Klamath Farmers appeal court-ordered increase in water for salmon

November 14, 2006

By JEFF BARNARD  / Associated Press

Klamath Basin farmers are going ahead with their appeal of a federal court ruling that gave more water to salmon, raising doubts among salmon advocates that farmers are really interested in solving the region's environmental problems.

Attorneys for the Klamath Water Users Association, which represents about 1,000 farms irrigated by the Klamath Reclamation Project, filed a brief Monday with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco in their appeal of an injunction speeding up the timetable for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to increase Klamath River flows for threatened coho salmon.

The appeal came after the Bush administration withdrew its own appeal and four weeks before a summit organized by the governors of Oregon and California to find solutions to the Klamath Basin's long-standing environmental problems, particularly four hydroelectric dams widely blamed for hurting struggling salmon runs.

"There was a lot of discussion about not appealing from a lot of different aspects, not least of which is because we are trying to turn the corner (in) our relationship (with) the tribes and downstream interests," said Greg Addington, executive director of the association. "While we're getting close to turning the corner and getting along a lot better, we're not quite there yet. Until we get there, we have to keep our options open."

In 2001, irrigation water was shut off to most of the Klamath Reclamation Project to provide water for threatened coho salmon in the Klamath River during a drought.

After irrigation was restored the next year, tens of thousands of adult chinook died of gill rot while stuck in low warm pools in the river.

Last summer, commercial salmon fishing was practically shut off along 700 miles of Oregon and California coastline to protect struggling Klamath River chinook.

The Klamath summit is tentatively set for the middle of December in Klamath Falls with representatives of state and federal agencies, farmers, tribes, conservation groups and fishermen. One of the top issues will be what it would take for PacifiCorp to agree to remove its four Klamath River dams, which NOAA fisheries has said would be the best way to assure salmon reach blocked spawning habitat.

The farmers' appeal represents an attempt to return to the past, said Dave Bitts, a Eureka, Calif., salmon fisherman and secretary of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations.

"I have to wonder what happened to all the touchy feely, let's not bash each other stuff we've been hearing the last year or so," said Bitts. "If they want to actually work together for our mutual assured survival, rather that our mutual assured destruction, I would much rather do that."

NOAA Fisheries is likely to have a new management plan for threatened Klamath coho incorporating new river flows by the time the appeals court rules in 2008, which would make the appeal moot, added Kristen Boyles, attorney for Earthjustice, which represents fishermen in the case.

The appeal seeks to lift an injunction imposed last May by U.S. District Judge Saundra B. Armstrong, which says that irrigators will have to do without water in years when there is not enough for both farms and fish.

It argues the injunction is illegal because it makes farmers on the federal irrigation project responsible for making up for water used by state and private irrigators upstream, said Damien Schiff, attorney for Pacific Legal Foundation, a property rights public interest law firm representing farmers.