So where will all this water be coming from?   

Klamath Falls Herald and News

Letter to the Editor

October 24, 2010

   I have heard this question asked, but never answered about the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement: Someone said irrigators were to get 50,000 acre-feet of water from Upper Klamath Lake, but if the KBRA was already implemented, they would have gotten as much as 300,000 acre feet.

   Can someone tell me where that extra water would have come from?

   Also, someone from the Tribes said the Tribes were giving up a lot. Maybe someone could tell us exactly what they are giving up.

   It was also said that it was local control to keep the government out of our businesses. I assume the government will be paying the $1.5 billion to implement the KBRA. To me, this means total government control. I have yet to see the government pay for anything that it did not control.

   In one of the stories about the KBRA, the headline read: “Water deal helps with property tax losses.” Then later in the story, it says Klamath County stands to lose property tax revenue because irrigators will annually voluntarily surrender 30,000 acre-feet of irrigation water from Upper Klamath Lake as part of the agreement. Less water means less valuable land, which means less tax revenue for the county.  Instead of the water deal helping with lost taxes, it is what will cause them in the first place. The KBRA is also supposed to get affordable power rates for irrigators, but when asked about it, all they came up with was we hope it will be so much or we think it will be a certain amount. Nobody seems to know. I guess we will have to wait until it is implemented to find out what it does. Kind of like Obama Care.

   Ralph Welch

   Bonanza