Klamath Falls Water Wars May Be Heating Up
Center for the Study of Hate and Expremism
California State University San Bernardino
August 19, 2001

Thousands of farm supporters are on the move towards Klamath Falls, Oregon , this week, coming by convoy from Malibu CA, Elko NV, Kalispell MT and Boise ID, with the goal of keeping the water flowing for Klamath Falls farmers.

Some of the supporters are allied with ardent property and states rights groups. They will gather this week in Klamath Falls to protest the shutoff of irrigation water as government gone awry. Last week, a committee of leading farmers, local officials and others in the area unanimously passed a resolution condemning death threats and other intimidation leveled "against people on all sides of the water issue."

Many officials in Oregon fear the convergence of the convoys and groups supporting their goals could fuel a confrontation, inflaming tensions dampened three weeks ago when Interior Secretary Gale Norton released some of Upper Klamath Lake's water to farms that had been cut off.

It is the latest and perhaps most unpredictable chapter in this summer of strife in the Klamath Basin, where federal agencies reserved water in Upper Klamath Lake for endangered suckers and threatened coho salmon in the Klamath River, and more than 1,000 farms supplied by the lake went dry, According to the Portland Oregonian.

The convoys are expected to arrive Tuesday. The water Norton freed up July 25 probably will last until Thursday, two days after convoys of food, supplies and money for ailing farmers is to arrive. Planned are Prayer services, speakers, including formerr Congressman Helen Chenoweth Hage, and live entertainment on "Freedom Day" at the county fairgrounds in Klamath Tuesday.

Klamath County Sheriff Tim Evinger, who had pushed for Norton's July water release as a way to calm emotions, calls the two events an "unfortunate coincidence." Although he wants to bring national attention to the double-whammy of drought and endangered species restrictions that combined to shut off water to farms, Evinger fears another showdown at canal head gates guarded by federal officers ever since farmers opened them illegally last month.

"I don't want to just stand back and wait for these trains to hit," Evinger said. "My feeling is that this is largely going to be a relief effort, but anybody who's a threat to public safety will be dealt with."

Evinger plans to survey farmers prior to the arrival of the convoys to find out whether they want to hold remaining water in the lake for next year. If they do, he will ask those arriving in the convoys to respect the farmers' wishes and not fan the flames while court-led mediation of the water struggles continues. But he also is working with federal agencies on contingency plans he declined to discuss.

Organizers say Evinger need not worry about them. "There is no intent on our part to do anything disruptive," said Bill Ransom, a local grocery store owner planning the events. "We're businesspeople. We're not extremists."

One planned event is a repeat of a July 20 horse-mounted parade that organizer Jon Hall calls the United States Freedom Cavalry, which this time may involve as many as 500 riders from around the country. Some will carry American flags upside down to symbolize the distress in the basin. The the demonstrators plan to parade through Klamath Falls with a pair of 12-foot-high metal buckets and trucks full of supplies for farmers. An organizer, Jeff Head, has found that "We are hoping for tens of thousands of people here on Tuesday. We are asking anyone within driving distance to be here Tuesday morning at 10 AM when those events take place. The city has issued a permit for the event when the convoys arrive ... but they are only allowing EIGHT vehicles in the official parade. They don't want to congest traffic on a workday. What will happen is that the other hundreds of vehicles will come anyway and they'll just obey the trafiic lights and congest traffic all the more, " according to his post on Freerepublic.com.

Farmers and their supporters have built a full-scale encampment around the head gates in part to protect the worn concrete structure that controls water to irrigation canals, according to Ransom. That's also what many said in July, before dozens of local residents illegally pried open the head gates with television cameras looking on.

One of those guarding the head gates during the July confrontation was organizer Head, of Emmett, Idaho. Head has already arrived in Klamath Falls for this rally. On his website, which flies the US flag upside down, Head has drafted a petition which reads in part:

The situation is critical. Thousands of individuals are being unjustly deprived of their water rights in the Klamath Basin, and by extension, of their land rights and their liberty. Such actions are intolerable, and if allowed to proceed will represent tyranny descending upon this nation’s heartland. To such tyranny, to such conditions, and to those abetting or supporting them we raise our collective voices and proclaim,

Not in America! Let the water flow!

Failure to redress this grievous wrong will only embolden and enable similar acts elsewhere in this nation. In soberness we warn those bureaucrats, administrators and politicians who either support such activities, or turn a blind eye to them, to guard well what they foist on the agricultural community of this nation. Your very careers depend on you ceasing and reversing such actions. Ultimately, becasue (sic) the food growers of this nation are so critical to its well being, the very peace and tranquility of our entire society may well depend on it.

As groups arrive with agendas that include gun rights, reform of the federal Endangered Species Act and state takeover of federal land, nobody knows quite how things will go this time. "We're very concerned about that," Gov. John Kitzhaber said Thursday after a speech in Portland.

Klamath Tribal Chairman Allen Foreman asked the convoys "to turn around and go home." Their call for undoing the Endangered Species Act will do little to resolve a Klamath crisis brought about by drought, poor water quality and a century of converting wetlands into farmland, he said.

"Their message will actually hurt farmers and ranchers in the basin, by raising false hopes and discouraging people from coming together to focus on the search for workable answers," Foreman said. "The problem in the Klamath Basin is real. Fisheries, guaranteed to our people by treaty, have been made meaningless because the fish have been brought to the brink of extinction... The government gave away water it did not own, then ruined the riparian areas and marshes throughout the basin that sustained our fisheries. The fish are as much a crop to the Klamath Tribes as potatoes are to the farmers."

One group sponsoring the convoys is the Washington State Tyranny Response Team, which describes itself as a

non-violent, 'guerrilla' protest organization. We exist to organize and take part in protests and counter-protests wherever and whenever statist politicians and organizations spread their venom. We will counter as many speeches, rallies, marches, press releases, news conferences, etc. as we can. As with all grassroots organizations we depend upon the participation of our membership. As our numbers grow we will expand our efforts holding our own large gatherings and marches.

Then let the statist groups try to counter us.

With Klamath farmers faced with losing their land, "that pretty much fits the profile of what we consider tyranny," said TRT co-founder Jeff Stewart. The group has asked its members to "leave your weapons at home" to avoid any risk of violence that could hurt the Klamath farmers' cause, he said.

Organizing a convoy of trucks from Montana is John Stokes, a Kalispell talk radio host who refers to environmental groups as "Green Nazis" and the "Fourth Reich" and said the breadth of people disturbed by the loss of water in the Klamath Basin "grows every day." "We've got little kids bringing in piggy banks, and little old ladies writing checks for $1,000," Stokes said. The environmental movement has split America in a way that's "every bit as serious as the Israel-Palestinian issue," he said. "Nobody is going over there with any ill intention," he said of Klamath. "We come in peace. But time is running out. There comes a time when holding hands and singing 'Kumbaya' stops. That day is coming soon in America."

Stokes plans to bring a banner bearing a green swastika and burn it as "a special gift" for the Oregon Natural Resources Council, the Portland-based conservation group that has advocated reducing irrigation demands through buyouts of willing farmers. "Whether they like it or not, that is the symbol attached to them," he said.

Another convoy is arriving from Elko, Nev., the center of a land-rights movement sparked by a U.S. Forest Service decision not to rebuild a washed-out road near Jarbidge, Nev., because doing so might harm threatened bull trout. A group called the Jarbidge Shovel Brigade defied the government and reopened the road in a July 4 rally, and it now promotes local control of federal land. Some organizers and members of other groups from other convoys were also involved in the Jarbidge Shovel Brigade ,including a number of people who post at Freerepublic.com.

"Hopefully, these folks will listen to cooler heads and maintain a peaceful demonstration," said Jeff McCracken, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the Klamath irrigation project.

But protest organizers say they cannot guarantee what will happen if federal officials try to close the irrigation head gates, after farmers exhaust their allotted 2.4 billion gallons of water by next Thursday. Currently, nine federal officers are guarding the head gates.

"They would be foolish or silly to shut that water off," said Jon Hall, a Klamath Falls rancher and leader of the Klamath Calvary. "They are just asking for trouble" Hall said, "If they try to cut off our water, I can't say what will happen," Hall said, according to the Sacramento Bee.

On Wednesday, several Elko organizers gathered in Malibu with members of the Los Angeles Farm Bureau and the Blue Ribbon Coalition (an off-road vehicle group) to start a California leg of the convoy. Many were members of the Jarbridge Shovel Brigade, an Elko group that confronted U.S. Forest Service rangers when they tried to close a popular road for jeep enthusiasts that was washing sediment into a trout stream.

"We are linked by one thing: The federal government is violating its trust with the American people," said Grant Gerber, a lawyer from Elko. "They are violating it with miners, ranchers, farmers and recreationists, and we are fighting back."

Gerber said his group's fight will be waged by getting its message out. But he, too, said there could be trouble if the feds try to cut off water again.

"Farmers and ranchers are peace-loving and want to go about our business," Gerber said. "But we have reached a point where we can't do it anymore.

Jeffrey Bennett, who broadcasts conservative commentary over the Internet, shortwave radio and satellite, offered advice in an online column for those joining the Klamath convoys. "Visually, this should be an unarmed event," he wrote. "Leave the AK's, etc. in the vehicles. Glocks and .45s have no business on the hip. This type of visual sends the wrong message to the rest of the nation." This statement was also posted on the website of Sierra Times, the website of former militia member J. J. Johnson.

Bennett said he has taken "a lot of flak" for that advice from people who stressed their right to carry guns. "If those people feel the need to carry weapons with them on a trip for their own self-defense, or if they feel a sense of uprising from the other side or want to protect the farmers, then they should carry them," he said. "Certainly I want this to remain peaceful. If there is to be any altercation -- I don't care who starts it -- we need to have it on camera." He encouraged participants to take cellular telephones to update reporters around the nation on events. He also urged people to "show up with shovels and picks or anything to get the water going."

Bennett said he is not anti-government -- "I'm anti-corrupt government." Militia groups formed to defend personal rights are misunderstood and misrepresented by the media, he said. "These are an intelligent, well-organized bunch of people, not a bunch of radical yahoos." But he acknowledged that the Klamath events might draw people with more extreme agendas. "Based on where and how this function has been promoted, you're going to attract some of those types."

Conservation groups said they fear that may only provoke tempers at a time when the Klamath Basin needs a long-term resolution to conflicts over its water supply. "At a time when solutions are starting to emerge, the last thing we need is people showing up to throw fuel on the fire," said Steve Pedery of WaterWatch of Oregon, a party in the mediation. "This is about what's best for the Klamath Basin, not about all these other agendas."