Lawsuit Accuses BOR of Killing Fish
Associated Press
March 22, 2001

MEDFORD -- Environmentalists said Wednesday they are suing the federal operators of the Klamath Project irrigation system for failing to keep thousands of endangered fish from being drawn into diversions to die.

The lawsuit, sent to U.S. District Court in Medford, accuses the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation of allowing thousands of juvenile Lost River suckers and shortnosed suckers, as well as hundreds of adult fish, to die by failing to install screens on diversions that draw water from the Link River Dam on Upper Klamath Lake in Klamath Falls.

"After 10 years of mostly inaction, it's time to stop killing the fish," said Wendell Wood of the Oregon Natural Resources Council, which joined with the Klamath Forest Alliance in filing the lawsuit.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service called for fish screens on project diversions in 1992, and extended until 2002 the bureau's deadline for installing screens on the main diversion drawing water from Upper Klamath Lake -- known as the A Canal.

However, the lawsuit maintains that in 1996, the bureau agreed to see that its permit-holders, PacifiCorp and Cell Tech International, installed fish screens on diversions on the east and west sides of Link River Dam.

The deadline for that work was June 1, 2000.

Karl Wirkus, who manages the Klamath Project, was not available for comment.

The lawsuit is the latest development in a long-running battle by environmentalists to change operations of the project, which irrigates 240,000 acres in the Klamath Basin straddling the Oregon-California border.

With drought depleting water supplies and the Endangered Species Act requiring more water for endangered suckers in Upper Klamath Lake as well as threatened coho salmon in the Klamath River, farmers are faced with the prospect of not getting any water for the first time since the project began in 1907.

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