The issue: Adjudication involving water rights for more than 700 claims by water users, including the Klamath Tribes, in the Upper Klamath River Basin.

   Why voters should care: The KBRA may encourage participants to resolve disputes without expensive, often adversarial adjudication.

   What proponents say: KBRA supporters say adjudication will not resolve issues covered in the agreement, such as water quality, and the stability of agricultural water supplies.

   What opponents say: All claims should be resolved before taking on issues in the KBRA.

   Adjudication, a legal process that will define water allocations in the Upper Klamath Basin, will move ahead in some form even if the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement is implemented.      

  The adjudication of more than 700 claims involving state and federal agencies, hundreds of individuals and the Klamath Tribes has been ongoing for decades. In 1975, federal courts confirmed the tribes have rights to enough water to support 1864 treaty-protected hunting, fishing, trapping and gathering activities.  

   What to do first

   Some KBRA opponents believe the complex adjudication process defining those water amounts should be completed before other steps are taken.

   “We’re still a long way from finishing up with water adjudication,” said Carl “Bud” Ullman, the Tribes water lawyer, noting the nine tribal cases aren’t expected to be resolved for several years. Even when those cases are determined, he said, the decisions wouldn’t resolve such issues as water quality, habitat, impacts of the Endangered Species Act and the stability of agricultural water supplies.  

   He believes those issues can be best handled by implementing the KBRA, which aims to resolve water issues among Klamath River Basin stakeholders, including various tribes, farmers, ranchers, fishermen and other water users.

   “The KBRA is crafted in a way that allows the adjudication to continue while addressing the underlying disease,” Ullman   said. “The KBRA also makes it easier for people to settle among   themselves.”

   Klamath County voters in November will be asked whether they think the county should stay involved in the water agreement and related dam removal agreement. Results of the vote are advisory and not legally binding.

   Former state Sen. Steve Harper of Klamath Falls believes adjudication cases need to be either resolved by the legal process or through judicially approved agreements between the many parties.

   “We need to have adjudications completed because we need to have quantifiable water amounts,” he said. “When you have adjudication, you have a legal right to water. In lieu of an agreement between the parties you’re going to have a legal determination, which is adjudication.”  

   Quantity issue

   Although the Tribes’ 1864 water rights supercede other rights, the issue is quantity, Harper said. Depending on who is making claims, he said, those rights could range from “every drop to not much water.”

   “It’s a crap shoot for everybody,” he said of the legal process. “That’s why it would be in everybody’s best interest to sit down and work it out.”

   Harper believes tying the removal of four Klamath River dams to the KBRA should not have been done. “ The dam issue has nothing to do with anything,” including adjudication, he said.

   Ideally, he said, federal agencies should allow representatives from the Klamath Tribes, Klamath Reclamation Project water users and off-Project water users to work out a mutually acceptable agreement to resolve Upper Klamath Basin issues.

   “If you want to work out an agreement on what you want to do with Klamath Basin water, you can do that,” Harper said. “They’d have to get over some hard feelings that came out from the 2001 disaster,” when water was not delivered to Project irrigators.  

   Ullman said the Tribes are continuing to pursue the legal cases. He notes the nine cases involving the Tribes are among more than 700 involving more than 7,000 contestants.

   “Yes, the Tribes’ claims are threatening to other water users. But so is any senior claim threatening to any junior water user. The Tribes are not the only one being forced by the adjudication to play hardball,” he said.

   “We filed claims we are confident we can prove. We are pursuing them vigorously, but the KBRA is still a much better tool for solving the Basin’s difficulties.”