Community support for a community agreement

May 11, 2008

Klamath Falls Herald and News Editorial  

Community members should support the 2008 Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement.

We’ve studied the issue — looked at the economics, the politics, the history, the cultural aspects — and we’ve used hundreds of column inches in reporting on it. What convinced us to endorse the agreement? People.

We’ve met with stakeholders and supporters. We like them and believe they are community minded. We think they are astute and they employed a sound negotiating process. We trust them.

This by no means indicates we reject those against the settlement; we’ve met them, and like them, too. But the majority of stakeholders are committed to the settlement. They continue to work improving it, negotiating with individual water users, and talking it up in their circles. We’re going with them. 

If you are a community member, you should consider being supportive, too. Even if there are parts you don’t entirely like — such as dam removal — you should consider supporting the agreement as a whole. Our commissioners should vote to endorse it, because the settlement is good for our economy and good for the greatest cross-section of our people. Our state and federal politicians should look to receive the agreement, champion it and make it work through policy and funding.

What’s best for the community is what each of the stakeholders should have been thinking as they came to the table over the past couple years. What they strived for was mutual benefit through certainty, predictability and sustainability of water and other resources up and down the entire Basin.

Is it the perfect settlement? There is no perfect settlement; there never will be. If the process were reopened now in order to try to make more people happy, it would only make more people unhappy.

Adversaries include some off-Project irrigators (those who rely on the water to irrigate their crops, but who are not located in the Klamath Reclamation Project); some downriver concerns who believe the settlement doesn’t do enough to restore fisheries; Siskiyou County commissioners who worry about several items, including loss of property valuation of the dams; and PacifiCorp officials (they say they aren’t philosophically for or against dam removal, but publicly take an adversarial posture).

Klamath County commissioners haven’t voted.

In favor of it are several community interests, most on-Project irrigators and associations, the Klamath Tribes, and other local governmental interests up and down the Basin, fishing interests, environmental groups and state and federal agencies.

State and federal officials indicate receptiveness.

Supporters feel that it’s important to round up all the support possible and hand it off to state and federal officials.

U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Oregon, says that the present administration is interested in the Klamath Basin and willing to do something.

“They know how important it is and would like to get something done on their watch,” he says. He adds that there is realistic hope that some progress could be made by the fall, and there’s no telling just yet what the next administration will do.

In the meantime, the state has refused to stay adjudication of water rights and claims; they evidently believe that the extra pressure might bring about greater consensus on the settlement (that’s a joke). It is reported that the legal costs of adjudication for farmers, the Tribes, anyone at all involved, is thousands of dollars every single day.

The agreement stops the bleeding of legal fees and addresses most of the major issues of our Basin community. We should push to have it accepted and supported.

“The thing to think,” says Walden, “is, ‘if not now then when ... if ever?’” He’s exactly right.


    Steve Miller wrote today’s editorials. 

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Source:  http://www.heraldandnews.com/articles/2008/05/11/

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