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This Website is Dedicated to Alvin Alexander Cheyne January 10, 1921 - June 17, 2005 |
Klamath
'
By Felice Pace
Guest comment
Capital
Press
The Klamath Water Users Association, Karuk Tribe and Yurok Tribe would
like you to believe that a new era of trust and cooperation has emerged
in the
Apparently they've convinced Capital Press editors. The lead Capital
Press editorial in the Aug. 24 edition, "
But buying into the broader settlement at this stage is a bit like
buying the proverbial pig in a poke. The negotiations are secret and no
one is talking about what is actually in a settlement which, while
incomplete, is already being promoted as the answer to all the Klamath's
problems.
Doesn't it seem a bit strange to be selling an agreement so heavily
before it has even been drafted?
Instead of providing details of what is being proposed, we are told by
Klamath Water Users Association and Yurok Tribe spokespersons that we
should trust them because they are "working hard." Please
forgive this basin resident, but I prefer to look at actions rather than
words.
When we do look beyond the nice-sounding words the picture we see is
quite different. Take, for example, the farm bill which recently passed
the House of Representatives. As that bill made its way through
subcommittees and the full Agriculture Committee to passage, a change
was made to the language pertaining to the EQIP Conservation Program.
Language which - in exchange for government funding - would have
required on-farm water conservation projects to save a minimum of 15
percent of that farm's consumptive use of water was changed.
The new language will make it possible to use taxpayer money to fund
on-farm projects under EQIP if they "result in a minimum reduction
... in the total consumptive use of ground water or surface water."
It creates water conservation program, which by law minimizes water
savings - so this is why they liken making laws to making sausage.
What does this have to do with the Klamath?
EQIP is the program under which $50 million was expended under the 2002
Farm Bill to improve on-farm water conservation in the
As stream flows dwindle in this drought year, fishermen and
restorationists are wondering where the water saved by those irrigation
improvements can be found. On the Scott and Shasta rivers, for example,
flows have dwindled to less than 11 and 18 cubic feet per second
respectively. That is enough water to fill two or three irrigation
ditches but far less than the flow needed to allow salmon to access
prime spawning grounds.
Those familiar with 2002 Farm Bill details know that EQIP language was
inserted into that bill, which made it possible for irrigators in the
Klamath River Basin - including the Shasta and Scott as well as the
Klamath Project and other "Upper Basin" water users - to make
improvements in their irrigation systems, which actually resulted in
more rather than less water use during the key late summer and fall
period when, in the Klamath as in most other western river systems,
demand for water exceeds supply.
And while specifics of EQIP projects are protected from disclosure as
"trade secrets," it is believed that some Klamath Project
irrigators used EQIP funding to exploit groundwater and then turned
around and leased that water back to the federal government under the
Bureau of Reclamation's Klamath Water Bank program.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, recent exploitation of
groundwater for irrigation in the Klamath Project Area has lowered
groundwater levels, drying up domestic and community wells. USGS says
the groundwater pumping is not sustainable.
The long arm and political connections of the Klamath Water Users
Association is at work in the gutting of EQIP water conservation
language in the House-passed farm bill.
What does this say about the claim that irrigators and tribes
negotiating a broad "Klamath Settlement" have come to care
about each other's interests? Is a change from "15 percent
reduction" to "minimum reduction" in on-farm water use an
expression of how much Klamath Project irrigators care about fish?
It is because of actions like the gutting of Klamath EQIP that some of
us have grown skeptical about the newly found trust between some of the
Basin's tribes and the Klamath Water Users Association. The Klamath is
increasingly looking like another Bush administration-orchestrated
effort to buy off tribes with senior water rights in favor of irrigators
with junior rights.
The truth is that all Klamath irrigators are not at the settlement table
and only one group of irrigators representing about 40 percent of
irrigation water use in the basin stands to gain from the settlement
that is being negotiated.
That group is the Klamath Water Users, who have made no secret of their
desire to regain their position as an irrigation elite that enjoys
"water supply certainty" and a "power subsidy" while
the other 60 percent of irrigators have to play - and pay - by other
rules.
Deals forged in secret usually create winners and losers as well as
unforeseen consequences. The Klamath deal is no different. The
insistence on secrecy was a warning light and the farm bill's EQIP
shenanigans give the lie to the "cumbia" rhetoric issuing from
Klamath Water Users and a minority of the basin's tribes.
The people of the Klamath have a message for the secret dealmakers: Cut
the rhetoric and come out into the light of day. A just and equitable
Klamath solution will be forged democratically and in the open with all
interests at the table and with the people on guard against special
interest shenanigans.
Felice Pace lives in the
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Source: http://www.capitalpress.info/main.asp?SectionID=75&Sub