Spilyay tymoo. (Warm Springs, Or.) 1976-current, July 26, 2023, Page 5, Image 5

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    Spilyay Tymoo
July 26, 2023
Page 5
In recognition of indigenous leadership
Alyssa Macy, of the Con-
federated Tribes of Warm
Springs, was announced last
week as an Ecotrust 2023
Indigenous Leadership
Award winner.
Ms. Macy, who is Wasco,
Navajo and Hopi, works as
the chief executive officer
of Washington Conserva-
tion Action in Seattle. She is
also a former chief opera-
tions officer of the Confed-
erated Tribes, among her
other work and education
accomplishments.
Ms. Macy is receiving a
2023 Ecotrust Leadership
Award, “In recognition of
her efforts to build strong
relationships between Wash-
ington Conservation Action
and Indigenous communi-
ties, her advocacy for
salmon protection, and her
leadership in Washington
state’s environmental com-
munity.”
She is one of six indi-
vidual Ecotrust award win-
ners this year.
The Indigenous Leader-
ship Awards are a distin-
guished honor, as determined
by other Indigenous leaders.
The 2023 Awardees to be
honored this year represent
Native homelands across the
Alyssa Macy
Pacific Northwest—the re-
gion where Ecotrust fo-
cuses its work as an organi-
zation—and includes sea-
soned as well as emerging
leaders.
This year’s awards will be
celebrated on Wednesday,
October 18 in the Main
Hall of Redd East,
Ecotrust’s regional food
hub and event space in Port-
land.
With Ms. Macy this year
the other award winners are:
Sgaahl Siid Xyáahl Jaad (Ma-
rina Anderson) (Haida/
Tlingit), Kh’ashee-chtlaa
(Louise Brady) (Tlingit),
Frances G. Charles (Lower
Elwha), Corine Pearce
(Pomo), Gabe Sheoships
(Cayuse/Walla Walla), Terri-
Lynn Williams-Davidson
(Haida); and the Confeder-
ated Tribes of the Umatilla
Indian Reservation Youth
Leadership Council—the
first group to be nominated
for the honor.
Since 2001, the Ecotrust
Indigenous Leadership
Awards have recognized 60
outstanding Indigenous lead-
ers for their unwavering
dedication to strengthen self-
determination and uplift the
environmental, cultural, eco-
nomic, and social conditions
of their communities and
homelands.
The awards are funded
through a private endow-
ment established in 2000 to
recognize the work of Indig-
enous leaders.
“Guided by Indigenous
values, elders, and cultures,
the 2023 Indigenous Lead-
ership Awardees are dili-
gently working to ensure
healthy, safe, and vibrant
futures for tribal communi-
ties and homelands.
“Their unshakeable com-
mitment and impact on a
wide range of issues and
needs are deeply meaningful.
Ecotrust is honored to rec-
ognize them and their
humble dedication,” said Lisa
J. Watt (Seneca), director of
the Ecotrust Indigenous Lead-
ership Program.
More information about
the October 18 event, and
purchasing tickets, will be
available soon.
The awardees are chosen
by a selection panel consist-
ing of previous award recipi-
ents who review substantial
nomination packages made
up of letters of recommen-
dations, reports, articles, and
media submitted by govern-
ing councils, community mem-
bers, and colleagues.
Ecotrust creates and accel-
erates ‘triple-bottom-line in-
novations’ to benefit our re-
gion and inspire the world.
Their work is rooted in
the region from California
to Alaska that holds produc-
tive lands and determined
people.
On the far m, at the
coast, in the forest, and
across our cities, we work
in partnership towards an
equitable, prosperous, cli-
mate-smart future.
Ecotrust recognizes the
legacy of colonialism and the
deep inequities of this place,
and we believe that radical,
practical change is possible
and necessary. Join them at
ecotrust.org
Around Indian Country
Who’s doing the work?
Last December, the Kla-
math River Renewal Corpo-
ration took over the license
of the Lower Klamath Hy-
droelectric Project from
PacifiCorp, the utility that
owned and operated it.
The nonprofit KRRC,
which formed expressly to
oversee dam removal, is re-
sponsible for hiring contrac-
tors and complying with the
many federal and state per-
mits required to do this
massive project. PacifiCorp
will continue to operate the
power plants as needed un-
til they are decommissioned.
Kiewit, a national con-
struction company, is the lead
contractor
for
the
deconstruction of the dams
and associated infrastructure.
The company will hire up-
wards of 250 to 300 work-
ers once the project ramps
up and has already selected
a number of local and tribal
subcontractors.
Courtesy photo
Dam removal site on the Klamath River.
Resource Environmental
Solutions, or RES, is respon-
sible for propagating millions
of seeds and revegetating the
reservoir footprints with na-
tive plants. Crews from the
Yurok Tribe are already col-
lecting seeds and weed-
whacking invasive plants
near the reservoir shores.
What’s
next?
(from page 4)
Praise in public,
punish in private
As a leader, you are
responsible to recognize
superior performance
and reprimand substan-
dard performance. How
you do this is what mat-
ters most. I suggest you
praise people in front of
their peers. On the other
Rain Circle
hand, when an issue
arises, deal with it in pri-
vate. Also, use tact and be respectful when talking with
your subordinates.
Keep the people informed
Communication is key in any workplace relationship.
Keep your people informed whenever possible.
Let them know about upcoming assignments, changes,
issues, etc. They can deal with the bad news. In fact,
bad news is better than no news. Keep your people in
the loop.
Do not hoard the information.
Recognition is one of the most important aspects
of your job. Recognition could include a thank you note,
a small reward, a certificate, time off, public praise, paid
for lunch, leave work early, a certificate, or something
else.
Find creative ways to recognize people. When doing
it, do it publicly and be specific. Tell people why they
are being recognized.
Feedback
If the only time your people hear from you is when
they mess up, you are failing as a leader. It’s important
to give your people feedback frequently.
Let them know what they are doing right, what they
are doing wrong, what they can do better, etc. Do this
privately and face-to-face whenever possible and keep
a record of it to show your people their progress.
Training
Klamath dam removal largest in the U.S.
The first of four hydro-
electric dams along the Or-
egon-California border has
been removed from the
main stem of the Klamath
River. All that remains of the
dam, known as Copco 2, in
Siskiyou County, California,
is the headworks of a diver-
sion tunnel adjacent to the
now free-flowing river.
“As little as a month ago,
it was a 35-foot concrete
dam that spanned the entire
width of the Klamath River
right there,” says Mark
Bransom, chief executive
officer of the Klamath River
Renewal Corporation, which
is overseeing dam removal.
When complete, the over-
all project will be the biggest
dam removal in U.S. history,
and will reopen 400 miles of
fish habitat that was cut off
for more than a century.
Getting this first dam out
of
the
way
takes
deconstruction crews one
step closer to drawdowns of
the remaining three reser-
voirs next January.
Veterans message
happening
For the next several
months, Kiewit will lay the
groundwork for the draw-
downs. Soon, crews staged at
the base of Copco 1 Dam
will “drill and shoot” a 10-
foot diameter outlet tunnel
through the concrete struc-
ture.
“The contractor will leave
about a 10- to 12-foot plug
of concrete that will sit there
until early January of next
year,” says Bransom.
Come January, they’ll blast
through the rest of the tun-
nel, effectively pulling the
plug and allowing water and
sediment to pour through the
opening.
“So all the water from
J.C. Boyle, all of the sediment
accumulated there on the
Oregon side, all of the wa-
ter and all of the sediment
behind Copco Number 1,
and all of the water and all
the sediment behind Iron
Gate Dam are going to come
out of that hole right there,”
says Bransom.
“That is the final control
point, if you will, for the
drawdown of the remaining
three dams.”
While this work takes
place, the reservoirs are be-
ing carefully managed to en-
sure enough water flows
downstream to support coho
salmon, as required by fed-
eral fish agencies.
“The Bureau of Recla-
mation has a biological opin-
ion that requires them to
ensure that a certain amount
of water always flows below
Iron Gate Dam all the way
down the river,” says
Bransom.
“So what we’ve had to do,
in close coordination with the
Bureau of Reclamation,
tribes and others, is to over-
lay our construction opera-
tional requirements on top
of those regulatory require-
ments.”
When will the reser-
voirs go away?
Starting next January,
three reservoirs behind the
remaining three dams will be
drawn down at a rate of
about five feet per day.
“We never want to have
so much water coming
through these outlet tunnels
that we create a dam safety
condition,” says Bransom.
“And the second thing is we
never want to overtop the
riverbank.”
An estimated 20 million
cubic yards of sediment has
accumulated behind the
dams over the last century;
Bransom says about 5 to 7
million cubic yards of that
will wash out during the
drawdowns.
Crews will use fire hoses
to blast sediment from espe-
cially steep slopes near the
rims of the former reser-
voirs to prevent future ero-
sion into the river.
To best protect fish from
the muddy water, the draw-
downs will take place in win-
ter, with a pause in April to
allow young coho salmon to
migrate out to the ocean.
The reservoirs could partially
refill with spring snowmelt,
but by June the Klamath
River should be flowing
freely through the newly
open outlet tunnels in the
dams.
Though it will temporarily
impair water quality in the
river, the movement of sedi-
ment is an important part of
healthy river systems, says
Bransom. “And the Klamath
has been starved of that
natural process since these
dams were constructed.”
How will the other
dams be removed?
Once the drawdowns are
complete, the remaining
three dams will be taken
down all at the same time,
starting next June.
The
deconstruction
method will be tailored to
each structure. At Iron Gate,
excavators will bite chunks
out of the massive earthen
dam and feed them to an
endless convoy of dump
trucks. At Copco 1, crews
will drill small holes in the
base of the dam and pack
them with dynamite—not to
create a massive explosion,
but to break the monolithic
structure into more manage-
able chunks that can be
hauled away.
They’ll also remove a por-
tion of the deep concrete
foundation to ensure it
doesn’t ever pose a barrier
to fish.
Along with the dams, the
powerhouses, penstocks and
outbuildings will be dis-
mantled. Steel will be re-
cycled and any hazardous
materials hauled off to the
appropriate disposal site.
Your organization eats, breathes, and sleeps training.
You must provide organization focused training.
This will have a huge positive impact on the people’s
morale in your group. Get out of the office, go outside
or some other location.
It doesn’t have to be an expensive destination event
it can be Peer to Peer, on-site sharing of best practices,
cross training (have different departments teach each
other their job). Plan and rehearse your training so it is
top notch and over delivers then do an ‘after action
review’ when every event is complete. Canvas the group
to identify;
What went well? What needs improvement? What
should we keep doing and what should we stop doing
(just some examples).
Be ‘others’ focused
Instead of focusing on yourself, and your needs;
focus on helping your people succeed. When your people
know their leaders care about them, it will help improve
their morale and performance within the group.
This means you find out your follower’s goals, you
help them excel in their career, you help them solve
their problems when they arise, etc. This is servant lead-
ership.
By providing the support and resources your staff
needs, you’ll let them know that you’re not there to tell
them how to do their jobs. Instead, you’re there to help
them do their jobs better. This shows them that you
trust their judgment to make necessary decisions, which
can fill your team with confidence. When your workforce
is confident in their abilities, they’ll be more willing to
learn new skills and set loftier goals for themselves –
goals they’ll be able to achieve. Ultimately, you’ll notice
higher performance and increased productivity through-
out your company. ~
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