Our Klamath Basin water war is widely recognized by all and mirrors similar battles being waged across most of the western United States.  We were skeptical that any sort of agreement would result from the original negotiations leading up to the release of the first public draft of the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement (KBRA).  As a result we were surprised to hear that agreement was reached and initially applauded the efforts put into the KBRA.  However, as time went on we became more and more disappointed in the structure of the KBRA.  It seems to promise that which it cannot bring into existence.

The use of a confidentiality requirement during negotiations was carried too far.  From early on, far too many questions posed to the supporters of the KBRA were answered “sorry, can’t talk about that, we’ve signed confidentiality agreements.”  That should have gone away with the first public release!  As a result, many of those both supporting and opposing the KBRA remain woefully misinformed about the specific details of the agreement.  What we are left with is a divided community and so long as we remain divided, the KBRA is destined to fail.

Fighting this water war has practically become a way of life in the Klamath River Basin. Nobody wants this situation to continue. If the fighting is to end, there must be an agreement that has much broader support than this. As it stands today, the KBRA represents only a starting point, not an endpoint to a definitive agreement.  It is not to the point we need to be at considering that the KBRA will seal our fate for the next 50 plus years.

One Billion Dollars of Public Taxpayer Financed Funding (aka Government Money)

We wonder what our predominately conservative and historically self-supporting community is doing asking for such a massive federal handout.  We believe that the acceptance of this money will ultimately spell doom for the Klamath Basin.  Ask yourselves this, “where has the government ever fixed anything by throwing money at a problem?”  The answer, of course, is nowhere.

Consider the situation when a family icon dies without a proper will to his land in place.  We have all watched the legal proceedings with dismay as families “lawyer up” and begin fighting over their supposed share of the loot.  We believe there is a lesson to learn here.  The money connected to the KBRA is likely to result in the same kind of behavior, except in this case the family farm has been expanded to encompass the entire watershed!
 

We are not persuaded by the financial aspects of the KBRA.  We listen to those supporting the KBRA claim “it will take all this money to do all the many needed projects!”  But we are unconvinced of the need for such immense levels of funding.

We are especially concerned about the establishment of a “Klamath Basin Coordinating Council (KBCC)”.  Who in the world came up with this idea and how did this make it into the agreement?  What is the process to get on this KBCC?  Who selected the members?  What is the process to remove one or more of the members?  This council appears to be comprised of the very people who have historically been a large part of the challenges (problems) we have had to face down.  The establishment of the council appears intended to position former adversaries so that they can use the KBRA to further their personal agendas at our expense.

As established in the KBRA, the KBCC would be a conglomeration of people who would have no accountability to anybody in the Klamath Basin.  Furthermore, they will have more money at their disposal than most, if not all, of the elected officials of the counties inside the Basin.  And what might they do with all this money?  Who could honestly consider this a good idea?  

While the coordinating council held a couple of open meetings early on, it now seems to have vanished back into the “cloak of confidentiality” under which the KBRA was birthed.  If there is an agreement that is supposed to benefit the Klamath River Basin, why do the KBCC meetings, where the decisions are really made, remain closed?  We feel the answer lies in the old adage “follow the money.”  A billion dollars is a lot of money and powerful motivation for people to do just about anything.

The Guarantee of Project Irrigation Water

A “guaranteed” block of water is thought to be the first thing provided for in the KBRA, but as long as the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is the law driving the problem, there will be no guarantee.  Any water freed from “harm” to endangered fish species would have to come via revised Biological Opinions (BO).  The odds would seem to be stacked against this as the biologists responsible for drafting these opinions have been getting ever more draconian in their water demands in recent years.  It is naive to think the Services will suddenly “see the light” and write a BO favorable to irrigation needs of agriculture.  Even were a favorable BO to be written, the many existing legal precedents currently restricting agricultural water use challenged in previous opinions is likely to be raised in new lawsuits to derail this.   The primary precedent is, of course, the water shut off of 2001.  This is ample legal case for the fact the most draconian of the biological options needs to be used for fish, not agriculture, and there are ample organizations not bound by signing the KBRA to file lawsuits

The block of water to be guaranteed is inadequate for irrigation.  The size of the Klamath Reclamation Project is 210,000 acres (more or less).  Water requirements are 2 acre feet per acre to meet plant needs.  Year in and year out, there needs to be 400,000 acre feet (more or less) of water delivered to those acres.  The block of irrigation water from the KBRA will vary from 330,000-385,000 acre feet, depending on the water year conditions.  You can do the math a number of ways, but the ultimate fate is for many irrigated acres to go away.  The process in determining which of those acres will go away, when they go away, and how they go away, may become problematic.  However figured, the Project would be expected to downsize.

Did negotiators with well water think they could continue pumping ground water indefinitely to make up the difference?  Say the average of 330,000 and 385,000 is 357,500 acre feet.  This is at least 10% less than the 400,000 acre feet of plant water requirement.  In reality, we see the potential for reductions as being far worse.  

We should also point out that under the KBRA, 2011 would have been a water-curtailed year for agriculture.  The KBRA amounts would have been set before the abnormally, wet spring and a filled lake.

Off Project Water Users Divide

Off-project water users would be adversely affected as well.  Off-project users are divided into two widely divergent groups, one opposed to and one pro-KBRA.  While we repeatedly hear that “the majority of off-project water users support the KBRA”, in actuality most off-project producers do not support the KBRA as evidenced by public testimony.  They realize as more land in the basin is taken out of production, the infrastructure for livestock producers and farmers will be affected.  Almost 100,000 acres has already been taken out of production above the lake.  This agreement calls for another 30,000 acre feet of water to be given up above the lake which is about 18,000 acres of irrigated land.  Livestock production has been the economic leader for our farm economy. Fewer and fewer cattle and along with farmed acres could mean the loss of businesses that are vital to our agriculture community.

It is important that farmers and ranchers both on and off the Project not allow agencies and environmental groups to convince them to alienate themselves from their neighboring resource users.  Water District leaders have the water fees of their constituents to make deals with agencies and environmental groups against the wishes of the majority of the citizens.  Without repealing or reforming the ESA, private property must continue to satisfy the public interests of species well-being before the property can be used by its owner.  The KBRA does not change this.

Water Adjudication

We firmly believe that before any agreement is put in place the Oregon Water Resource Department should finalize the Klamath Adjudication.  When that has been completed, all irrigators will know the legal standing of their water rights under Oregon Water Law.

The Klamath Tribes

We have nothing against the Klamath Tribe, but it seems to us support from the local community for a Klamath Reservation would be far easier to obtain if the Tribes had agreed to drop their claims under the adjudication process as part of their signing the agreement.  Instead it appears to us they stand to gain plenty with no concessions on their part.

The Dam Removal Issue

For whatever reasons, the KBRA was tied to the removal of the four Klamath River Dams by the negotiators.  We understand the politics of why this was done, but since the KBRA is supposed to be a long term solution, removal of dams on a major river system will pose more long-term negative precedence than benefits gained.  We think that existing studies (primarily in the ‘gray’ literature) are inadequate to provide reliable predictions about the effects of dam removal. Most notably, there has not been a systematic, comprehensive assessment of the impact of dam removal on native fish populations of the Klamath, particularly salmonids. This is surprising because the primary motivation for removal of the dams is improvement of these populations."

We disagree with statements that removal of the Klamath Dams will not result in a precedent which is an action or decision that can be used subsequently as an example for a similar decision or to justify a similar action.  The removal of the dams only furthers the aims of dam removal advocates, particularly in the Snake and Columbia Rivers.  The plan doesn’t provide an alternative to dam removal, blames low flows on the agricultural community, erodes property and water rights, and offers very little advice as to what needs to be done to make recovery possible."

The TMDL for uplands in the Upper Klamath Lake watershed calls for a reduction of 18% in external phosphorous loading. But just 4% of total external loads come from agriculture pumping; this drives fears that the burden to improve water quality could fall disproportionately on agriculture's shoulders.

"There has been a massive push for federal funding to help project irrigators be more efficient with water, by installing high-pressure sprinkler systems and other equipment, since 2001. Such systems use less water, but require more electricity; there is an increasing need for energy at a time when dams are likely to be removed. 

Dam removal is a hoax, and aside from paying the “stakeholders” billions, will not save the fish. How does the purchase of a 92,000 acre property for the Klamath Tribe save the fish?

 

The FERC re-license report clearly states that the Upper Klamath Basin is a naturally polluted watershed.  It is volcanic and high in alkali. The dams contribute to CLEANER WATER!!! Never is there mention of linking increase in algae behind the dams to the ever increasing release of warm, nutrient laden, eutrophic water from Upper Klamath Lake.   There is no conflict between agriculture and fishermen and native people except that which has been manufactured by environmental groups who are after the money and the power

Upper Klamath Basin Salmon Restoration

We see this as another major point of contention and it is particularly troubling to us.  We are aware of the studies that support the historic existence of Chinook salmon in the Upper Klamath Basin.  Certainly there were years when salmon could access Upper Klamath Lake and its tributaries, but we have no way of knowing how often this occurred, or how heavy the runs were.  And just as certainly, there were many years where low water prevented any salmon passage past either or both the Keno or Link River reefs.  It is our position that these studies can give us no realistic restoration goals in terms of numbers.  Our fear is that the overwhelming attitude will be failure if anything less than millions of salmon show up seeking upriver passage past the Keno Dam.  We believe that Spencer Creek is probably the last upstream spawning point from a yearly run production.

Lower Klamath River Salmon Restoration

The KBRA assumes that if we remove the dams it will “restore the salmon runs”.  We doubt the likelihood of restoration of Lower Klamath River salmon as the problems facing salmon go far beyond the presence of the dams.  Changing ocean conditions and overharvest are just a few of the other variables affecting salmon runs.  In addition, many questions have been raised about the genetics of these lower river fish.  For years we have heard about the loss of genetic diversity due to formally extirpated stocks.  Such genetic loss (diversity) can never be replaced and would affect the ability to restore salmon runs after dam removal.  We question whether the current salmon populations are truly native species?  Are the current ESA listings even appropriate or just a means to an end?  Each day we seem to learn more about the variables affecting salmon populations, and there is considerable opinion that dam removal may be more likely to reduce salmon numbers than increase them.

Validation

Now we see water districts who have signed the KBRA going to court to seek legal validation for their actions.  None of these water districts saw fit to actually attempt to poll their respective memberships to gauge the level of support among the members.  If validation is achieved, individual members will have no future legal recourse to challenge for damages when they occur.  This is a tough one to explain, much less to understand.  What we cannot have is this sort of misguided policy ruling our lives for the next 50 years.

Finally! 

The KBRA does not guarantee water, a specific power rate, or any relief from the Endangered Species Act or Biological Opinions, but the multi-billion dollar  KBRA does guarantee downsizing agriculture, demolishing hydropower dams servicing 70,000 households, controlling water well use, planting fish species, including fish parasites, into Klamath Lake and requiring their survival, requiring further downsizing agriculture if their committees conclude farmers are ruining the climate, and giving control of the ag drought plan to government agencies, tribes and environmental groups.

There are certainly other reasons we do not support the KBRA, a proper rebuttal would require a document equal in size to the KBRA.