Student Work
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Title
Watershed: Undamming the Klamath River Basin
Project Description
Estella Dieci | Master of Environmental Design (M.E.D.) 2026
Primary Advisor: Keller Easterling & Stephen Most
Reader: Anthony Acciavatti
The Klamath River Basin has been one of the most contested water basins in the United States for decades. The Klamath is one of the largest rivers in the Western U.S., spanning over 260 miles between Southern Oregon and Northern California, and was once the third-largest salmon run on the West Coast. Historically, it is also one of the most biodiverse regions in the country. This began to change in the mid-eighteenth century, when the Basin was devastated by ongoing genocide, gold mining, speculation, extraction, and terraformation. Though lesser-studied than the Colorado and Columbia, the Klamath was one of the earliest sites transformed by the Reclamation Act of 1902 to develop and manage large-scale irrigation projects in the Western U.S., leading to over a century of conflict between tribes, irrigators, and environmentalists. The Basin is known for its separatist movement for the State of Jefferson and conservative, tea party politics. However, despite all odds, the region made history when the largest dam removal project in the world was completed in October 2024, following decades of activism and negotiation between tribes, farmers, ranchers, attorneys, politicians, scientists, and corporations. But the work is not over. Combining environmental history, science and technology studies, on-site fieldwork and qualitative interviews, this research considers how landscape is constructed by shifting values and politics, conservation science, myth, and connections to place. This research considers lessons from the Klamath in a new era of infrastructure decommissioning and environmental collapse, and in redefining, reclaiming, and revitalizing the places we live and love. The research examines what restoration means in the Klamath and situates itself in a broader context of dam construction and removals, agricultural development in the West, environmental movements, and tribal sovereignty
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