Walden demands Klamath
summit
Capital Press - July 21, 2006
With money for Klamath River fishery restoration running out
and a coastal crisis over curtailed ocean salmon fishing, Rep. Greg Walden,
R-Ore., is calling for help from three Cabinet secretaries and the chairman
of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
There's plenty of water in the 10 million-acre Klamath watershed this
season, but below-normal flows are typical in six out of 10 years.
"I would like to revisit our efforts and assemble a bipartisan team of
other federal, state and local officials to engage today's challenges
together," Walden wrote in a July 14 letter to Interior Secretary Dirk
Kempthorne, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, Agriculture Secretary Mike
Johanns and Jim Connaughton, chairman of the Council on Environmental
Quality.
Walden's 2nd Congressional District includes the Oregon portion of the
Klamath Basin. With his counterparts from California, he has pushed for
cooperative Klamath solutions since the April 2001 federal decision to hold
a drought-shortened water supply as habitat for fish protected under the
Endangered Species Act, reneging on irrigation water delivery to an
estimated 1,100 farms.
In a telephone interview, Walden said he shares frustration "that many
in the basin feel. There have been promises. … We need leadership from the
administration to make it happen. I'm not blaming anyone - each of those
departments has thousands of issues to deal with - but it is time to turn up
the heat."
By July 18, Walden hadn't heard officially from any of the departments, but
he predicted "there will be a high level of interest." The
congressman was to meet later that day with the Council on Environmental
Quality.
"It's a good time" for a summit, said Glen Spain of Pacific Coast
Federation of Fishermen's Associations. He recalled the recent past, when
California, Oregon and the federal government signed an agreement to work
together on Klamath issues but little happened.
"We need to establish a coordinating body basin-wide," Spain said.
"I give credit to Congressman Walden for taking the leadership. Clearly
if we don't do something there's going to be continued crisis somewhere
along the river just about every year."
There's little indication of when the Bush administration might react to
Walden's request. One significant factor among stakeholders, said Greg
Addington, executive director of Klamath Water Users Association, is the
ongoing settlement talks over conditions to PacifiCorp's Klamath
hydroelectric license.
"I think it has complicated stuff," Addington said.
In fact, just about every Klamath stakeholder from the U.S. Department of
Interior to small American Indian tribes are parties to the closed-door
settlement negotiations. Participants are bound to silence about what is
discussed.
Farmers represented by Addington have consistently asked for credit in upper
basin conservation projects that improve water supply as part of any policy
setting goals for downstream flows. Their bottom line is a dependable supply
of irrigation water.
Walden's letter sets a simple agenda of looking at what has been
accomplished and focuses on comprehensive solutions to basin problems.
"I'd love that," Addington said. "A where we are at, where we
are going" appraisal.
Walden's plea goes to the same departments and environmental advisers
President Bush charged in March 2002 with finding short- and long-term
solutions to Klamath Basin problems brought on by water shortages, treaties
made with American Indian tribes nearly 150 years ago, hydroelectric power
generation and reclamation that turned 100,000 acres of wetlands into
farmland.
The Klamath River Basin Federal Working Group formed by presidential order
was to report by July 2003. That deadline came and went with no report. In
October 2004, then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton signed a agreement with
the governors of Oregon and California pledging cooperation on "an
aggressive, coordinated approach to allocate existing resources." The
only thing to show for that is a third draft of the Klamath Conservation
Implementation Plan under study by U.S. Bureau of Reclamation officials.
What's needed for all stakeholders, Walden said, is certainty. With this
year's commercial salmon closure, he noted that in five years there has been
suffering of farmers, Indian tribes that focus on seasonal instream
fisheries and commercial offshore fishers.
"The point is, how do we get to certainty?" Walden said.
Tam Moore is based in Medford, Ore. His e-mail is tmoore@capitalpress.com.
Side Bar
| Court
asked to look at injunction |
The
federal court order implementing a 100,000-acre-foot water bank for
the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Klamath Project is going back to
court.
The Klamath Water Users Association late last week asked the U.S.
9th Circuit Court of Appeals to void the injunction that requires
this year's water bank. Last fall, a panel of 9th Circuit judges
agreed with Judge Sandra Armstrong's order requiring the National
Marine Fisheries Service to redo its 2002 biological opinion
protecting endangered Klamath River coho salmon.
NMFS issued a supplemental biological opinion and with Reclamation
set a schedule for reworking the entire document. Armstrong this
spring ordered immediate implementation of 2010 water bank sections
in the 2002 biological opinion. The water users contend in their
appeal that the supplemental opinion ought to be followed, not one
portion of the 2002 opinion.
What happens with Klamath River flows has a significant impact on
upper basin water supply diverted to Reclamation's irrigators. To
meet this year's water bank in a wet year, Reclamation had to
contract for groundwater pumping and make deals with farmers idling
crop and pasture land.
- Tam Moore |
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