Snowpack Eases Strain at Klamath

One year after an epic drought slashed water to farmers in the Klamath Basin and sparked a fierce fight over the protection of endangered species, Mother Nature has fashioned a short-term truce of sorts.

The snowpack that supplies water to the broad, flat basin straddling the Oregon-California border stands at more than 120% of normal. On the eve of a new planting season, there should be enough to go around for farmers and endangered salmon and suckerfish.

Those prospects may ease tempers enough to allow the warring factions--salmon fishermen, environmentalists and Native American tribes pitted against farmers--enough elbow room to craft a long-term fix.

“There’s still plenty of heat and plenty of passion, but there’s also plenty of water,” said Glen Spain of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Assns. “This is the year to solve these problems.”

It doesn’t figure to be easy.

Environmentalists already are miffed that the head gates of A Canal, site of last summer’s most heated showdowns, are set to be cranked open Friday, even though federal wildlife agencies have not completed biological studies of a proposed 10-year operating plan. Environmentalists say they’re taking a wait-and-see attitude, but farmers fear that a lawsuit is being planned to block their irrigation water.

“I won’t be surprised if the day after water flows, an environmentalist lawsuit hits,” said Bob Gasser, a fertilizer dealer in Merrill, Ore.

Meanwhile, lawmakers in Congress seem headed toward a showdown over a proposed $175-million package to fix problems that have bedeviled the basin for more than a decade.

The money for Klamath is included in a multibillion-dollar omnibus farm bill being negotiated by a Senate-House conference committee. With a war on terrorism continuing and the federal budget looking increasingly tight, the possibility remains that Klamath’s share could be sliced.

Even if it survives, two Oregon lawmakers are wrangling over how it should be spent.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wants money to restore wildlife habitat and retire farmland, reducing water demand. Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), who represents the region and has been a ready ally to the farmers, wants agriculture to be ensured irrigation water as part of the deal.

Todd True, an attorney with EarthJustice, said Walden seems bent on “locking up water for irrigation and shutting out the fish and environment.” Farmers such as Bill Kennedy, meanwhile, rue Wyden’s approach. “There are other ways to reduce demand without permanently retiring productive Klamath Basin farms and ranches,” Kennedy said.

The Bush administration, which last year had the Klamath mess explode shortly after the president took office, has now entered the fray in earnest.

On March 2, Bush established a Cabinet-level panel to help resolve conflicts in the Klamath area. Last week, Interior Secretary Gale Norton opened negotiations aimed at the possible return of ancestral lands to the Klamath tribes, which could ease long-simmering divisions between the government and the landless band of Native Americans.

Even with prospects bright for full irrigation deliveries this year, farmers say they’re still hurting.

After last year’s unplanted fields and huge financial losses, many are having trouble getting bank loans to pay for this year’s seed, machinery and labor costs. Gasser said he would normally have a dozen machines out in the fields spreading fertilizer and spraying chemicals. Right now he has two in use.

Some banks won’t make loans until the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which runs the sprawling system of dams and canals, provides guarantees that the water will flow. Even then, some farmers have been deemed loan risks.

“We’ve still got major, major problems,” Gasser said. “A lot of people are not loanable, their debts got so big.”

Divisions between various factions within the farm community also persist. Some farmers have been pushing in recent years to sell out, while other groups believe that farming in the region can’t shrink any further or the area will lose the critical mass of tractor dealers, fertilizer salesmen and seed distributors that keeps things running.

“It’s been a nasty crisis, and there’s still tension,” said Dan Keppen, executive director of the Klamath Water Users Assn. “Getting water and getting folks farming will help alleviate some of that tension, take some of the sting out of last year.”

To that end, the Bureau of Reclamation has in recent days declared its intent to let the water start flowing, even though important reviews of endangered species remain unfinished.

Federal wildlife agencies have about four months to conduct an endangered species review. But the bureau didn’t finalize its plans until late February, putting the wildlife agencies in a pinch to deliver in half the allotted time.

Last week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service threw up its hands, announcing that it would not have a biological opinion completed until early June, long after farmers historically plant their crops. Meanwhile, top Interior Department officials made it clear that they weren’t going to let statutory roadblocks keep water from farmers.