McPherrin Dam

NELSON, California (CNN) -- The dam that gave life to Laverne McPherrin's fields strangled marine life in the creek, so the structure is being removed.

McPherrin and his son, Lewis, walked across the wood-and-concrete dam, saying goodbye to the structure that has helped three generations of their family draw water from Butte Creek to irrigate their rice fields.

"We've been working with it for 50 years. We'll miss it," the farmer said. In its place, the family will get water through a different supply system.

In a ceremony Tuesday, U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt used a sledgehammer to symbolically chip away at the dam that shares the McPherrin family's name. He was striking a blow for salmon.

While the dam has given life to the rice fields, it has prevented chinook salmon from spawning. The ceremony Tuesday marked the beginning of a project to remove four dams and restore 20 miles of Butte Creek to unimpeded flow for the first time since the 1920s.

Butte Creek, which flows into the Sacramento River near Colusa about 50 miles north of Sacramento, is one of only four tributaries that still contain spring-run chinook salmon.

The dams make it difficult -- if not impossible -- for the fish to return upstream to lay eggs.

"You can't spawn your way over a concrete dam," Babbitt said.

'A spirit of hope'

The Western Canal Water District, which owns the irrigation-diversion dams, has received state and federal grants to remove the structures and set up an alternative irrigation system.

Babbitt whacks away at the dam

The $10 million project, which is to be finished by the end of summer, will benefit the McPherrins and almost 200 other landowners in the Sacramento Valley Water District.

"I think it represents a spirit of hope for California to find a better balance between agriculture, recreation and the environment," Babbitt said.

Many of the 75,000 dams in the United States -- 3,000 of them in California -- were built decades ago and are no longer needed, particularly if fish are to be protected, Babbitt said.

"Dams are not like the Pyramids of Egypt. They do not stand for eternity. We find over the years that there are different conditions and different needs, and hopefully we will respond to them," he said.

Similar projects are going on elsewhere in the country.

Two months ago, Quaker Neck Dam, on the Neuse River in North Carolina, became the first to be demolished for strictly environmental reasons.

The Edwards Dam in Augusta, Maine, also will be removed, to help restore fisheries on the Kennebec River.