By TY BEAVER 

H&N Staff Reporter

December 19, 2010

   It will be at least two more years before the state issues a final order in the Basin’s water adjudication process, detailing how much water various individuals and groups control in the region.

   The process has taken decades to get to this point and wasn’t impacted by a water shortage that left irrigators with less than half their usual allocation of water.  

   After the state’s decision is made in late 2012, legal appeals and challenges will begin.

   “I think, just from my perspective, I’m just looking forward to having a decision,” said Garrett Roseberry, an irrigator involved in adjudication who lives off the Klamath Reclamation Project.

   Irrigators, tribes and federal and state agencies already have invested countless hours and millions of dollars in the adjudication process, which was established by the state about a century ago to determine and quantify vested water rights or water rights that existed before the state’s water laws.

   In the Klamath Basin, the adjudication process applies to any person or agency that uses surface water in the Klamath River watershed, which includes the river, Upper Klamath Lake and streams that flow into the lake.

   More than 5,500 challenges were filed against 730 claims for water in the Basin, and the state and an administrative law judge have been gradually working through them.

   Klamath Falls attorney Bill Ganong, who has worked with Klamath Reclamation Project irrigators on adjudication, said the water shortage this season had no impact on the process.

   “The administrative law judge issued a pretty stern letter saying it had to be life or death,” Ganong said referring to any delay in adjudication.  

   Bud Ullman, an attorney for the Klamath Tribes, said “all the parties are up to their necks in briefings” and the adjudication process runs independent of most outside influences.

   “Droughts are something the adjudication process accepts as part of life and doesn’t make any particular adjustment for,” he said.

   Water claims filed by the Tribes and counter claims filed by off-Project irrigators are among the last that need reviewed.

   The Tribes and Project irrigators have reached a tentative arrangement through the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement. In it, the Tribes would not call on water needed by Project irrigators beyond a set limit. The KBRA has yet to be implemented by Congress.

   A similar arrangement between the Tribes and off-Project irrigators doesn’t exist, though Ullman said the Tribes are working toward it.  

   Roseberry said he is eager for adjudication to move forward so everyone claiming water knows what he or she legally has.

   “Everyone will have a foundation to work from,” he said.

   Those involved in adjudication said they don’t see the process stalling or slowing, though Dwight French, an adjudicator working in the Oregon Water Resources Department, said he knows of one monkey wrench.

   “Funding is the big issue,” he said. “We don’t have a budget for the next biennium yet.”