Wild species gain as, for the first time since 1907, farmers in Southern Oregon's Klamath Basin are denied irrigation water

Saturday, April 7, 2001

Federal dam operators said Friday they will deliver almost no water to thousands of farmers in Southern Oregon's Klamath Basin this year and will instead use runoff from scarce mountain snow in Upper Klamath Lake and the Klamath River to protect imperiled fish.

The decision means that almost 90 percent of the 210,000 acres irrigated by Klamath Project reservoirs will go dry in what is already one of the driest years in memory. The Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge, the nation's first waterfowl refuge and home to the one of the nation's largest populations of wintering bald eagles, will also probably dry up.

"It looks very grim right now for the refuge and almost everyone else," said Jeffrey McCracken of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. On Friday, the agency, which operates the Klamath Project, released its plan to dole out this year's trickle of water.

Snow in the mountains above the Klamath Basin holds barely 29 percent of the water that feeds Upper Klamath Lake in an average year. Oregon's largest lake, it flows into the Klamath River.

That will leave too little snowmelt water to keep either the lake or the river as high as federal biologists had recommended for endangered suckers in the lake or for threatened coho salmon in the river, reclamation officials said.

As a result, they will cut off all irrigation flows from the shallow lake, which supplies most water for the basin's farmlands.

Dam operators will hold the lake at the lowest level it reached last year. Environmental groups said that is still not enough for fish and wildlife.

It will be the first time since the federal project to irrigate the arid basin began in 1907 that Upper Klamath Lake will deliver no water for agriculture.

The decision, discussed at levels as high the White House, marks a drought-induced shift in the project's priorities from farmers to fish. Among those fish are the endangered Lost River and shortnosed suckers, once staples of the Klamath Tribes, which are now too rare for anyone to catch.

Two irrigation districts in the Langell Valley east of Klamath Falls will receive 70,000 acre-feet of water from Clear Lake and Gerber reservoirs, which do not feed into Upper Klamath Lake. The districts cover about 10 percent of the basin's farmland but less than 5 percent of its roughly 6,000 water users, which include not only farms but also schools, parks and other landowners.

Some runoff from those districts may flow to other farms downstream, but the water altogether totals just 15 percent of the 500,000 acre-feet normally provided for farms, not nearly enough to go around.

"This decision is heartbreaking," said Don Russell, president of the Klamath Water Users Association. "It is inconceivable why the Department of Interior would sacrifice the economy of an entire region for illusory environmental benefits, oblivious to the personal hardship it will cause thousands of families."

Russell said the basin's many longtime farmers have become the unfortunate victims of years of failed federal policies seeking to protect threatened and endangered species that have only continued to decline.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Friday that most crops in the basin would be eligible for federal crop insurance payments, including some not normally insurable.

Environmental groups won a federal court ruling earlier this week that said the basin's dams operated in violation of the federal Endangered Species Act last year. Friday, they questioned whether dam managers should release any irrigation water this year.

Biologists had projected that leaving the Lower Klamath Wildlife Refuge without water could lead to the loss of as many as 950 bald eagles because habitat for the ducks and other waterfowl the eagles feed on will disappear.

"There are serious legal questions with finding water for agriculture when there's clearly not enough to keep the endangered species intact," said Jan Hasselman of Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, which represented the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations. "There will very likely be a Round 2 here."