Newport News: Fixing the Klamath; Part I: Why the Klamath matters here

Early in the 20th century, the federal Bureau of Reclamation developed a plan to use the Klamath Basin, straddling the Oregon-California border, and the adjacent Lost River basin for farming.

Through the "Klamath Project," the bureau dammed rivers, drained wetlands, cut forests, dug canals, diverted waters, and enabled the irrigation of tens of thousands of acres in the basin. Farmers began to raise potatoes, onions, alfalfa, barley and other crops in areas east of the Cascade Range that are naturally been semi-arid, even though they are laced with wetlands and lakes fed by runoff from that range.

Starting at about the same time, a series of dams were built on the Klamath River; only one was designed as part of the irrigation effort and the others were intended for power production and flood control.

Copco 1 was built in 1918; Link River Dam (key to the Klamath irrigation effort) in 1921; Copco 2 in 1925; J.C. Boyle Dam in 1958; Iron Gate in 1962; and Keno Dam in 1967.

For decades, it appeared to most everyone - except the Native American tribes who relied on Klamath salmon for their food and culture -the dams and the Klamath Project had succeeded.

But both the irrigation system and the power production have become embroiled in controversy; it appears there was a price to be paid for their successes.

There are different views on just how to allocate the blame for the reduced Klamath salmon runs between the irrigation diversions, the effects of the dams, and other causes, as well. Still, the bill appears to have come due in 2001 and 2002, when a regional drought lowered water levels in the Klamath to the point where farmers, who need it for irrigation, found themselves fighting conservationists, Native tribes and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who all wanted the water for fish.

In 2001, Klamath farmers confronted federal marshals for several weeks at the head-gates that kept water available for endangered sucker fish (also known as mullet) in Upper Klamath Lake and for threatened coho salmon in the Klamath River. Some 1,400 family farms received no irrigation water and suffered serious economic losses. Some went into bankruptcy, some went out of business.

In the summer of 2002, the Bush Administration overrode the US Fish & Wildlife Service and restored full irrigation flows to the farmers. That spring, there had been smaller die-offs of juvenile fish in the Klamath; come September, tens of thousands of returning Chinook salmon died in the river. The original estimate was 35,000; later estimates doubled the number. The cause, according to the National Research Council of the National Academies was "two types of pathogens that are widely distributed and generally become harmful to fish under stress, particularly if crowding occurs."

The findings of a U.S. Fish and Wildlife report, "Klamath River Fish Die-Off September 2002: Causative Factors of Mortality," reached the same conclusion conservationists and Native American tribes had reached - that low flows below the Klamath's Iron Gate Dam, (the dam closest to the ocean and the die-off area), caused by upstream irrigation diversions, had created the conditions causing the epidemic which led to the die-off in the river's lowest 40 miles.

In 2005, Oregon and California coast commercial salmon fishers joined the fish in helping pay the Klamath Project bill. Fish from the reduced 2001 outgoing run were coming back and had to be protected. The 2005 salmon season was limited to prevent fishers from catching many of the returning Klamath Chinook.

This summer, the worry about returning Klamath Chinook led to a virtual closure of the commercial ocean salmon season, a first-ever shutdown (with a few exceptions) along 700 miles of coast from below the Columbia River to California's Point Sur.

The closure led to calls for changes in how the Klamath Basin, Klamath lakes, and Klamath River are managed. It led, also, to the Klamath farmers, in an effort by the "Klamath Bucket Brigade," providing aid to coastal salmon fishers struggling to survive the season. And it has led to various proposed solutions to the problems of the Klamath.

But nothing is certain, including the exact cause of the 2002 fish die-off. It may seem common sense to figure that fish need water, and salmon need cold, clear water - and a shortage of both would damage the Klamath salmon. But the Klamath Water Users Association says upstream water diversions did not cause the crisis, and that Upper Klamath water is too warm to have helped the fish had it been released. Further, South Coast salmon fisherman Scott Boley, who grew up in the Klamath and returned there recently with other coastal fishers to talk with Klamath farmers, says the strong returning Chinook brood in 2002 and consequent overcrowding in the lower Klamath, with or without the water diversions for farmers, was enough to cause the 2002 die-off.

Even if the environmentalists, fishermen, California Department of Fish and Game and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are correct in believing competition between fish and farmers for Klamath flows caused the die-off, there in no guarantee the required water will go to the fish. The flows, especially in drought years, may not be enough to meet all the claims on them.

Salmon runs

One thing certain is that, before the Klamath was dammed and diverted, it was the West Coast's third greatest salmon stream, behind the Columbia and Sacramento rivers. It drains a basin of 9,691 square miles that gets less than 12 inches of rain per year, but is also watered by runoff from the Cascades Range.

According to an April 2005 article by John Hamilton, Gary Curtis, Scott Snedaker and David White in "Fisheries," published by the American Fisheries Society, the Klamath River in 1908 was filled with salmon. It quoted a Klamath Falls Evening Herald article of Sept. 24, 1908 that, "There are millions of the fish below the falls near Keno, and it is said that a man with a gaff could easily land a hundred of the salmon in an hour, in fact they could be caught as fast as a man could pull them in."

One estimate, the article noted, put the Klamath salmon runs at 650,000 to 1 million fish.

Chinook historically used the whole length of the 350-mile long system including the distant tributaries of Upper Klamath Lake. But much of their best spawning sites were in the middle reach at, above, and now underneath the river's dams and reservoirs.

Steelhead, too, made it into the tributaries of the Upper Klamath Basin, as did coho salmon. They prefer smaller streams than Chinook, and historically spawned mainly in the upper basin (as did sockeye and pink salmon, and cutthroat trout). The coho are down to 1 percent of pre-project numbers, according to an article by Zeke Grader of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Association, in the Fishermen's News of August 2001. The chum and pink salmon are gone. The coho runs are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The Chinook are protected under the Magnuson Stevens Act.

But when people spoke of immense Klamath salmon runs in years gone by, it was the Chinook they were referring to. The Chinook have spring and fall runs, and if the basin were somehow returned to a state of nature, it is the spring runs (aided by Cascades and other melt water) that would re-colonize the Klamath to its highest springs. The fall Chinook (protected by the truncated 2006 salmon season) might make it that far up in good water years, but not in lesser years.

Geography

The Klamath region is one of the most complex in Oregon. Besides receiving water from the Cascade's eastern slopes, it also gets runoff from the ridges, small mountains and streams to its east. Historically, its lakes grew and shrunk naturally with the seasons, and were surrounded by great wetlands. With two wildlife refuges and an abundance of fish, birds and other critters, the region has been called the Everglades of the West.

Three large lakes are at the heart of the region: Upper Klamath Lake, Lower Klamath Lake, and Tule Lake.

Various streams flow into the north side of Upper Klamath Lake; at its south end, the Link River flows out beside the city of Klamath Falls, into a brief, mini-lake (Lake Ewauna) and then becomes the Klamath River. It flows south and then bends east, heading through canyons and past dams to the ocean. There is also Lower Klamath Lake, which is connected to the river. Tule Lake, further east, had naturally been separate, a terminal evaporative pond, but has been connected to the broader Klamath system by man.

Clear Lake, and Malone and Gerber Reservoirs, east of Tule and the Klamath lakes, add their water to the upper Klamath system.

Several smaller rivers further downstream feed into the Klamath River, including the Shasta, Salmon and the Scott rivers. Finally, just 43 miles before the Klamath reaches the ocean, the Trinity River - the biggest single tributary - enters into it.

The fish die-off in 2002 took place within the first 36 miles from the mouth of the river, downstream from virtually all of this. What happens in the basin, affects the salmon - and the Oregon coast.

Joel Gallob is a reporter for the News-Times. He can be reached at 265-8571 ext. 223, or joel.gallob@lee.net.