'Bucket brigade' planned in Oregon

This story was published 5/5/2001

By Mike Lee
Herald staff writer

Farmers incensed and frightened by federal water demands are turning the plight of "exterminated" Klamath Basin farm families into a rallying cry for irrigated agriculture across the West.

Buoyed by a landmark federal court ruling in California earlier this week, Mid-Columbians are among those converging on Klamath Falls to protest a federal decision to dry up the 200,000-acre irrigation project on the Oregon-California border.

Monday's "bucket brigade" is an attempt to stir national sympathy for the 1,400 waterless farmers by passing buckets of water from the Link River to a nearby irrigation canal.

It's a symbolic action of defiance and hope in the face of disaster now that the federal government has decided to provide water for sucker fish in Upper Klamath Lake rather than the $350 million farm economy that depends on the 96-year-old irrigation project.

The significance for the Columbia and Yakima basins is hard to miss. Both irrigation projects are run by the Bureau of Reclamation, the same agency that operates the Klamath project and that last month said farmers will get no water this year.

"I hope that everybody recognizes that we are not invulnerable," said Mike Poulson, a Connell farmer involved with multiple water issues around the Northwest. He is among approximately 10,000 farmers and ranchers expected to attend Monday's rally.

"We could look back at the bucket brigade a year or two from now and see it as a major turning point in public perception," said Dean Boyer, spokesman for the Washington Farm Bureau.

"What's happening in the Klamath Basin is really just the most recent and the most egregious and the most public of actions that have been taken all across the West in denying water to farmers and ranches," he said. "Federal decisions on the Endangered Species Act have gone overboard."

Such sentiment also appears to be rising in Congress, and the House Resources Committee is reviewing how species protection affects communities such as Klamath Falls.

"From the dust bowl and disaster that will result this summer, perhaps will rise the change that is so needed, and so overdue," said U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., in a Tuesday speech on the House floor. "We should never have ended up in this place."

The Oregon Wheat Growers League in Pendleton, the Oregon Grains Commission and the Oregon Water Coalition are encouraging members to attend the noon rally on Monday.

"This is an opportunity for all agriculture to unite," said Tom McCoy, president of the Wheat Growers League.

To reserve a seat on the water coalition's bus, call 541-564-0279. Washington residents are welcome. For more information about the bucket brigade, go to www.klamathbasincrisis.org.

Washington farmers already have dealt with the heavy hand of federal fish-saving tactics, most notably in the Methow Valley, where empathy with Klamath growers runs deep.

Residents there have worried for the last three years that the federal government was starting to garnish water in isolated North-central Washington -- which is relatively insignificant in the farm world -- to gain momentum for larger takeovers.

"We have said all along that if they could get away with it here, they could get away with it anywhere, and it looks like it's spreading," said Bonnie Lawrence, an Okanogan property rights activist.

While growers fret about federal water supplies, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims on Monday rendered a substantial victory for irrigators in a case that pitted a Tulare Lake, Calif., water district against federal fish protection measures that included the reduction of private water rights.

"It looks positive, and we need some wins," Lawrence said.

The government argued that requiring water for fish wasn't "taking" private property, something the court rejected.

"The denial of a right to the use of water accomplishes a complete extinction of all value," the ruling said.

So, the court found that "the federal government is certainly free to preserve the fish; it must simply pay for the water it takes to do so."

Galen Schuler, a leading Endangered Species Act lawyer from Seattle, said the ruling is a substantial victory for water users from the Methow to Klamath Falls.

He's fighting the legitimacy of federal water takings on several fronts, but says the landmark Tulare Lake decision means, "Even if you lose all those arguments ..., (federal agencies) still have to pay you."