Levee blasts signal a truce in water wars

Klamath - Four half-mile sections are pulverized in an effort to restore fish habitat  

October 31, 2007

GAIL KINSEY HILL

The Oregonian

KLAMATH FALLS -- Fifty-year-old levees blew up in a dramatic display of dirt and smoke Tuesday, freeing lake water as part of an unprecedented wetlands restoration effort to save protected fish and cool the water wars that have divided the Klamath Basin for decades.

At 11:10 a.m. , the first in a series of blasts sent chunks of the massive dikes 300 feet into the air. One after another, detonations fueled by tons of explosives pounded the air, shooting up like fireworks in a billowy display of blacks, greens and yellows.

Less than five minutes later, four half-mile sections of peat soil the consistency of powdered sugar lay in heaps. Slowly the smoke settled. Even more slowly, water from Agency and Upper Klamath lakes began seeping into tawny-colored barley fields.

The flooding of 2,500 acres of the Williamson River delta is designed to aid the recovery of two species of fish found only in the Klamath Basin . In 1988, the Lost River and shortnose suckers were declared endangered under federal law. Ever since, sparring interests have been trying to put together an acceptable recovery plan.

Suckers once thrived in the wetlands of the lower Williamson River . Their numbers began to decline after engineers built the levees in the 1950s to drain the river delta for farmland.

But the $10 million restoration project goes well beyond the survival of a species. It reaches into faltering environments, disrupted tribal cultures and struggling farm families, attempting to harmonize human communities and wildlife habitat.

The fish "are like the canary in the mine shaft," said Mark Stern, Klamath area conservation director of The Nature Conservancy, which bought the delta property and is spearheading the restoration. "They're indicative of far bigger problems."

The project should put another 17,000 acre-feet of water in the lake, he said. An acre-foot is roughly enough water to cover a football field 1 foot deep. Lake levels will go down about 2 inches but spread out farther, Stern said. "Eventually that will be available for downstream uses."

Joseph Kirk, council chairman of the Klamath Tribe, remembers a time before the levees were built. He was in the first-grade. At the river near his grandmother's house, he would fill his wagon with suckers and sell them to friends for a nickel or a dime apiece. The fish were a food source and often were smoked and dried.

"They had a tremendous impact on our social and cultural lives," said Kirk, who supports the delta restoration. On Tuesday, he stood among a small crowd of people gathered to witness the levees' destruction.

Marshall Staunton, a Klamath Basin farmer on the California side of the border, is a veteran of the water wars. He was one of 15,000 farmers who hit the streets of Klamath Falls in 2001 to protest the actions of the federal government, which had shut off irrigation water to try to protect the suckers and another endangered fish, the coho salmon.

"This is a river that's seen a lot of controversy," Staunton said. "We hope that with projects like this we can continue to share the water and improve the situation for everyone."

Gail Kinsey Hill: 503-221-8590; gailhill@news.oregonian.com For more environment news, go to http://blog.oregonlive.com/pdxgreen

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