High and Dry in the Klamath
By Michael Milstein, The Oregonian
May 9, 2001

KLAMATH FALLS: No one needs to tell folks here that every drop of water counts. That's the tragedy of the Klamath Drain: an unglamorous waterway that funnels irrigation runoff from the basin's sprawling farmlands and wildlife refuges into the Klamath River. It contains the worst quality water in Oregon -- too polluted to do anyone, or any fish, much good.

At times, says a state report, "the drain resembles a stagnant pond, complete with fluorescent green patches of mold floating on mats of decaying algae." In it, hardy minnows go belly up.

When hard drought makes water scarce, as it has this year, farm water is withheld to dilute pollutants that feed algae blooms deadly to protected fish.

The Klamath Drain shows that the crisis facing Klamath Basin -- and a way out of it -- has as much to do with water quality as water quantity. If the water were cleaner, some of it would be available to the more than 1,000 farms that this season are going dry.

Many of the lakes and rivers here have always been a murky broth: Some pioneers would not let their horses drink from Upper Klamath Lake. But researchers say intensifying use of the water and the lands around it has compounded problems. Example: the loss of wetlands that once filtered out troublesome nutrients, stored water like a sponge and sheltered young fish.

"To me we're like a guy with five credit cards that are all maxed out," says Phil Norton, manager of the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuges, which also will go without much water this year. "We've overused everything we have. Any bump in the road, and we're in deep."

A road out of the basin's despair may encompass several options:

Restoring wetlands as natural filters. Trial projects have already reduced pollution in Upper Klamath Lake.

Building reservoirs and drilling wells to boost water supplies in dry years.

Reducing water demand by retiring farmland, buying out water rights and improving water conservation.

Settling and enforcing overlapping water rights so no one takes more than they're entitled to.

Improving logging and grazing practices to reduce erosion and pollution.

Assisting imperiled fish by removing dams that block spawning areas and controlling predators.

And perhaps the most controversial: reforming the Endangered Species Act to ease pressure on local economies.

Leadership lacking

Former Sen. Mark Hatfield, R-Ore., formed a working group of farmers, wildlife advocates and biologists to advocate solutions, but that group lost direction when Hatfield retired from the Senate in early 1997. That left a leadership void, worsened by the polarization of this year's drought and the loss of water to farms.

"We tried, but we didn't get far enough fast enough," says Mark Stern, a biologist with The Nature Conservancy and member of the Hatfield group. "I think that's in part because the answers are complex, but also because we don't have enough leadership at the federal level to work through the conflicting interests."

Any answer will drive up the price taxpayers have already paid for converting the Klamath Basin's marshes and sagebrush to a farm belt. For starters, the dams and canals of the Klamath Project cost the nation more than $50 million. Farmers have reimbursed less than a fifth of that, without interest, based on a formula that considers their ability to pay.

The government has since spent millions studying endangered fish that have declined in part because of the same irrigation works.

Last year, Oregon's Klamath County, the most populated slice of the basin, received more than $3 million in farm subsidies, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Many local farms owe up to a quarter of their profit to government payments. Even before the water was cut off this year, hundreds of farmers clamored to sell their water allotments back to the government in a pilot project to reduce the load on the system.

Federal authorities have now allotted more than $1 million to plant crops to tie down fields that might otherwise erode in the wind and to drill emergency wells. Oregon's congressional delegation is at work on an even broader package of grants to farms that cannot plant crops this year.

And a San Francisco-based conservation group called The American Land Conservancy has bought options to purchase more than 10 percent of farmland in the 200,000-plus-acre Klamath Project. The group hopes Congress will eventually appropriate money to acquire the land and hand it to local irrigators, who could use it to house farms that now operate on the wildlife refuges.

A "refuge" in name alone

The refuges themselves are less wildlands than giant ponds controlled through dikes and ditches, a microcosm of the basin as a whole. The sight shocked Norton when he arrived from managing a refuge in Texas. What was once known as Tule Lake is now known locally as Tule Sump, because it's largely a collection pond for irrigation runoff.

"I couldn't believe they called this a wildlife refuge," he says.

The 180,000 acres host about 80 percent of the waterfowl, from bald eagles to swans, that migrates up and down the Pacific Flyway.

Shifting the more than 30,000 acres of farms off the refuge would leave more land for wildlife and trim the total farm acreage, leaving more water for others. It also would offer a way out of farms that can no longer compete with declining crop prices and escalating worldwide competition.

"I believe the federal government is the only one willing to buy the land," says John Anderson, who farms along the Oregon-California line and this spring planted a costly crop of mint that will wither without water. "It would reduce the load on the system, so the people who are left know whether there's water or no water.

"We just need an answer."

But as in all things Klamath Basin, the answer is not so easy: Other farmers contend farms provide vital food for wildlife. They say buying their neighbors out would prey upon their weakened industry and pry apart communities.

They would rather see farmland rotated around the refuges, rejuvenating wetlands one section at a time.

"The American farmer can do an important job here," says Rob Crawford, who farms on the Tulelake Refuge. "There can be a lot of marsh, and farms can provide a lot of food for wildlife."

Ken Rykbost, an agronomist at Oregon State University's experiment station in Klamath Falls, argues that pollution is a natural element of the Klamath Basin. The volcanic soils are high in nutrients, he says, and shallow Upper Klamath Lake "is a dying lake," doomed by the continued buildup of such deposits.

"If we remove agriculture from the land, we'll still have a water quality problem," he says.

Many in agriculture supported the purchase by federal agencies and The Nature Conservancy of former ranch land along the upper end of Upper Klamath Lake, home to the most imperiled population of endangered suckers. Restored river channels and wetlands now occupy the land. A new study found that nutrients entering the lake fell 8 percent in the six years after the work.

A drop of about 30 percent should cut off enough nutrients to halt the lake's most toxic algae blooms, which kill fish and in summer make the lake resemble the Klamath Drain.

"The result of not addressing our problems is extreme," says Norton. "We only have to look around to see that.

"I don't think anybody wants to go back to the way it used to be, but we also can't go on the way we've been going."

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, and as defined under the provisions of "fair use", any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment for non-profit research and for educational use by our membership.