Mr.
McCarthy,
Being
as generous as I can it seems to me that you must have far too much time on
your hands. You may have followed the recent spate of messages on the Klamath
Stakeholder e-mail list on the topic of
Shooting the Messenger. Quite frankly this overly long opinion of
yours is PRECISELY what drives shoot the messenger. It is also quite
representative of something that does more harm than good. You quite
obviously lack an adequate historical or even a reality perspective of what
is going on here. Otherwise you would have used your time in a useful
pursuit. As the saying that came out of the 1960's and 70's goes
"you can either be part of the problem or part of the solution".
You and ONRC have long since decided to
be part of the problem. Otherwise you would be more careful with
truth.
I
have no problem with people holding different opinions from mine.
Therefore I have no quarrel with your entering the fray. I have no
wish to shoot you as the messenger. However your message is flawed.
There is likely no way your paradigm collection will let you see what is
obvious to others. I will not take the time to respond point by point,
but I will take issue with several of your salient points.
You,
and the rest of the environmental viewpoint, feel quite free to point
fingers at agriculture with blame in your heart and soul. Yet when
agriculture reacts to the finger pointing you do, you have the unmitigated
gall to protest finger pointing. If you don't like finger pointing,
then may I suggest you quit pointing fingers in the first place? If
agriculture were to disappear tomorrow
the water gain would fix nothing.
As
far as Albert Gatschet, in 1873,
mentioning the blue waters of
Klamath
Lake
. You surely can't be serious about using this to prove the waters of
Klamath
Lake
were clean and pristine. Or maybe you are serious. We don't,
from your referencing this source, know the time of the visit. At any
rate under proper light conditions and from the right viewing angle,
Klamath
Lake
will be seen as bright blue even though it is pea soup green when you
actually get out on the lake. This actually illustrates your
particular place in this debate. You wish to see a crisp,
clean, bright blue lake, when the actuality is that UKL
is hyper-eutrophic and likely has been that way since the eruption of
Mt.
Mazama
added untold tons of high phosphorus
volcanic pumice and ash all those thousands of years ago. If you wish to
reference historical observations on the quality of Upper Klamath Lake,
don't conveniently forget to add John Freemont's
1854 observation that the waters of
Klamath
Lake
were so green and foul smelling that his horses refused to drink it.
I
sit here in utter amazement of your defense of the use of warm lake water
for rearing salmon. In a small sense you are right in that the
contention of warm water releases is not a problem in the cool water months.
Winter, spring and later fall water temperatures are not the problem.
The demand for the extra flows comes in the summer. Your contention
that the “contentions that warm water
releases harming salmon are clearly incorrect" is ridiculous.
Because you can only state that that water is below the lethal limit for
salmon is really strange. How one restores salmon with water that is
only "below the lethal limit" is frankly amazing. Those
salmon will only be restored with salmon quality water, not water that is
"below the lethal limit". The Salmon die off (both adult and
juvenile) we read about in the newspapers every week started only AFTER the
change in water allocations wrought by 2001. So everybody knows things
changed then, we don't need to contact the Klamath
Tribe. There is too much folly in this argument
of yours for me to waste much more time.
You
also conveniently distort agricultural
diversions. That is understandable since yourself and ONRC
are committed enemies of
Klamath
Basin
agriculture. We really expect nothing else. Yes you can
represent the fact that the Klamath
project diverts 46% of available water in dry years. You either don't
realize, don't understand, or perhaps don't care about the fact that the
water diverted is water that is stored. If it were not for the
Reclamation Project and the Link River Dam, all that water (stored for
irrigation) that "is below the lethal limit" for Salmon would
long since have left
Klamath
Lake
and it would not be present for you to argue over. You also
conveniently forget to mention that the 54% of the water not diverted at
Link River Dam clearly supports higher than historical downstream flows.
If that weren't the case we wouldn't have pictures of
Link
River
when it was dry. We would also not have those
Link
River
pictures if the minimum lake levels were actually 4,140 feet.
I
will not waste my time further by going
after your diversion discussions. You obviously have your narrow point
of view. I suppose you can also argue that I also have my point of view
as well. I would not argue the point. I realize that changes are
ahead for all stakeholders. If I have to change my water use it will
have to be based on real science, that is
grounded with proper historical perspective. You and ONRC
will have to change your tack as well as this old "point the finger
cry wolf environmentalism"
will also have to change. Unless of course you really don't want to
see useful solutions. That would not surprise me in the least.
Trying to blame the government and trying to eliminate agriculture are not
the solution.
Steve
Cheyne
Posted
with permission from the author.
