Klamath
Falls Herald and News Letter to the Editor
The Klamath Water Foundation is a non-profit organization whose goal is to unite
local agricultural, business and community interests in order to sustain
traditional livelihoods and protect our local communities, their economy and the
environment.
We are funded by broad-based community support. Foundation board members are
well-known business leaders, agricultural producers, scientists and educators.
Our principal mission is to secure and sustain reliable guarantees of water
supply for irrigation in the Klamath Basin.
In pursuit of that mission, we wish to go on record as supporting continued
detailed study and construction of additional deep-water storage in the Upper
Klamath Basin. We believe that study of the Long Lake reservoir site and similar
storage alternatives should be conducted to determine the most productive and
economically feasible options.
We do not believe that further permanent reductions in irrigated agricultural
acreage are either necessary nor desirable, nor even capable of providing
desired water supply security for all Basin interests. Nor do we believe that
current proposals for reduced summer irrigation diversions above Upper Klamath
Lake can substitute for real, year round, deep-water storage capable of
retaining normally abundant spring runoff for later use.
It has become abundantly clear that Upper Klamath Lake's present water storage
capacity of approximately 500,000 acre-feet is inadequate to support both
Klamath Project irrigation water security and all desired environmental
purposes.
More of the lake's annual net inflow, which averages about 1.3 million
acre-feet, should be captured and stored for later use.
We believe that most technically feasible alternative and the most politically
acceptable solution to all Klamath Basin interests will be deep-water
facilities, which both minimize evaporative losses and provide long-term storage
capability.
Lynan Lea Baghott
President
KWF Board of Directors
Source: http://www.heraldandnews.com/articles/2003/10/24/viewpoints/letters/letters.txt