Federal Plan for Water in Klamath Basin Is Accused of Favoring Farmers Over Fish

A proposal heralded as a first step by the Bush administration to cure the Klamath Basin’s heated water war came under criticism Monday from environmentalists who say it favors farmers over endangered fish.

Foes say the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s draft blueprint for the next 10 years seems motivated by a desire to test the limits of the federal Endangered Species Act, not to help revive sagging fish populations in Upper Klamath Lake and the river downstream.

“James Watt would be proud of this plan,” said Reed Benson, executive director of Oregon WaterWatch, a Portland environmental group. “The Bush administration is creatively ignoring their duties to commercial fishermen, tribes and endangered species.”

Officials at the bureau, which for nearly a century has operated the network of canals and culverts for agriculture in the Klamath area, countered that they are trying to avoid a reprise of last summer’s vitriolic fight.

Bennett Raley, an assistant secretary for the Interior Department who oversees the bureau, emphasized that the document released Monday is only a draft and that the snap judgments by critics are “absolutely not founded.”

Raley said the draft contains several innovative concepts intended to ease tensions in the fight over water in the basin. Those include proposals to help fish in dry years by buying 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, upgrade water quality and improve wetlands that act as nurseries for fish.

Raley said the bureau wants “to turn this basin back to a place where the communities can work together.”

For the past 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 suckerfish 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.

But environmentalists, fishermen and Native American tribal leaders said the draft “environmental assessment” released by the bureau seemed to undo all goodwill.

Klamath Tribal Chairman Allen Foreman called the document “just another empty promise” that would undercut tribal water rights and hurt the suckerfish, which once served as a source of food and remains part of the tribe’s cultural heritage.

Felice Pace of the Klamath Forest Alliance said the draft seemed “motivated by high-level political agendas” that, if enacted, would represent “a clear signal that the Bush administration intends to aggressively dismantle the Endangered Species Act” and tribal water rights.

Release of the draft marks the start of a flurry of activity that should by April 1 decide how the water is divided between fish and farmers. The bureau document is open to public comment until Feb. 8, then will be forwarded to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agency and the National Marine Fisheries Service, which have the scientific responsibility for determining whether changes are needed to ensure the survival of the suckerfish and salmon.

By the start of the April planting season, the bureau would be expected to release an operations document telling farmers how much water they can expect during the coming months.

In a related matter, a land-rights advocacy group is planning to file a lawsuit this week challenging the federal endangered species listing of the coho salmon in the Klamath River.

The Sacramento-based Pacific Legal Foundation plans to use the same tactic it deployed to successfully challenge the salmon’s status on the Oregon coast. The group argued in federal court that biologists failed to make a valid argument that discernible differences exist between plentiful farm-spawned salmon and their scarce wild cousins.