Snow job? Film blames Basin Farmers for Fish Kill

By Phil Hayworth

pioneerp@sisqtel.net

A film depicting the evil of Klamath Basin farmers and irrigators, along with Republican, Washington D.C.-based puppet masters such as Karl Rove, is sweeping through major cities along the West Coast, including Portland, and likely further poisoning the minds of city folk against the farmers of Klamath.

The film by Wyoming environmentalist Todd Darling puts Klamath farmers in the same category as snowmobile-riding polluters and dirty-dealing politicians. It describes the 2002 Klamath River fish-kill as an evil plot between Basin farmers and Rove himself, suggesting that the water releases to Basin farmers was a way to bolster support in the area for the re-election of George Bush - all the while without regard to the lives of salmon.　

The film, which played last weekend at the Hollywood Theater in Portland, follows Darling as he visits the Yurok tribe in Northern California. Due to damming up the river, the fishing industry was suffering, the Tribe said, and that water is instead used by the Klamath Basin Project up river. However, the issue goes deeper, the film suggests, with Karl Rove stepping in during negotiations in order to help things go smoothly for a Republican election in the area.

What the film fails to mention is that research since 2002 has shown that most of the blame for the salmon's collapse has been placed on ocean conditions. Specifically, the Pacific Ocean in 2002 entered a warm phase that delays the onset of current "upwelling" off the West Coast and starves the marine ecosystem of nutrients and food.

Also, the film fails to mention that the U.S. government's Bureau of Reclamation diverts as much as 90 percent of the Trinity River water to the Sacramento River - water that would usually flow into the Klamath at Weitchpec. Instead, the water is being diverted and utilized in California's Central Valley.

According to Tom Patton, a hydraulic engineer for the BOR, the percentage of water being released from the Trinity Reservoir and diverted to the Sacramento was 73 percent during the fish kill. Government officials had previously assured Hoopa tribal members that the amount released would be 50 percent.

Therefore, the 2002 fish kill likely had little to do with Basin farmers.

Darling transitions from the Klamath issue and upsetting imagery of dead fish to ranchers in Wyoming struggling with the federal government's right to mine natural gas on private property due to loopholes in property deeds. The film is tied together by Darling's quest to learn why the most common type of snowmobile engine, which is 27 times more polluting than an average automobile, was allowed by Bush to remain on the market after an earlier government directive sought to phase it out in favor of a cleaner type of engine.　 The irony is that Darling drives one of those polluting beasts throughout the whole movie. To see a trailer, go to www.tinyurl.com/6f9mwg.