Klamath Basin Plan Fuels Debate

Setting up another potential showdown in the Klamath Basin, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation took steps Wednesday toward adopting a 10-year operating plan that could cut water to endangered fish and give it to farmers.

Environmentalists say the biological assessment represents a blunt assault on federal endangered species laws and could push coho salmon and two types of sucker fish toward extinction.

The 112-page report sets in motion a series of reviews over the next month that by early April should determine how water will be divided over the next decade between farmers and fish in the broad, arid basin straddling the Oregon-California border.

Federal water officials heralded the plan as a cooperative effort to meet the needs of agriculture and endangered fish in the Klamath River and the lake that feeds it.

“Reclamation is committed to a collaborative approach,” said John Keys, commissioner of the agency.

But environmentalists say the draft blueprint seems to be devised to test the limits of the federal Endangered Species Act.

“The prospect is for more conflict, another hot summer of protests in the Klamath Basin,” said Felice Pace of the Klamath Forest Alliance. Pace said a legal battle between the federal government and environmental groups is inevitable, concluding that the Bush administration “wants to arm the nation and disarm the Endangered Species Act.”

Steve Pedery of WaterWatch of Oregon added: “If rolling back endangered species exemptions were an Olympic sport, the Bush administration would be gold medal winners.”

Glen Spain, who represents West Coast fishermen, said the biological assessment proposes cutting river flows in some cases to less than a third of what salmon need to survive in dry months.

“It would plunge the whole lower river into permanent drought,” Spain said. “This is little more than a thinly veiled effort to blame all of Klamath’s problems on endangered species, not the over-allocation of water.”

Meanwhile, the lake would be pushed to a level that could hurt sucker fish by depleting oxygen, increasing the effects of toxic substances and leaving wetlands high and dry.

Spain and others also say the Bureau of Reclamation has used a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences on Klamath to more aggressively favor farmers over fish.

The 26-page interim report, part of a yearlong study, declared that a sharp cutback in water to farmers last year was not justified by the science.

Environmentalists worry that the Bush administration will pressure wildlife agencies to avoid aggressively countering the Bureau of Reclamation’s approach.

Some also said the late arrival of the report, a month before the traditional April 1 start of planting in Klamath, puts additional strain on the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service, which act as shepherds to the endangered species.

Officials at the Bureau of Reclamation, which for nearly a century has operated the network of canals and culverts in the Klamath area, say they are trying to avoid a reprise of last summer’s fight.

The biological assessment, they said, includes innovative concepts intended to ease tensions. Those include proposals to help fish in dry years by buying or leasing water from willing sellers, including farmers in the Klamath Basin.

In addition, the agency talks of shifting irrigation practices to make better use of winter runoff that otherwise drains out of the basin, upgrading water quality and improving wetlands that act as nurseries for fish.

For the last year, the region has been whipsawed by strife.

In the face of a fearsome drought, farmers were told their traditionally plentiful irrigation supplies would be virtually suspended because of concerns over the survival of two species of sucker fish in Upper Klamath Lake and coho salmon downstream.

Klamath’s agricultural community mounted a summer-long siege of protests, including several successful attempts by demonstrators to crank open the head gates that block the flow of water to farms.

This year looked to be more promising, given a far more abundant snowpack in the sprawling drainage basin of the Klamath as well as new public resolve by all sides to work toward a solution.