Friday, April 13, 2001

KLAMATH FALLS -- Gov. John Kitzhaber told about 5,000 residents of Southern Oregon's parched Klamath Basin on Thursday that the Endangered Species Act should be overhauled to protect farmers as well as fish.

Kitzhaber, who has been a leader in salmon restoration efforts in the West, has said in the past that he prefers to put more responsibility on state and local governments for salmon restoration.

"The biggest problem with the Endangered Species Act . . . is how the act is implemented," he told an angry crowd crammed into the county fairgrounds. He said he and other Western governors would continue to revise the law.

Last week, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced it would cut off irrigation water to hundreds of farmers in a basin along the Oregon-California border to help threatened and endangered fish survive a drought.

About 90 percent of the farmers are to be left dry this year, with water from the Klamath Reclamation Project instead to be used to sustain threatened coho salmon and endangered suckers.

"I don't think it's a question of fish being more important than people. They're not," Kitzhaber said. "I don't intend to stand by and see this community or the children in this community become extinct."

Water users have sought a court order forcing federal dam operators to send water to their fields. The motion for an injunction, filed this week, asks the court to prohibit dam operators from depriving of water to "any historically irrigated lands in the Klamath Project" unless it would send river or lake levels below historic lows.