New Farm Season Finds Klamath is Still Thirsting
By Michael Milstein, The Oregonian
May 26, 2005

After the Klamath Basin's bitter 2001 cutoff of irrigation water, President Bush ordered his top secretaries to find "immediate steps and long-term solutions to enhance water quality and quantity" in the arid region.

But after four years and more than $200 million in federal cash, as the Klamath Basin faces another dry summer, no true solution is in sight. Some in the basin wonder whether time and money are running out.

Water demand still outstrips supply. The U.S. government is buying millions of dollars worth of farm water to help protected fish, but it still fears a repeat of the 2002 fish die-off that killed more than 30,000 Klamath River salmon. Farmers continue to wonder how much water they'll get. And the government is paying them to irrigate crops with well water drawn from a sinking water table.

Few agree on a solution. Some say it lies in restoring fish habitat, while others insist farmers must permanently give up some of their most precious resource: water.

"It's hard to find much to point to that shows progress since 2001," said Bud Ullman, a longtime water attorney for the Klamath Tribes.

Others say the government's spending has prolonged the basin's troubles instead of solving them.

"The quantity of money that's been thrown down a rathole in Klamath is getting absurd, without having anything to show for it," said Steve Pedery of the Oregon Natural Resources Council.

Federal and state officials launched discussions reaching across the Klamath Basin from Oregon to California, and they continue to hold out hope of progress. But most acknowledge a broad resolution remains years away.

"I think we're further along," said Sue Ellen Wooldridge, solicitor at the U.S. Interior Department and the top Bush official on Klamath issues. "Do I think everything's fixed? No. It's a process, and you can't just fix everything immediately."

She said the administration remains committed to resolving the Klamath struggle, proving to other parched regions that solutions are possible. She said repairing wetlands, fish habitat and other elements of the basin's natural plumbing will eventually pay off.

But the rush of federal funding and attention from the Bush administration, which made Klamath a national priority, may be waning. Federal spending in Klamath had increased each year since 2001, but the White House's 2006 budget scales it back.

Interior officials cannot remember the last meeting of the Cabinet-level Klamath working group the president established to find lasting fixes. They said it was probably a couple of years ago.

"Already the window is closing," said Dan Keppen, who led the Klamath Water Users Association from 2001 until this year. He has since taken over leadership of the Family Farm Alliance, an organization of irrigators across the West.

"There's a lot of other hot spots in the West," Keppen said. "They look at Klamath and say, 'For a couple years they deserve to get as much as they can get, but there are other problems out here that need to be addressed, too.' "

The few signs of progress in Klamath include construction of a $16 million fish screen to keep endangered suckers from being drawn into irrigation canals and plans to remove an aging dam that blocks fish habitat. Federal biologists had been advocating both steps for years before the water battle blew up in 2001.

That's when a severe drought hit. Biologists said suckers in Upper Klamath Lake and coho salmon in the Klamath River needed almost all the water. That left little for farmers, although some was later freed up for their fields.

Angry farmers occupied canal head gates and briefly pried them open, gaining worldwide attention.

Neither the fish screen nor plans to tear out Chiloquin Dam have changed the picture sharply, though. Sucker numbers lag, possibly due to poor water quality. Although rain has been plentiful lately, it has run off quickly. Water stored in mountain snow around the basin is about 30 percent of normal.

The Bush administration has freed more water for crops in recent years, but federal managers say some farmers could be shorted up to 40 percent of their usual supply this summer.

Several ambitious actions recommended last year by a national panel of scientists remain unpursued.

In the background are other factors that could change the shape of the Basin's water debate. Farmers are fighting a plan by PacifiCorp to raise electric rates more than 10 times, saying the higher rates could make it too costly to pump water onto their fields.

Also, farmers, tribes, environmentalists and others are negotiating over the relicensing of hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River. Some advocate removing dams to reopen the upper river and Upper Klamath Lake to salmon runs.

The state of Oregon continues to work to legally dole out water rights by ruling who owns how much water. The Klamath Tribes have an overriding claim to much of the basin's water.

The federal government, meanwhile, will pay many Klamath Project farmers to idle their fields this summer and to use well water to irrigate other land, freeing water in lakes and streams for fish. The so-called water bank, to cost $7.6 million this year, is billed as a temporary measure to compensate farmers for water sent to fish until other solutions emerge.

A review by the U.S. Geological Survey found the strategy provides more water for fish, though it is difficult to measure how much. The water bank program has also increased pumping of water from wells eight-fold, dropping the water table anywhere from 2 feet to 8 feet over wide areas.

Conservationists argue the strategy also drains taxpayer money. They say the money could be used instead to buy and retire marginal farmland, easing agriculture's thirst.

But Merrill farmer Steve Kandra, president of the Klamath Water Users Association, said only cooperation, not the finger-pointing criticism that still swirls around Klamath, will lead to workable solutions. He said there is no clear path for farmers, tribes, fishermen, environmentalists and others to follow.

"There's a lot of what I call healing and repairing that still needs to occur," he said. "We don't have a clear enough vision of a blueprint to tell us what needs to be done next."

He said farmers have little incentive to cooperate in projects to benefit wildlife because even as they dedicate land and money for restoration, their water supply remains unreliable.

"You don't get any credit for doing anything, even though people have done a lot," Kandra said.

He agreed that financing may limit solutions. While increased studies have revealed more details about threatened fish populations, the findings still have not translated into a more secure future for farmers or anyone else.

"This is our opportunity at this time to do some things, and that will pass," he said. "If people can get their act together and collaborate and work together, then you'll be able to get the resources to do some things."

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