Everything in our region will suffer 

I am “in the water” over 50 times per year for 50 years, as my grandfather before me, and her waters literally run in our blood.

As also known by many others having equal or greater unbiased experience with the region and river we love, without question the Klamath water quantity, quality and riparian stability at our location are far better as a result of the dams than before.

Ogden, Freemont, Gibbs, Everman, Lietritz, Boyle and many other highly educated people wrote extensively in manuscripts, books and articles during the local pre- and post-European influence periods describing the pre-dams Klamath conditions and events in front of them at the time, confirming the routinely dismissed “non-rewarded” multi-generationals’ river experience and knowledge.

A year ago I wrote a guest column for the Siskiyou Daily on the background and the disaster about to befall our region. Sadly, that time is here.

With the grand convergence of Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement (KBRA), Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement (KHSA – formally Agreement In Principle), water quality’s Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs), Fish and Game 1602 Incidental Take Permits (ITPs), the suction dredge ban, the Siskiyou Crest Monument and much more, all flying in the face of statistical benefit, regional history and the current studies contradicting their “theoretical” justifications, a relative handful of special interests have orchestrated a precedence-setting future that will fail all except the few that created it.

While their individual damage to our region has and will be horrendous, through the KBRA/KHSA, those self-serving interests will reap billions, political power, agency expansions, land transfers, funding guarantees, hierarchal superiority, subjective determination and liability protections as a result of secret meetings affecting unrepresented public and private assets – excluding everyone not agreeing to their dams-removal prerequisite, dividing the guaranteed benefits among themselves, and placing the costs and consequence on the backs of the previously excluded unrepresented ratepayers, taxpayers and the majority vested interests targeted for extinction.

We have been here before, and prior escalating attacks have left our region and people with little left to stand on. As predicted by the locals over 20 years ago, forests closed by self-benefiting interests are now being decimated due to excessive growth; they are condemned to centuries cycles of “natural” burning brush, erosion, pollution and infestation, drastically reducing optimized natural productivity, and crushing economic and environmental benefit with devastating burden.

To date, imposed Klamath “mitigations” based on current theory have cost at least a half billion dollars over 20 years; the 2001 water shut-offs saw 1,200 homes and families lost to raise water levels in the name of sucker improvement, and extensive regional losses, insecurity and asset destruction, have already occurred to no known significant statistical improvement.

Facing constant harassment lawsuits and manipulated lack of FERC option, incredible concessions have been offered to Pacific Power in secret meetings to be paid for by unrepresented ratepayers and taxpayers if Pacific Power accepted dam removals and KBRA inclusion – with all parties in those secret meetings to be granted legislated legality and liability protection for both environmental and economic damage.

In a recent presentation with a Siskiyou supervisor to Washington entities, the Economic Development Council’s letter described its enthusiastic cooperative compliance with a new “vision” and economic direction for Siskiyou County, without mentioning sustaining impacted, existing productive industries and local lives.

Ironically, the board president of Siskiyou EDC is a paid representative for Pacific Power.
Under terms of the KBRA and the previous KHSA requirement, by signing on, Siskiyou County agrees to release any county representative liability recourse on behalf of its citizens and agrees to be the enforcement arm to require citizen liability release for any assisted mandated regulatory requirements, as issued by the then-in-place protected KBRA. That unequal hierarchy will no doubt continue for 50 years regardless of any eventual “dams removal” decision, requiring ever greater “mitigation” fees and requirements, furthering the obvious intention of regional agricultural and rural resident attrition.

Except for those that created it, under their agenda, everything in our region will suffer, including the environment.

One of our county supervisors said they wondered if it might be more beneficial to sign on and claw from the inside rather than throw rocks from the outside as it goes by.