The federal government wants to use water meant for restoring the Trinity River to prevent a fish kill on the Klamath River this fall.

By its own admission, such a decision would delay the goals of the Trinity River Restoration Program -- which just received full clearance to proceed by a federal appeals court this year.

In a letter Monday, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Mid-Pacific Region Director Kirk Rodgers told restoration program chief Douglas Schleusner to craft a schedule for using the water meant to flow down the Trinity River in the spring to raise and cool the Klamath during the typically hot fall, when salmon migrate.

The letter outraged some Trinity River advocates, like Byron Leydecker, who saw it as ordering the theft of Trinity water from its intended purpose to cover Reclamation for failed policies on the Klamath.

California Trout's Leydecker said Reclamation has overcommitted water on the Klamath, and now wants to prostitute a 16-year effort on the Trinity to make up for it.

"I've seen some gross political action in my time," Leydecker said, "but this one is very near the top of the list."

He said if Reclamation should buy water from Central Valley contractors like it did two years ago.

The Klamath River basin has received a tiny portion of its typical snow pack -- around 30 percent -- this year. Reclamation's operations plan calls for flows only slightly higher than those believed in part responsible for a massive salmon die-off in the lower Klamath in 2002. While Reclamation has bought 100,000 acre feet of water from farmers in its Klamath Irrigation Project, fall flows are still anticipated to be paltry.

"When combined with one of the lowest projected adult spawning escapements in recent years, impacts to fisheries in both the Trinity and Klamath basins could be severe," Rodgers wrote.

Schleusner was directed to work with the Trinity Management Council and the Trinity Adaptive Management Working Group to develop a flow schedule, including options and tradeoffs. Those groups meet this week.

Reclamation spokesman Jeff McCracken said the goal of the restoration program is to restore the river and the fishery, and this approach fits that bill. Asked if the agency could buy water from the Central Valley for the same purpose, McCracken said competition for tight water supplies has grown tighter, making water more difficult to buy.

In a letter that predates Rodgers', the Hoopa Valley Tribe asserted that the management council has no authority to use the water for anything other than Trinity River restoration. It also addressed a lack of funding for the effort. The council is at risk of dealing a "triple blow to restoration," by postponing the effort, underfunding it, then withholding the water needed to reshape the river, the tribe wrote.

"Each of these actions is unlawful and potentially jeopardizes the fishery that the United States holds in trust for our tribe," the March 4 letter reads.

Source:  http://www.times-standard.com/Stories/0,1413,127~2896~2812024,00.html