BuRec tries another Klamath solution

Karas said it will be about 45 days before a consultant gathers stakeholders for what’s hoped will be a final shaping of goals and organization. No new legislation is envisioned in the draft plan, but it calls for funding by federal and state agencies, which will at the least take legislative budget approval.

Alice Kilham, the Klamath Falls businesswoman who heads the Klamath River Compact Commission, formed nearly 50 years ago by California, Oregon and the federal government, said she doesn’t “quite know where the CIP will fall” among existing organizations, and particularly how it will be accepted by the American Indian tribes with longstanding treaty rights on the big river and its tributaries.

The federal government has a tremendous responsibility for what’s happened, Kilham said. In a telephone interview, she ticked off heavy timber harvest in federally owned uplands, the massive plumbing of the Klamath Project and BuRec’s Trinity River diversion that ships part of the basin’s water to farmland west of Fresno in Central California.

“Those are all factors,” she said, “but to make restoration work they’ve got to help the landowner; funding has been so tenuous and difficult.”

BuRec tied CIP to its 2002 biological assessment of Klamath Project operations. In 2004, at the urging of members of Congress and stakeholders, the vision expanded from one centered on the upper basin project to something that encompassed much of the 10 million-acre basin shared by California and Oregon.

The most recent draft:

• Proposes a basinwide ecosystem restoration program, including migratory fish that aren’t now listed under the Endangered Species Act;

• Proposes ongoing federally funded research and sponsorship of an annual science conference where it can be reported; and

• Hopes for “a lasting partnership” among tribal, government and private interests built around a sustainable economy and restoration of natural resources. CIP itself is proposed for a 15-year life with automatic renewal.

Four American Indian tribes have treaty rights to anadromous fish in the Klamath: the Hoopa, Karuk and Yurok on the Trinity and mainstem Klamath; and the Klamath Tribes in the upper basin.

There are already six federal or federal-state advisory groups with Klamath issues under their jurisdictions.

They include the Trinity River Restoration Task Force and BuRec’s Trinity restoration office; the Upper Klamath Working Group and Klamath Basin Fisheries Restoration Program; the California-Oregon-federal Klamath River Basin Compact Commission; and Oregon watershed councils. In addition, California Department of Fish and Game is wrapping up coho salmon restoration plans on two Klamath tributaries in Siskiyou County with help from stakeholders, and the North Coast Regional Water Pollution Control Board and Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality are working through total maximum daily load pollution standards in parts of the basin, also with massive stakeholder involvement.

Tam Moore is based in Medford, Ore. His e-mail address is tmoore@capitalpress.com.