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This Website is Dedicated to Alvin Alexander Cheyne January 10, 1921 - June 17, 2005 |
Time
to find common ground in the Basin
Restoration
agreement offers long-term solution to water problems
By
JOSEPH S. KIRK (Council Chairman of the Klamath Tribes)
Guest
writer
For
more than two decades, the people of the
Upriver
tribes, downriver tribes, commercial fishermen, and irrigators in the
Klamath Reclamation Project have all taken major hits in the form of
lost fisheries, massive fish die-offs, or loss of irrigation water.
Bitter water wars have become a defining feature of the Klamath in the
eyes of many.
More
of the same is not what we want. It’s time to fight for peace.
That’s why a diverse coalition of farmers, Indian tribes and
conservationists has come together to develop a bold, long-term
solution, called the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement.
We
came together, listened to and learned from one another, and hammered
out a grassroots solution in the restoration agreement. It equitably
shares water among farmers, fish, and refuges, restores salmon runs,
protects affordable power rates, implements collaborative approaches to
the Endangered Species Act and strengthens rural and tribal economies.
Some people on the extremes – left and right –
don’t want a solution. They oppose compromise and want to continue the
divisions that have only brought economic and environmental hardship to
the
If we fail to act now, farmers and ranchers will go
broke, and subdivisions will rise in their place. Fish, and those who
rely on them, will continue their downward spiral. And as these victims
of the status quo go down, the hope for economic vitality required to
create jobs, support schools, and create community will disappear along
with them.
The Klamath Tribes are a partner in helping craft this
consensus plan. But one of the most disturbing tactics being used by
certain opponents of a common ground solution is to attack the Tribes
and anyone who associates with them, using misinformation to generate
fear and mistrust that feeds on old prejudices that still lurk in this
place.
The Tribes are proposing to support affordable power
rates for irrigators, while Tribal members struggle to pay their own
power bills. The Tribes are embracing a new, collaborative approach to
enforcing the Endangered Species Act that will calm the fighting by
helping both fish and irrigators. The Tribes are proposing to equitably
resolve long-standing disputes over water, so that the Tribes and
irrigators can both have a future.
In return, the Tribes are getting help with economic
development that will be good for the entire community, and programs
designed to restore fisheries. Every group that embraced compromise and
negotiated towards the middle has a similar list of gives and gets. It
is unfair and inappropriate to single out what the Klamath Tribes get
through this agreement – beware of those who do so, and look carefully
for their real motives.
Nothing about finding common ground among diverse
interests has been, or ever will be, easy. But it has been accomplished
in the restoration agreement, which the Klamath Tribes has officially
endorsed. Now it needs the support of our government leaders and most
importantly, you the public, the residents of the
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