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Tribal
land plan clouds dam deal
A
proposal to restore Klamath reservation territory threatens an agreement
for setting free the Klamath River
MATTHEW
PREUSCH
The
Oregonian
The so-called settlement
group of 26 government agencies, farmers, tribes, fishermen and
conservationists Tuesday announced a proposal to bring competing
interests together to remove the dams.
The dams, owned by
Portland-based PacifiCorp, have no fish ladders on the lowest three and
are widely blamed for destroying salmon runs in the river and in the
In the proposal to remove
the dams are sweeteners for various interest groups to get them to
cooperate. They range from guaranteed irrigation water for farmers to
money for Native American tribes.
Under the new strategy,
the agreement supports the tribes' request for $21 million from Congress
over the next four years to buy 90,000 acres of private forestland. That
amounts to about 2 percent of the $1 billion estimated cost of the
The only reference in the
241-page settlement proposal to re-establishing the reservation is
Section 35.2 on Page 138, a brief mention of what it calls the Mazama
Project.
Restoring the reservation
is a hot-button issue in
The tribal land proposal
is no different.
On a frigid Thursday
night, about 50 people stood outside the
"The way this has
worked out is you stab everyone in the back and the last one standing
has a settlement," Bartell said.
The land in question is a
25-mile-long wedge of lodgepole and ponderosa pine straddling U.S. 97
north of
More than 50 years ago
under a federal policy called termination, members of the Klamath Tribes
got cash payments and their reservation was converted into the
The tribes recently
shelved a push to revert 690,000 acres of the national forest to tribal
ownership. The plan was opposed by a local group worried about losing
access to public lands as well as national environmental groups that
feared stepped up logging in the pine lands.
Some of the same voices
that fought the return of the national forest to tribal ownership now
speak out against the Mazama forest purchase.
"They sold it and
now we're going to buy it and give it back to them?" said Glenn
Howard of the Klamath Basin Alliance, a group of private landowners.
The parcel contemplated
for the reservation is part of 500,000 acres of Northwest timberland
broken up after Crown Pacific declared bankruptcy in 2003. It also
includes a shutdown stud mill the tribes hope to use.
"We're trying to
find a valuation that works for both sides, as we'd really like to see
the tribes have this property," said Greg Lane, chief operating
officer of Fidelity National Timber Resources, a subsidiary of
Florida-based Fidelity National Financial, which purchased controlling
interest in Crown's former holdings in 2006.
The tribes see the forest
property as a cornerstone to reconstituting its resource-based economy
and helping ensure eventual tribal self-sufficiency.
"We want to get as
much of the reservation as we possibly can, and use it obviously for
tribal members but also the community," tribal Chairman Joseph Kirk
said in an interview.
The agreement also
envisions fulfilling the tribes' desire to restore salmon runs to
tributaries of
In return, farmers who
are part of the federal Klamath Project will get predictable allocations
of water during irrigation season, forestalling, they hope, a basinwide
crisis like the one that erupted in 2001. And the tribes promise to back
off on using the Endangered Species Act as a weapon against irrigators.
But before any part of
the agreement can be enacted it must be approved by the tribes,
Now there are worries the
attempt to get a new reservation could destroy more than two years of
tense negotiations.
"It took 21/2 years
to build this, and it seems like we're trying to tear it down in 48
hours," said Greg Addington, executive director of the Klamath
Water Users Association, which represents irrigators on the 240,000-acre
federal Klamath Project in southern
Matthew Preusch:
541-382-2006; preusch@bendbroadband.com
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Source: http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/
news/1200716707296330.xml&coll=7