United States regulators approved a plan Thursday to demolish four dams on a California river and open up hundreds of miles of salmon habitat in what will be the largest dam removal and river restoration project in the world when it goes forward.
The unanimous vote by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on the lower Klamath River dams is the last major regulatory hurdle and the biggest milestone for a $500m demolition proposal championed by Native American tribes and environmentalists for years. The project would return the lower half of California’s second-largest river to a free-flowing state for the first time in more than a century.
