
pursuing a power deal, at the company's headquarters in Oregon and
elsewhere — and Klamath hashtags began to trend.

"One of the things I like to stress when talking about the story is how
every single part was in play," said Chichizola, adding that scientists
argued the scientific case for dam removal, politicians played politics,
tribal leaders negotiated and coordinated, and a community of activists —
many who'd grown up in this effort — organized and rallied.

When the day of action arrived, it was massive, with COVID-19 adapted
protests in 11 cities — and in front of Buffett's home — 7,000 people
attending a live online forum and 10,000 signing petitions calling for dam
removal. Multiple national Native rights groups joined the social media
push and #undamtheklamath began trending on multiple social media
platforms. Meanwhile, a coalition took out a full-page advertisement in *USA
Today* calling for dam removal and casting it as a social justice issue.

Tucker said he's simply never seen anything like it.

"We had protests popping up all over the place that we didn't really
organize and that's what you want — that's a grassroots movement right
there," he said.

*It's hard to pinpoint* the moment it happened — whether it was on the
river that day, Huffman's grilling of Bolton, the scores of heartfelt
testimonials on the day of action — but something moved and Berkshire came
to the table. (Berkshire Hathaway, through a spokesperson, "declined the
opportunity" to be interviewed for this story.)

But when the company did decide to take PacifiCorp's position at the
negotiating table, stakeholders say everything changed. Myers, the Yurok
Tribe's vice chair, said Fehrman, Berkshire Hathaway Energy's CEO, stepped
in as the company's lead negotiator and took a granular approach to
understanding the agreement, the dam removal process and potential
liabilities involved.

Over the course of about a week, a core negotiating team formed, with
Fehrman representing Berkshire, Myers representing the Yurok Tribe and
Tucker there for the Karuk Tribe, as well as Oregon Department of
Environmental Quality Director Richard Whitman and California Department of
Fish and Wildlife Director Charlton Bonham. Because everyone's schedules
were packed, the only time they could find to meet were early mornings and
weekends, but Myers said no one flinched and the group began meeting three
or four times a week, with participants often joining the video conferences
from their homes.

"It did bring a certain amount of closeness to these meetings," Myers said.
"The first hour of everyone's day, people are pretty straightforward with
who they are. You get to see people in their homes getting their first cups
of coffee. There's some real humility there."

Tucker said Berkshire wanted to be walked through every aspect of the plan
in fine detail, how construction would work and a detailed breakdown of the
budget, the insurance plan and liability concerns.

click to enlarge [image: Berkshire Hathaway Energy CEO William Fehrman
smells a bottle of toxic algae pulled from above one of the four
hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River while speaking to protesters at a
blockade on Aug. 28, 2020. - SAMMY GENSAW]
<https://media1.fdncms.com/northcoast/imager/u/original/19878126/news1-04-cc335f6d66a7514b.jpg>

   - Sammy Gensaw
   - Berkshire Hathaway Energy CEO William Fehrman smells a bottle of toxic
   algae pulled from above one of the four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath
   River while speaking to protesters at a blockade on Aug. 28, 2020.

"We're talking about removing four large dams — this is on the scale of
demolishing skyscrapers or decommissioning giant power plants," Tucker
said. "But they committed to being open-minded and said, 'OK, you keep
telling us this is buttoned up, so let's go through it again.' Once we went
through it, they were like, 'Wow, the Klamath River Renewal Corporation has
it together.' ... We kind of watched the realization of the company that
this wasn't just some pipe dream. This was well-thought-out and
well-managed."

It was another shift. "And," Tucker continued, "once they decided they were
going to go for it, everything changed. Every interaction with the company
was all of a sudden, they are clearly 100 percent committed to dam
removal."

Ultimately, the parties agreed PacifiCorp, California and Oregon would
pledge another $45 million in contingency funds to account for cost
overruns or liabilities and that Berkshire would agree to a three-way split
of any liabilities or overruns beyond that moving forward. But a
significant hurdle still remained: Berkshire wanted another entity to take
over PacifiCorp's status as co-licensee on the dams through the removal
process. Oregon agreed to sign into the role. But the deal needed
California to do so, too.

Myers said Bonham had done a "phenomenal job" throughout the negotiations
but indicated this kind of decision was beyond him. The tribes would need
to talk directly with Gov. Gavin Newsom.

When tribal representatives met with Newsom in Sacramento, Myers said he
knew the stakes couldn't be higher. His approach, he said, was not to vouch
for the science or the economics of the project — others had done that for
years. Instead, he said, the goal of the day was to really show Newsom what
this agreement would mean to tribal people.

"It was our role to really say, 'This is worth it,' and to speak to the
150-plus years of pretty horrific negotiations with California," Myers
said. "When you look at the gold rush in California, when you look at the
timber barons in California, the commercial fleets of California, the
mission system in California, there is an atrocity built on an atrocity
built on the graves of our people. This is the world's fifth largest
economy because it's built on the resources of the Indigenous people of
California. ... This is our land and we're still here."

After the group finished making its case to the governor and the meeting
was wrapping up, Myers said he offered a last push: "California has a huge
debt to Indian people and dam removal does not repay that debt by a long
shot. But it's a good down payment."

Newsom, Myers said, responded: "California is all in and we're never going
to stop until the dams come out."

*In late October* and early November, word crept into activist circles that
negotiations with Berkshire were going well, that there was progress. But
it was hard to believe.

"I was still tepid," said Hillman. I'd heard there was another agreement in
principle. Well, I remembered the other agreements in principle. We were
hearing that there's an agreement, that the states are involved. That
sounds good. But other agreements have sounded good as well."

It was mid-November when word began circulating that a press conference was
in the works when Newsom, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, Berkshire Hathaway and
the Yurok and Karuk tribes would announce a new deal had been reached. But
most interviewed for this story recall a singular moment when this
agreement felt not just real but substantively different than its
predecessors — a draft press release began to circulate and in it was a
quote from Buffett himself. And the quote didn't talk about ratepayers. It
talked about the good of Native people.

"I recognize the importance of Klamath dam removal and river restoration
for tribal people in the Klamath Basin," Buffett said. "We appreciate and
respect our tribal partners for their collaboration in forging an agreement
that delivers an exceptional outcome for the river, as well as future
generations. Working together from this historic moment, we can complete
the project and remove these dams."

For Hillman, who once fasted for 10 days in preparation for a meeting with
Buffett only to be turned away, the moment was profound.

"It hit me a lot harder than I thought it was going to, for his words not
to be about ratepayers but about restorative justice," he said. "That day
did feel a lot different than it ever has. People say we've been here
before but I'm saying, 'Not here.' We haven't been here, where the states
and the company and Fish and Wildlife are talking about restorative
justice. Those statements are hard to walk back. It sure does feel
different."

Last month, the KRRC filed the new agreement with FERC for approval and,
this time, the consensus is it will be approved without issue, having
checked all the boxes the regulatory agency laid out with its prior ruling,
laying the path for dam removal to begin in 2023. Hillman said he's heard
Berkshire Hathaway representatives have been meeting with FERC staff to
make sure everything is in order, noting that he and other advocates were
repeatedly denied such meetings.

"That makes me happy on the one hand but just angry on the other," he said.
"We've always known that if the big wigs decide they want to do something
as a corporation in America, they do it. They could have done this the
whole time."

But they didn't. Repeatedly. So what, after years of pushing and angling,
finally brought Buffett to the Klamath table? Everyone interviewed for this
story said it's impossible to pinpoint any one thing, as changing economics
and political sentiments coupled with stalwart generational activism all
created a perfect storm. But if there was a tipping point, Myers and Tucker
said it was likely that moment on the Klamath when a group of Native people
seeking justice for their river refused to let Berkshire Hathaway
executives pass.

"At the end of the day," Tucker recalled, "I was like, 'I'm not sure that
went the way we wanted it to.' The tribal activists became a little
confrontational and I thought in the moment, 'Oh, no.' But what I thought
was things going off the rails and all our best laid plans starting to go
awry I think was serendipitous. It created opportunities for interactions
that wouldn't have happened otherwise.

"No one sells the Klamath better than the people who live there," Tucker
continued. "People's entire adult lives have been spent fighting these
dams. My child is 16 years old and that's all he's ever known that I do.
And I think there's a lot of Native kids who have grown up, and that's all
they know their parents do. ... We are committed. And it's generational. If
something happens to me, something happens to Frankie (Myers), something
happens to whoever, there's a generation of young people who will step in
to fill our shoes. I think Berkshire finally understood that."

*Thadeus Greenson (he/him) is the* Journal*'s news editor. Reach him at
442-1400, extension 321, or **thad at northcoastjournal.com
<thad at northcoastjournal.com>**. Follow him on Twitter @thadeusgreenson.*

*The Community Voices Coalition is a project funded by Humboldt Area
Foundation and Wild Rivers Community Foundation to support local
journalism. This story was produced by the* North Coast Journal *newsroom
with full editorial independence and control.*
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