Capital Press: Final work on Reclamation Klamath Plan in December

October 27, 2006

With the help of a consultant, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation hopes to tie down the organization of a stakeholder group that will oversee restoration of the Klamath Basin.

Invitations went out last week for a Dec. 6 and 7 working session at the Red Lion Inn in Medford, aimed at settling what's been an elusive organizational structure. Reclamation calls its effort at basinwide restoration the Klamath River Basin Conservation Implementation Plan.

Christine Karas, the deputy area manager for the Klamath Reclamation Project, has headed the project since she arrived in 2003. She was part of a similar multi-state cooperative agreement on the upper Colorado River.

Reclamation operates a 200,000-acre irrigation project in the main stem Klamath's upper basin, and ships large quantities of water from the Trinity River - largest tributary in the system - to the Central Valley Project in California.

When Karas launched consultations along the river, she said Klamath issues are such that stakeholders can't wait five years to settle on a plan. Since that time both a federal cabinet-level working group, and a pact made between California and Oregon, failed to produce results, and the 20-year-old law appropriating money for Klamath fish restoration expired Sept. 30.

The governors of both states and Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., are pressing for a summit to shake out multiple Klamath issues.

Drafts of the CIP say it will provide the vehicle for coordination of conservation and restoration in the 10 million-acre drainage and become the vehicle for technical advice and funding to get the job done.

ECCO Resource Group, a Washington state consultant, is assisting Reclamation in getting the organization sorted out. It will probably take intergovernmental agreements involving local, state and federal agencies or special legislation to give the CIP organization standing in what's been a decades-old controversy.

- Tam Moore