Environmental Business Journal (EBJ), a strategic business intelligence provider to the environmental industry, has honored Resource Environmental Solutions (RES) with a Project Merit Award for its work on the Klamath River Renewal Project, the largest dam removal and river restoration effort in American history.
Dam removal began in 2023 and was completed over a 16-month period. The project, aimed primarily at saving the river's chinook salmon from extinction, has reopened more than 400 stream-miles of historical salmon, steelhead and lamprey habitat that had been blocked for more than a century. RES serves as the ecological restoration provider across 37 miles of river. This work includes replanting 2,200 acres of formerly inundated reservoir footprints using more than 20 billion native seeds representing 100 plant species. Working closely with tribes who have depended on the Klamath River since time immemorial, RES last year intensively restored four priority tributary channels that were buried for decades beneath seasonally toxic reservoirs.
Ecological recovery is already underway alongside ongoing restoration and monitoring. Just two weeks after dam removal was completed, chinook salmon were observed in Oregon's Spencer Creek, marking the first documented salmon sighting in Oregon's Klamath waters in more than 100 years.
Restoration has been grounded in years of collaboration with tribal partners, including basin-sourced native seed collection by tribal crews hired by RES. Real-time water quality monitoring is occurring across 236 miles of river, setting a new benchmark for large-scale river restoration, habitat reconnection and collaborative environmental recovery.