KLAMATH FALLS -- Oregon's largest lake just got a little bit bigger, and it may take an army of lawyers to shrink it back to size.
An earthen dike on the southwestern shore of Upper Klamath Lake gave way June 7, flooding low-lying farmland while nearly washing out Oregon 140 and covering part of a golf course. The water has settled on 2,000 acres northwest of Klamath Falls in an area known as Caledonia Marsh.
The result is a new shallow inlet on the 20-mile-long lake and a football field-sized gap in the Geary Dike.
As emergency work tapered off this past week, and the economic and environmental consequences of the aftermath began to sink in, a variety of public and private jurisdictions began bickering over who's responsible for the mess and cleaning it up.
So far, no one knows who will pay for fixing the dike and pumping out the water.
"This is a huge thing, and the costs to fix it are going to be extensive," said Jon Barkee, development manager of the Running Y Ranch. "I think everyone is starting to understand that now."
The Running Y owns about two-thirds of the submerged land and roughly half of the adjacent dike. The Geary family trust owns the remainder of the flooded land and dike, and the breach is on the Geary end, Barkee said.
Both owners leased the land to a grain farmer, who lost not only his crop but a few pieces of farm equipment in the deluge.
At the Running Y's Arnold Palmer-designed golf course, holes 3, 4 and 5 are partly or mostly under water.
"It's a 15-hole golf course now," said Barkee, giving a tour of the course's outsized water hazard. "But people are playing."
For more than a week, a steady stream of dump trucks has hauled dirt and rock to the course from dawn to dusk, building up a temporary levee around the holes. Once the levee is complete, water will be pumped away from the holes and into the surrounding water.
"At this point, these are emergency measures to get the course operational again," Barkee said. "The permanent solution is going to be decided by the lawyers."
Barkee was referring to the evolving dispute over the dike and flooded area's fate. The resort says PacifiCorp, the regional power company, is responsible for the dike and should rebuild it, sooner rather than later.
"We obviously feel like it's their responsibility, and we're looking into them to take care of it," Barkee said.
PacifiCorp's predecessor, the California Oregon Power Co., signed an agreement in July 1920 with the Geary family's investment company to "protect the dike and certain lands from waters of Upper Klamath Lake," said Dave Kvamme, a PacifiCorp spokesman.
"Beyond those facts, a lot has happened since 1920, and reasonable parties can interpret the scope of that agreement in different ways," Kvamme said. "We believe that will be sorted out in the future," possibly in court.
Multiple calls to a representative of the Geary family trust weren't returned.
The dike was one of a network built around the Klamath Basin by farmers and ranchers eager to drain and cultivate the rich bottomlands that once surrounded Upper Klamath and other lakes as seasonal marshes and wetlands.
Ironically, federal, state and private parties have discussed the possibility of allowing all or part of the Caledonia Marsh farmland to revert to wetlands and additional water storage by intentionally breaching the dike. That would have involved pre-emptive road improvements and other preflood planning, and the plan never took off.
"Maybe this will be a key opportunity to move forward with that concept," said Randy Bednar, assistant district manager for the Oregon Department of Transportation.
The state has reopened both lanes of Oregon 140, which connects Klamath Falls with Medford. Crews laid 175 tons of asphalt on a 580-foot stretch of the road, raising the surface about 5 inches to keep the water off, but that's only a temporary fix.
"Ultimately, for the long term, we're operating under the assumption that there's going to be water on both sides of the roadway," Bednar said.
The water will weaken the highway's pumice base, causing it to fail, he said. To prevent that, the state anticipates building up the surface of the highway 3 to 4 feet, widening it and installing guardrails at a cost of roughly $2.5 million.
"Nobody even knows at this point if the dike can be fixed," Bednar said.
Further complicating the issue are endangered species concerns. It's likely that shortnose suckers, the federally protected fish that led to the curtailing of agricultural diversions from the lake in summer 2001, are swimming in the flooded area.
"As one of our attorneys said: 'This thing has a lot of arms and they're all waving right now,' " said the Running Y's Barkee.
Matthew Preusch: 541-382-2006; preusch@bendbroadband.com
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