Officials to visit Klamath Basin to get the facts

By DYLAN DARLING Freelance Writer
Friday, March 11, 2005


Irrigation equipment sits ready near Klamath Falls, Ore. While the water supply forecast looks grim for the Klamath Basin, farmers and ranchers hope for late winter storms.
KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. – A dry year is threatening the 240,000 acres of Klamath Basin agricultural land that straddle the California-Oregon border, officials say.

Next week, federal and state officials tasked with prioritizing funding and finding a solution for ongoing Klamath water issues have set meetings to hear directly from those involved.

“We want to have a meeting down there,” said David Van’t Hof, co-chairman of the Klamath Basin Coordination Group and natural resources adviser to Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski.

Formed six months ago, in a pact between Oregon, California and the federal government, the group has met regularly, but out of the public eye. That changes this month. Meetings are planned for March 15 in Klamath Falls and March 16 in Eureka, Calif.

“We felt it would be fair to make it accessible to both ends of the Klamath,” said Art Baggett, the other co-chairman and water policy adviser to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The coordination group was formalized last October when Interior Secretary Gale Norton announced an agreement among federal agencies and the states of California and Oregon to cooperate and collaborate on solving Klamath River watershed issues. Officials from the agencies and state had been meeting informally for about two years, with the meetings held in Sacramento, Salem and Portland.

Now they are coming out to the Klamath Basin, upper and lower. At the public meetings there will be updates on water issues, including what might happen during the irrigation season, officials said.

Federal officials are trying to figure out how to reserve more water for protected salmon, and debates continue about facts at the root of the issues.

With two months to go until the start of irrigation season, Dave Sabo, Klamath Reclamation Project manager, said the water situation is hard to predict and officials will have a better picture in a few weeks.

“I’m not ready to say we have a problem,” he said. “It’s problematic, but it’s too early to say.”

Snow pack in the mountains ringing the upper Klamath Basin was 50 to 75 percent of normal the first week of March.

“If the water situation stays the same way it is, it will be a tough year,” said Jim Lecky of NOAA Fisheries, the federal agency responsible for threatened Klamath River coho salmon.

This year could be the worst so far in a string of dry years, said Curt Mullis, manager of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s Klamath Falls office. USFWS is responsible for survival of two lake-dwelling sucker fish under Endangered Species Act protection.

The dry January is almost a repeat of 1992, one of the driest years on record for streams feeding upper Klamath Lake, shared by the sucker fish and storage for the BuRec irrigation project.

“Things aren’t looking too good,” Mullis said.

While watching the weather, officials continue to meet to determine what to do in the long term.

At the coordination group’s meetings, about two dozen officials from state and federal agencies meet to organize efforts and determine where the agencies should focus their funding. They meet about every two months.

The group doesn’t have any authority, but the officials at the table in the meetings do through their individual agencies, Baggett said. A goal of the group is to have the different officials agree on facts on the water issue, then discuss what to do about them.

“In the past, everybody had different facts,” Baggett said.

He said goals for the group for this year include getting pollution loads determined, working on a settlement concerning the relicensing of PacifiCorp dams on the Klamath River, and improving day-to-day operations to avoid crises.

Meanwhile, BuRec and NOAA Fisheries wait for the completion of two studies regarding flows on the Klamath River, before they change river management. Lecky said the reports should be done this spring and then a process to revamp the biological opinion, a guiding document for the river, would start.

If the studies, which have been delayed several times, are done in time, the new biological opinion could be in place by the 2006 irrigation season, Lecky said.

That means the controversial 2002 biological opinions will stay in place for the Klamath River and Upper Klamath Lake for this year. Included in the river’s biological opinion is the requirement to have a 100,000 acre foot water bank that can be used to boost flows for threatened coho salmon.

In its third year, the water bank has expanded from 50,000 acre feet to 75,000, to this year’s 100,000, and is going to be more reliant on land idling.

BuRec announced in late December that applications for the land idling program, in which it wanted to get 50,000 acre feet worth of water, would be due in late January.

The balance of the bank will come from a combination of groundwater pumping, a contract to forego irrigation on pasture above Upper Klamath Lake, and water stored in national wildlife refuges.

In all, 234 applications were turned in, said Rae Olsen, BuRec Klamath spokeswoman. To get the 50,000 acre feet of water, the agency needs to put about 25,000 acres of land under contract.

“I would say that we are cautiously optimistic that the response from the irrigator community will help us make our 100,000 acre foot requirement,” she said.

Now BuRec is evaluating the applications, weighing crops, soil types and costs to determine if they will make their goals for the land idling program, Olsen said.

Water set aside in the water bank needs to be available for use by April 1. How the different elements of the water bank turn out will also wait on the weather, Sabo said.

“This will be another interesting year,” said Cecil Lesley, water and land chief for the Klamath Project.

 

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