Water Bought for Bald Eagles
Federal irrigation officials in the drought-parched Klamath Basin worked out a deal Wednesday to buy a little more water for a wildlife refuge that is the winter home to hundreds of threatened bald eagles.
Working through a court-ordered mediation process seeking long-range solutions to the basin’s water crisis, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation arranged to buy 2,700 acre-feet of water from two irrigation districts served by the Klamath Project and send it to the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge.
Combined with 1,000 acre-feet already being diverted from PacifiCorp’s hydroelectric projects on the Klamath River, the water is enough to meet minimums for the month of August set by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists for the 600 to 1,100 bald eagles that winter in the area.
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