| "Endangered" Klamath May Get Help |
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by Tim McKay
Named the second most endangered waterway in the U.S., the Klamath River may get assistance from Congress and the courts.
North Coast Congressman Mike Thompson used the river's listing as imperiled last month as a springboard to reintroduce legislation, HR 1760, to restore the Klamath Basin.
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May 2003
Help also may be coming from the courts, where the NEC, fishing groups and other plaintiffs were due April 29 trying to force the federal Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) to release more water downstream for the sake of salmon.
The BOR's operating plan for the river will send even less water downstream at critical times than it did last year—when an unprecedented massive die-off left some 33,000 adult salmon dead.
The BOR plan was blasted by the NEC as "offering socialism for the rich"—the large farms in the upper basin—"while giving free enterprise to the poor Indians and commercial fishing interests in the lower Klamath-Trinity system."
Dry Year Ahead
Forecasts say Upper Klamath Lake will receive little more than half of normal inflow between now and fall, triggering a "dry year" schedule that will further starve the river of water.
Highly subsidized crops like potatoes, onions and alfalfa will take precedence over troubled fisheries and wildlife refuges. That's why the NEC and other Klamath Coalition partners favor purchasing land from willing sellers in the upper basin to retire it from uneconomic farming.
Thompson's measure would fund water conservation and habitat restoration, as well as offer disaster assistance to Indian tribes and small businesses. He said it would make up for "a poor water management policy (that) has caused an environmental and economic catastrophe."
When upper Klamath water is diverted to the irrigators, flows drop in the river below Iron Gate Dam, which in turn results in fish strandings, and chronic kills of juvenile fish and water conditions that favor fish diseases.
While the lower Klamath-Trinity system is a major focus of Thompson's bill, it also addresses wildlife refuges in the upper basin that also have paid a price for subsidized spuds. The measure calls for a study by the Fish and Wildlife Service of optimal flows to the refuges, and then for those flows to be phased in over one to five years.
Thirsty Refuges
The BOR delivery plan calls for the region's half-dozen wildlife refuges to get less than a third of the water that conservationists believe is needed to sustain the area's huge winter population of bald eagles and other rare birds.
The Thompson measure also calls for one overall advisory group to assure that downstream voices are heard in the restoration process, as well as full implementation of the decision to increase Trinity River flows which has been blocked in federal court by Fresno's Westlands Irrigation District.
Coalition groups working for restoration of the Klamath-Trinity are encouraging citizens to urge Senator Dianne Feinstein to work for passage of the Thompson bill.
The Klamath listing as the second most threatened waterway came from the group American Rivers, which noted that a common theme in its listing of this year's ten most endangered rivers was water diversions for agriculture.
For more information, go to the NEC website yournec.org or to americanrivers.org. A copy of Thompson's bill is at the NEC.
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Updated Friday, May 23, 2003 |
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