Klamath River advocates worry Cheney inquiry could threaten truce forged in recent years

John Driscoll
Eureka Times-Standard

June 30, 2007

Congress will investigate Vice President Cheney's role in crimping water to salmon in favor of farms, a committee chairman announced Friday, but some in the basin worry it will only open old wounds.

House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick Rahall agreed to conduct hearings after Rep. Mike Thompson and 35 lawmakers from California and Oregon asked for an inquiry following a Wednesday Washington Post article.

The article covers Cheney's involvement in Klamath River issues, as well as in pressing for air quality controls friendly to industry, among other matters. Cheney's influence led to full irrigation deliveries in 2002, the article contends. Later that year, more than 68,000 salmon died in a hot, low river.

”It certainly appears this administration will stop at nothing to achieve political gain from natural resource disasters,” said Rahall, a West Virginia Democrat, in a statement. “Ultimately, it will be hard working Americans and their healthy environment that will lose if we fail to act.”

Thompson, D-St. Helena, said that courts have found the Bush administration's water policy in violation of the Endangered Species Act and the public should know if Cheney pushed for science to be manipulated for political gain.

But since 2002, irrigators in the Upper Klamath Basin , tribes along the Klamath and fishermen have brokered a truce. Especially in the past three years, the groups have worked together to push for basin-wide salmon restoration efforts and cooperation in pressing for a settlement over Pacificorp's request to relicense its hydroelectric dams.

Some worry investigations may threaten that truce.

Yurok Tribe policy analyst Troy Fletcher said the Post article is new spin on old news, and wondered if the expense of investigations wouldn't be better spent on restoration projects. He said the real news is how the upper and lower basin is working together.

”The Yurok Tribe hopes that this does not detract from efforts to resolve long-standing issues in the Klamath Basin ,” Fletcher said.

The stakes are high for people up and down the river, said Greg Addington, executive director for the Klamath Water Users Association. The association represents many of the upper basin's irrigators, who protested irrigation cutoffs in 2001 and to whose aid Cheney supposedly came.

But Addington said it's not in anyone's interest to start slinging mud again, and said the association's members are committed to moving forward.

”We're a lot more interested in looking forward than we are about looking back at what happened in 2001 and 2002,” Addington said.

John Driscoll can be reached at 441-0504 or jdriscoll@times-standard.com.