Bureau Bears Brunt of Anger
By Matt Hall, K-Falls Herald and News
October 13, 2002

Tribal protest at bureau offices aimed at policies

On Friday morning a tarp was spread out in the parking lot of the Klamath Falls Bureau of Reclamation offices and roughly a dozen decaying salmon were unceremoniously dumped onto it.

You could have cut the stench with a knife. It gagged even some of the roughly 150 protesting lower Klamath River tribespeople who’ve been smelling it for weeks. You didn’t want to breathe — you wanted to wash out your mouth.

Standing quietly on the steps of the bureau’s offices, Dave Sabo, the bureau’s area manager, watched. He was upwind, but he could still smell it, and he listened as the tribespeople blamed the recent fish kill, estimated now to be between 30,000 and 40,000 salmon, on his agency.

“Klamath agriculture isn’t the only tributary to the Klamath River,” Sabo said. “There’s the Trinity, the Shasta, the Scott, and a number of other tributaries. This is just a dry year and people need to remember that.

One of the key attendees at Friday’s demonstration was Allen Foreman, chairman of the Klamath Tribes, who, along with “quite a few members of our tribe,” said he attended to demonstrate solidarity with the tribes from the lower Klamath River.

“Absolutely, it’s an effort by all the tribes to keep the natural resources in the Basin at a level that they should be,” said Foreman. “I think it’s really important to note the fact that it’s quite evident that the Bureau of Reclamation simply can’t — is not capable — of managing the water resources in the Basin, here.

“Whatever they are relying on for science, everything obviously isn’t working because of the condition of the watershed this year, and the loss of the fisheries that we’ve had.”

However, Foreman cautioned against raising the flows at the present time.

“It will end up stranding a lot of fish if they add a lot of water, make it accessible for the fish and take the water away,” he said, but still indicated the overall need to increase the flow of the river while safeguarding against high water temperatures.

“We definitely need to get more water for the fish,” he said. “And we need to get a better management regime in place. One that takes into consideration the tribes and their requirements also.”

For his part, Sabo will wait until more reports are in, and all of the factors involved in the fish-kill are known.

“Until the science comes comes back, people can lay the blame anywhere that they want,” he said. “I’m just not sure that it’s valid blame until the science is in, and I think that agriculture is saying the same thing.”

As the protest ebbed among the Yuroks, Karoks, and Hoopas, Basin farmers and water overseers expressing understanding and sympathy, and they asked for understanding that the Basin’s agriculture wasn’t responsible for the fish kill.

“The last thing in the world that we farmers want is for any harm to come to those fish,” said Rob Crawford, a Klamath Basin farmer. “But sending warm water, which is toxic to them, down the Klamath River is not the solution.

“Just after the time of those fish kills they got lucky because there was a natural cooling period,” Crawford said. “What they have to do is figure out how to get cool water down the river.”

Dave Solem, manager of Klamath Irrigation District said that irrigation water is being shut off Tuesday and said that “the water that isn’t being supplied to the crops is going down to the refuges right now.”

Solem said the water that was released to aid the salmon’s run coincided with cooler temperatures “in the upper Basin,” which cooled the water sent down river.

“The jury is still out,” he said, “It’s a complex set of issues.”

A proponent of keeping the decrease going as planned is Dan Keppen, executive director of the Klamath Water Users Association, who offered up another view of the present needs of the running salmon.

“There is a push for more water to be released out of Klamath Lake, but that will be restrained by the biological opinion to protect the suckers,” he said.

It’s Keppen’s, who represents irrigators, said, “The pulse of water is starting to be ramped down now, and if that release was to be ramped down later in the fall you might have a more serious problem. Getting the streams to the biological level — hopefully that will occur at the same time that the run of fish will be peaking and spawning.

“The water level in the river has been pushed up due to the pulse level,” he said. “That was meant to help them move upstream, to halt the spread of the disease and the crowded conditions (which helped to spread it).”

Keppen said that now is the time for the water to be decreased, explaining that there is a timing difference between when the fish run, and when they lay their eggs.

“It’s better to be ramping down now, than before the peak runs reach the upstream areas,” Keppen said.

“If spawning occurred while you had higher flows in the system, then some of the redds might be exposed. So the ramping down is happening at a good time.” Redds are salmon spawning grounds.

Keppen said water was available to be released Sept. 28 “because we have dams. Without them, the water level would have been much lower, and we’d have a much more serious situation.

“Still, the bottom line is that we haven’t had rain for a long time,” he said, “and that’s what we need.”

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