Applied for in 1956, it was never granted and the application expired in 2006 

By JOHN ELLIOTT 

Guest Writer

October 17, 2010

     In his letter printed Oct. 7, Leo Bergeron of Montague, Calif., accused the Klamath County Board of Commissioners of lying about irrigation water behind Iron Gate Dam. He also claimed that the Shasta Valley farmers’ rights were being negotiated away.

   In this and previous letters, he, Brandon Criss and Anthony Intiso have stated that the Shasta Valley farmers have an adjudicated senior water right to 60,000 acre-feet of water storage behind the dams of the Klamath River. I hope those gentlemen can handle the truth, because those statements are far from true.

   Application 16958 was filed at 4:39 p.m. on March 20, 1956, with the state of California, Department of Public Works, Division of Water Resources. The applicant was the state of California, Department of Finance. The chronology of assignment/transfer of that application is as follows:

   July 5, 1956 — to Department of Water Resources.

   Sept. 13, 1959 — to California Water Commission.  

   Sept. 17, 1965 — to California Water Rights Board.

   Dec. 1, 1967 — California Water Resources Control Board.

   Water appropriation

   The application sought to appropriate 60,000 acre-feet of water identifying Iron Gate Reservoir as the source; the uses as irrigation, industrial, domestic, municipal, recreation and fish and wildlife and the Shasta Valley as the place of use.

   In the 54 years since that application was submitted, no permitting, licensing, adjudicating, certifying or granting of water rights associated with that application have been made.

   No entity, including the state of California, was granted this water right. This application was never vested in the farmers of the Shasta Valley. In fact, since this application sought to appropriate water from Iron Gate Reservoir, the application expired in 2006, concurrently with the expiration of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s license to construct and operate Iron Gate Dam.

   Bergeron stated this is a “senior” water right. Given that there is no water right until it is granted, the question of seniority is not relevant.

   Even if the state of California were to revive an expired application, the operative date is March 20, 1956. How does that date constitute a “senior” right, when compared with developed water rights that date from the 1800s?

   Neither the state of California nor the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors nor its counsel sought to protect this alleged water “right” because it does not exist.

   No water is being diverted from Iron Gate Dam for agriculture, nor do any facilities exist for such a diversion. As much as Bergeron, Criss and Intiso may not care for it, that is the truth.

   While they may not feel they owe an apology to the Klamath County commissioners, they should apologize to their neighbors in Siskiyou and Klamath counties for their misinformation about alleged “rights.”