GTN Pipeline Expansion Project

Why does the expansion of this existing pipeline matter, especially to the Klamath Modoc Yahookskin peoples and residents in the project area? 

A new proposal from TC Energy (the same company behind Keystone XL) to expand the capacity of the existing GTN pipeline to pump more natural gas through the region - the GTN Xpress project. This project would lead to more air and climate pollution and increased explosion hazards. It would also require the expansion of three compressor stations in OR, WA, and ID, including one farther north in the territory of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. 

“The increased gas capacity in GTN XPress is equal to adding 754,000 cars on the road each year, until 2052, according to a letter from Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson. In 2022, Ferguson filed a motion opposing the GTN Xpress expansion, an effort that was joined by Oregon and California.”

- https://www.knkx.org/government/2023-10-19/pacific-northwest-gas-pipeline-expansion-approved-by-federal-regulators

Interactive Natural Gas Infrastructure Map: https://gtpdr.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/basic/index.html?appid=eeb990453c664ba783e0f33f8ce9b41c

GTN Pipeline Overview by TC Energy Company: https://www.tcenergy.com/operations/natural-gas/gas-transmission-northwest/#documents

Gas Transmission Northwest (GTN) is a 1,377-mile (2,216-km) pipeline system that transports Canadian natural gas to communities in Washington, Oregon and California. With capacity to deliver as much as 2.7 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d), GTN offers families and businesses in the Pacific Northwest and California a safe and reliable source of daily fuel for cooking, heating, air conditioning and more.

About Gas Transmission Northwest LLC:

https://www.tcplus.com/GTN

Gas Transmission Northwest (GTN) is an interstate natural gas pipeline system that transports Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin and Rocky Mountain-sourced natural gas to third-party natural gas pipelines and markets in Washington, Oregon and California. GTN has an average design capacity of 2,900 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d). GTN is also connected to the Tuscarora pipeline system, which is wholly-owned by TC PipeLines, LP. Some of the GTN pipeline system's capacity is subject to annual renewals, however greater than 50 percent of the capacity is under long-term contracts, the majority of which mature between 2023 and 2028. GTN is operated by a subsidiary of TC Energy Corporation. TC PipeLines, LP owns 100 percent of GTN.

Quick Asset Facts:

• Commenced Operations: 1961

• Originates Near: Kingsgate, British Columbia, Canada

• Terminates Near: Malin, OR

• For more information on TC PipeLines, LP please visit: www.tcpipelineslp.com

• For more information on TC Energy please visit: www.tcenergy.com

CALL TO ACTION:

Please reach out if you are a concerned tribal member with personal relations, connections, or landowners within the GTN Pipeline route (specifically between the Chemult, OR, and Bonanza, OR, Compression Stations) and would like to be involved in legal action against the GTN expansion. Stand up for our homelands, and use your voice to protect the places you love.  

Our organizations involved in the fight against the GTN XPress Project, need tribal members to participate in the legal battle as ‘Standing Declarant’.

Background: In order to show that our organization has a reason to bring the lawsuit, we have to prove that at least one of our ‘members’, or people connected to rogue climate, will be directly harmed by the pipeline expansion. We do this by submitting a signed "declarations" or statement from members that detail those harms, including loss or degradation of your use of traditional lands, impacts to recreation, the aesthetic or spiritual value of the land, economic damage, and any other increased risk of harm. We find that the best way to explain all of this is through a narrative explaining your connection to the area, opposition to the pipeline expansion, and any direct impacts you are worried about. 

Process: What this typically looks like, is that we can create a set of questions to ask about concerns about the pipeline expansion and how this would impact you/their relationship to the land and the area. Then we could do a 30 minute interview or so, and take detailed notes, then draft a statement based on the interview to share and get approval from the individual.  Then it get’s signed, and submitted! It's extremely rare for courts to need to follow up with a declarant for any reason. It isn't like becoming an actual plaintiff in the lawsuit, more like a letter of support, and a statement showing that members of Rogue Climate have a stake in the outcome.

If you are a tribal member interested in being engaged in this process to protect our homelands, please reach out! Contact ashia.wilson@riostorivers.org.

Swan Lake North Pumped Hydro Project

What is the Swan Lake North Pumped Hydro Project?

Swan Lake Pumped Hydro Project is a…

2,000+ acre project consisting of constructing two cement reservoirs (64-acre upper reservoir, 60-acre lower reservoir), spillways, embankment, powerhouse, connected to a high-pressure steel penstock, and three low-pressure penstocks, and 32.8 mile long (230 kilovat) transmission line, substation, and miles of service roads. 

It is built to last until 2127, more than a century. Swan Lake Energy Storage plans to “utilize” Upper Klamath Lake water for the next 103 years. The water system the project will draw from has been in extreme drought for the past 23 years and has yet to leave this extreme drought condition. The water quantity of the system is also extremely poor, and it has high levels of toxins and nutrients, causing the rapid decline of endemic ESA fish species in the lake. The Upper Klamath Basin water is over-allocated, and the senior water right, the first priority legal right, is continuously disregarded. There is not enough water in the lake to meet Klamath Tribes Senior Water Right, established since time immemorial- upon our Maklak's arrival and distinguished in the Klamath Tribes Treaty of 1864.

How is it legal to grant another project that will undermine a federally recognized senior water right and allow additional over-allocation of water to the Upper Klamath Lake systems?

Place Names within Project Area:

Swan Lake Valley 

Swan Lake Rim 

Grizzly Butte

Site is within the Division of Ne’luksi (a late sunrise) Klamath Village

Who owns the Swan Lake Project? Who is involved or engaged in the project? the project? 

Dutch-Owned Energy Fund Management Company and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners bought project in 2020 from EDF Renewable Development, Rye Development and National Grid (Swan Lake North Hydro LLC) 

• Oregon Water Resources Department (OWRD), Oregon Water Resources Commission (WRC)

• Bureau of Land Management (BLM)

• Bureau of Reclamation (BOR)

• Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)

• Klamath Tribes 

• State, County, and Private Landowners

• Klamath County Residents

Where is the proposed project located? 

​​Location: 42°17'14"N 121°35'40"W

11 miles northeast of Klamath Falls (Yulonna)

10 miles from Haglestin & Barkley Springs 

2,000 acres: 

• 1,310 acres of state, county, and private lands

• 711 acres of BLM lands

• 19 acres of BOR lands

How much would this project cost?

Rye Development estimates the project is more than  $800,000,000+  million-dollars. 

Estimate of an additional $1+billion being invested in the project during the first 5 years of implementation. 

Why does Rye Development want to implement the project? 

Manipulation and control of waters

Money 

400 Megawatt of electricity to highest paying bidder y

ou

What you should know about the project:

• Massive groundwater withdrawals on aquifer and interconnected surface waters

• Critical migration corridor for deer and elk 

• Extensive open-water and wet-meadow complexes extremely important (important to the land, peoples, and specifically migratory ducks, cacklers, white-fronts, swans, and cranes)

• Heavy construction, and a high-power transmission lines, new permanent roads, other infrastructure 

• Heavy construction = Man camps = increase in Missing & Murdered Indigenous Peoples if Klamath County 

A glossed summary of the project- company will build two massive cement ponds, fill these ponds (reservoirs), pump water uphill, and then back down and the electricity generated will be connected to transmission lines, and sent and sold to California residents.  should care about it? Why?

Everyone, Everywhere: 

Everyone, everywhere, should care about this proposed project. Rye Development owns five pumped hydro projects, and Swan Lake is their pilot project, progressing the farthest through state and federal regulatory processes. This means the Swan Lake region and the other four regions of lands, waters, and communities will be violated and destroyed.

Aside from this project's economic, environmental, legal, and cultural woes, the loss still outweighs any benefits the company or corporate colluders might try to pitch. 

Over 200+ significant sites of the Klamath, Modoc, and Yahooskin peoples will be disrupted and destroyed. Still, we ask all peoples, tribal and nontribal, to stand in solidarity to protect these threatened sites and waters.

As humans, we have an inherent responsibility and duty to protect, honor, and love all relatives in our current world, the seven generations after us (our babies and babies), and the seven generations before us (our ancestors and ancestral spirits that dwell at Swan Lake Valley and Rim). 

We are responsible for ensuring that this water, land, people, and place are protected for the generations to come in 50 years and for the generations of people who came before us and occupied these lands so we can have them today. ine of

t

What is the timeline of the project? 

2012- Project proposed, unsuccessful 

2019- Project received 50-year FERC license, OWRD initiates public process for groundwater pumping permit (HE 617)

2020- BLM issues Final Environmental Impact Statement and Record of Decision approving transmission power line 

2023- Project listed as pending, currently in pre-construction phase. The company is awaiting final approval from FERC to commerce (it was indicated in 2020 that a proposed final order would be prepared shortly after the close of the 2020 comment period, yet there is still no progress)

2014- By 2014, 67 new pumped hydro projects were proposed in the United States; only 3 have been permitted by 2023 (the amount of power required to pump water uphill is massive, and the numbers of operating these facilities do not pan out). 

#1: Build Community, Build Power: 

The Klamath Tribes need to assert that the proposed project violates their right to water for fish. The Klamath Tribal Community needs to unify and stand in solidarity against this project collectively. Talk to your families and stay up-to-date with the project. Go out to our homelands and exist in these traditional places of the Maklaks. Occupancy is not a threat but the simple existence of Klamath Modoc Yahooskin's identities. Occupy our homelands for yourself, your family, and the peoples you come from. Please show up to this land to protect it and learn the stories of this place. Understand why we must fight to preserve this place, and understand your relationship to place. 

If you are an enrolled Klamath Tribes member, engage with our tribal community and politics to ensure the few tribal members working to support Swan Lake Hydro Companies in the desecration of our lands and waters, are outnumbered by tribal peoples that care about their home, water, and people. 

Shut down tribal members wanting to accept the energy company’s $40 million-dollar gag order of the Klamath Modoc Yahookskin nation. Clayton Dumont (chairman), Duke Kimbol, and Norma Cummings, working with the corporations to pressure tribal membership to support this destruction of place/water and be compliant with this type of activity, must be called out, and must be stopped. 

As for non-Klamath Modoc Yahooskin peoples, reach out to our community and see how we can build relations, foster community, and walk hand-in-hand to protect our homelands. #

#2: Demand State & Federal Agencies Uphold Their Duties: ate & Federalold Their Duties: 

The state disregarded its responsibility to ensure Rye Development Can and Will carry out the project, a legal requirement in Oregon and across the West. One direct action our communities can all work towards is demanding the Oregon Water Resources Department deny this project's groundwater pumping application. The Oregon Water Resources Commission oversees the Oregon Water Resources Department's decisions. Not only has the Oregon Water Resources Commission failed to uphold its agency responsibilities, regulations, and laws, but it also failed to conduct sufficient due diligence on the project to provide substance and content that all parties could use in an open and honest consultation process, meaning consultation and free, prior, and informed consent have been foreclosed upon. This results in our Water Resource Commission's support in reviving the conditions for pay-out schemes to Klamath Tribal members, which perpetuate the destructive trauma caused by Termination in 1954 and remediate the damage of these traumas. 

You can engage in the three opportunities listed below to demand our state water agency upholds their responsibilities and deny groundwater pumping permit to project:

• May 21: Oregon Groundwater Rulemaking Allocations rules public hearing (Online): 30+ years after Oregon passed groundwater management legislation, the state is finally moving to implement it with a rulemaking process. As wonky as it may sound, these ‘rules’ are critical to the health of Oregon’s aquifers AND interconnected surface waters. Click HERE to download the PDF on when and how to attend in-person and Zoom meetings, review the Draft Proposed Rules, and write testimony. We’ll also be circulating an action alert with key talking public testimony and comment points shortly.

• NOW through May 24: Oregon Groundwater Rulemaking Allocations rules comment period: 30+ years after Oregon passed groundwater management legislation, the state is finally moving to implement it with a rulemaking process. As wonky as it may sound, these ‘rules’ are critical to the health of Oregon’s aquifers AND interconnected surface waters. Please join us in being a voice for more sustainable and just groundwater management.

#3: Ensure Stakeholders Clearly Understand Maklaks Peoples DO NOT Consent to this Project, and we Refuse to be Complicit to this Detrimental01. Extraction of Our Waters and Homelands:

Plan, Facilitate, Fund, Support Direct Actions and Messaging to: 

Dutch-Owned Energy Fund Management Company and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (and EDF Renewable Development, Rye Development, and National Grid (Swan Lake North Hydro LLC)), clearly opposing the project, could support our fight to protect Swan Lake. Direct Parti

• Water Resource Commissioners Kathy Kihara,

•  Jan Lee Weinberg, Joe Moll, Eric Quaempts (Chair), Meg Reeves, Julie Smitherman, and Woody Wolfe;

• Oregon Water Resources Department Acting Director Doug Woodcock, Deputy Director Racquel Rancier, Acting Deputy Director Ivan Gall, Water Right Services Division Administrator Dwight French, Hydroelectric Program Coordinator R. Craig Kohanek

• Representatives Annessa Hartman, Ken Helm, Bobby Levy, Emerson Levy, Pam Marsh, Khanh Pham, Mark Owens

• Senators Michael Dembrow, Lynn Findley, Fred Girod, Jeff Golden, Floyd Prozanski, and Janeen Sollman

• Senior Natural Resources Advisor to Governor Kotek, Geoffrey Huntington

• Sr. Assistant Attorneys General, Renee Moulun and Jesse Ratcliffe

• Oregon Secretary of State Audit Manager Olivia Recheked, Senior Auditor, Bonnie Crawford, Staff Auditors Ariana Denney, and Wendy Kam

Rye Development’s Projects + Websites: 

1. Energy Storage: Swan Lake: https://slenergystorage.com/

2. Energy Storage: Goldendale ($2 billion + project, Goldendale, Washington): https://goldendaleenergystorage.com/

3. Energy Storage: Lewis Ridge ($1.5 billion + project, Bell County, Kentucky): https://lewisridgeproject.com/

4. Run-of-the-River: Pennsylvania Project & West Virginia Project: https://pittsburghhydro.com/

Klamath Marsh Landfill Project

What is it? 

The Klamath Marsh Landfill Project is a 806-acre landfill, that will be implemented through 30-acre cell increments.

Who is involved or engaged in the project? 

• Don Jensen 

• Russells Dump

• Klamath County Planning Department 

What you should know about the project:

The inherent logic of this CUP is that the Klamath Marsh, ancestral lands of the Maklaks Peoples, is viewed by the applicant and the county as wasteland uniquely situated to be engineered and permitted, formerly, as wasteland. This CUP is about artificially re-valuing the land as so worthless for any uses, including being left alone, that it becomes a wasteland. This view is in direct contrast to how others value the land as sacred and part of the Pacific Flyway.

The current zoning designation for the proposed site area is for Exclusive Farm Use-Grazing. 

The application for a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) to change the zoning from Exclusive Farm Use (EFU) to another type of use that permits a landfill has specific criteria that must be met to be considered/ approved by the county planners. 

The county application and approval process is not concerned about how the landfill will impact non-business related interests because the county politicians have yet to write any other consideration but business considerations into the law. This is how they ignore cultural heritage and environmental concerns -- they don't include them in the "conditions" to consider in the process of applying for a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) to change the zoning to allow for a dump to be located on EFU Land that is in a sacred marsh.

The dump is the site of the Pacific Flyway and the Klamath Marsh. Birds will be confused as to where to spend their time and where they are. Uncountable numbers of birds will be poisoned by animal carcasses, leachate chemical ponds, microplastics, and petroleum-soaked waste. Birds will swarm the rail cars for hours as they offload, they will swarm the dump as the dozers roll around, and they will experience a serious disruption to their migratory pattern as they wonder whether they have arrived in Shangri-La and stopped here forever. The area will be an incubator for the H5N1 Avian Flu. Have any migratory bird studies been conducted about how locating a massive dump under the Pacific Flyway will impact birds all over the world who pass through?

The applicant says they will contain stormwater, leachate, and run-off to the property line; however, the horizontal water flows will migrate to lower elevations and travel through the groundwater. This is a marsh -- the ground will soak up, and when it does, it becomes a fluid mass. This dump will be like a giant fetid and rotting tea bag sitting in a marsh leaching out its chemical stew into the groundwater. A 1964 water right applicant for permit G-3319 appurtenant to this specific site wrote: "This part of the Klamath Marsh is the higher part and soil is 15” to 24” over a pumice overlay. This type of soil takes quite a lot of water until it gets well-sodded. I would say about the same as sandy soil. Too, I would expect quite a little loss until the canals get sealed. This has been the history in this area." The thin layer of soil sits on a layer of pumice -- volcanic rock known for its good drainage properties. The applicant expects significant water loss through seepage, which is exactly what the dump will do: seep into the pumice, enter the groundwater, and move into the marsh in perpetuity.

Who should care about it? Why?

This is the homelands of the E-ukshi Division of Ewksiknii Maklaks. Our ancestors were granted original allotments in the direct project site area, and most of our families have been removed over the past hundred years. 

There are a few hundred residential lots directly adjacent to the proposed dump site, most of which may never be developed if this dump gets approved. Most are yet to be developed. Those who own the lots, and there are hundreds, will lose their development potential to build there -- the lots will remain relatively worthless. Also, anyone who moves there will be moving into a "Frontline Community" made so by the dump. The only people who would willingly move there would be the most disadvantaged members of our society; as such, this dump makes a perversion out of creating new, affordable housing.

Any residents within the area of this proposed project, should also be highly concerned about the project compromising their source of water. All of our groundwater, surface water, and aquifers are connected, the seepage caused from the landfill, will directly implicate nearby residential and agricultural water sources. 

What do we do? 

TESTIFY at the Klamath County Planning Department Hearing is Tuesday April 23, 2024 at 6 pm at the Klamath County Commissioners Chamber

SUBMIT WRITTEN COMMENT to Erik Nobel, Planning Director, no later than April 23, 2024 at 305 Main Street, Klamath Falls, OR 97601, (541) 851-3648, ENobel@klamathcounty.org

Cwaam and Koptu

An endemic fish species- meaning they only exist in the Upper Klamath Basin, no where else in the entire world- is currently sitting on the brink of extinction… and our people, state and federal agencies, and governments have failed to adequately protect the species.

Cwaam (Shortnose Suckers) and Koptu (Lost River Suckers), originate from our relative- a big black snake that swam throughout the meandering rivers into the Upper Klamath Lake. At one point in time, our Ewiksiknii coy Modoknii Maklaks were starving, and our Gmunkumps looked down on us and watched us fighting for our survival. Gmunkumps reached down and grabbed the big black snake from our river, and cut it up, throwing pieces back into our river. From this came our cwaam and koptu relatives- for as long as Cwaam, Koptu and Ewiksiknii Modoknii Maklaks exist, our relationship and identities are interconnected and inseparable. What shall happen to our relatives will happen to us, and vice versa.

In the early 1900s, settler establishments were selling canned cwaam in stores in Klamath Falls area. By the 1960s, settlers were killing mass amounts of cwaam and koptu through snag fisheries, and some killing the fish simply as a statement of oppression towards the Maklaks of the Upper Klamath Basin. Along with the federal termination of our peoples, our fish began to decline. Rivers once covered in cwaam and koptu, rapidly diminished and disappeared. By 1971, cwaam and koptu were defined under California law as a species of concern. By 1988, the two fish relatives were listed as endangered on the Endangered Species Act. By the 1990s, there were no more successful recruitment cycles of the species (last generation of cwaam and koptu). In 2016, USGS published a report concerning the species population data for 2001-2015, representing a 60% decline of cwaam- 100,000 cwaam river spawners and 8,000 cwaam spring spawners, and 78% decline of koptu- 19,000 koptu river spawners. In 2017, there was a mass fish kill of all fish species in the Upper Klamath Lake.

Our fish are unable to survive in our home waters because of poor water quality and low water quantity. Our waters have been in a state of extreme drought conditions since 2001, and have yet to leave this dry period. While it is apparent we are facing a catastrophic drought, water diversions have yet to be halted. So, our fish relatives continue to be disregarded, in order for the United States Bureau of Reclamation to sustain the Klamath Irrigation Project water allocations. While our fish do not have enough water in the Upper Klamath Lake to sustain them, the water that they are in, is so toxic, there is no dissolved oxygen left in water columns for fish to live. During the mass algal blooms of the lake, the dissolved oxygen levels drop below 2 in most areas of the lake, and fish suffocate in the lake. The Upper Klamath Lake is naturally nutrient rich, but when irrigators manage cattle, and use fertilizer/pesticides, there is a spike in phosphorus being added into the water systems. The increase of phosphorus due to agriculture, heighten the algal blooms, and make our water quality spiral down to a all time low- so toxic our dogs and children must stay away from the Upper Klamath Lake.

Hatchery Programs, and other state, federal, and tribal efforts towards the protection of cwaam and koptu is crucial and good, but has shown it is not enough for the past 53 Years. We have had 53 years to step up, and the 40 year old fish from the last successful generation of cwaam and koptu do not have much time left…

Water diversions must stop, and water health must be centered and healed.

What are we going to do? The responsibility cannot rest on the shoulders of our governments any longer- tribal, state, or federal. What are we going to do for our relatives? Who is going to step up? And what is our plan?

“Don’t agonize; strategize”

Species Overview in Growth, Survival, and Cohort Formation of Juvenile Lost River and Shortnose Suckers in Upper Klamath Lake, Oregon, and Clear Lake Reservoir, California—2021–22 Monitoring Report: Open-File Report 2024-1013-

“Lost River (KOPTU) and shortnose suckers (CWAAM) are long-lived lake dwelling Catostomids that make springtime spawning migrations to lake shore or tributaries as early as age-5 for shortnose suckers and age-6 for Lost River suckers, but average at age-6 for shortnose suckers and age-9 for Lost River suckers. Upper Klamath Lake populations typically spawn from March to June, whereas Clear Lake populations spawn from February to April. Additionally, Klamath largescale suckers (Catostomus snyderi), the least lake dependent of the Upper Klamath Basin suckers, are also in Upper Klamath and Clear Lakes.. Spawning migrations start when spawning tributary water temperatures exceed 10 °C in Upper Klamath Lake and can be as low as 2 °C in Clear Lake. Larvae of Upper Klamath Lake river spawning populations out-migrate at night in May and early June to in-lake rearing habitats within several days of emerging from gravel. Clear Lake sucker larvae out-migrate from Willow Creek during April and May. Age-0 juvenile suckers of both taxa are widely distributed throughout Upper Klamath Lake by late-July and August, with several studies indicating no evidence of directed migrations during this time period. However, previous entrainment studies and Bureau of Reclamation catches of juvenile suckers at their Fish Evaluation Station suggest a pulse of suckers going down the Link River in mid-August. These results suggest that although there does not appear to be a directed migration, there are suckers that leave the system via the Link River. Age-1 suckers are much less abundant than age-0 suckers, and immature suckers age-2 and older are rarely encountered in Upper Klamath Lake. The oldest Lost River sucker sampled was estimated to be 57 years, and the oldest shortnose sucker was estimated to be 33 years”.