Judge Orders New Irrigation Plan for Klamath, Citing a Threat to Salmon

Stepping squarely into one of the West’s most tumultuous water wars, a federal judge on Thursday ordered the Bush administration to revamp a long-term irrigation plan for the drought-plagued Klamath Basin that had been criticized for favoring farmers over fish.

U.S. District Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong ordered federal wildlife officials and water regulators back to the drawing board, saying the 10-year water allocation plan for the broad agricultural basin on the Oregon-California border violated the federal Endangered Species Act by failing to provide healthy downstream flows to the Klamath River’s threatened coho salmon.

But with the agricultural season half over, the judge stopped short of ordering immediate changes, which could have slashed water to Klamath farms and sent the region spiraling toward trouble. Two years ago, a ruling by Armstrong prompted steep water cuts and ignited a summer of protest stretching from the head gates of Canal A in Klamath Falls, Ore., to the halls of Congress.

Ever since, the farming region has battled a coalition of environmentalists, Indian tribes and fishermen who believe Klamath farming should be scaled back to provide more water for two species of endangered sucker fish in Oregon’s Upper Klamath Lake and the threatened coho that ply the Klamath River’s serpentine course across California’s far north.

Both sides claimed partial victory after Armstrong’s ruling Thursday.

“The key here is we’re going to be allowed to operate the project for the remainder of the year without any significant changes,” said Jeff McCracken, spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the federal water agency in the West. “Lord knows what could have happened otherwise.”

Kristen Boyles, an attorney with the nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice, said Armstrong’s ruling “starts us down the road toward better balance” between the needs of fish and farmers.

Tribes, meanwhile, were pleased that Armstrong ordered a trial on their claims that meager river flows caused an outbreak of disease that left more than 33,000 salmon dead.

“We’re looking at this as a victory for us,” said Susan Masten, chairwoman of the Yurok tribe, which has a reservation straddling the banks of the Klamath in Humboldt County. “We’ve repeatedly warned the administration that their water plan causes an unacceptable risk to coho salmon. Now we’re looking forward to our day in court.”

Once the nation’s third-most-productive salmon river, the Klamath has declined in recent decades. Environmentalists say irrigation deliveries to the federal government’s Klamath Basin project hurt salmon at all stages of life. Fry rely on sufficient river flows to reach backwaters where they can hide and feed. Year-old smolts need flows to safely reach the Pacific Ocean. Adult salmon migrating upstream to spawn can be hurt by water that is too warm or tainted by pollutants.

Under the federal plan, water officials argued that the Klamath Basin’s 220,000 acres of farmland comprise 57% of the watershed’s irrigated land and that 43% of the flows needed for fish should be provided by the state of California and Oregon, several tribes and scattered private irrigation districts that tap the Klamath.

Armstrong rejected that argument, saying the federal water plan relies too heavily on “actions by states and private parties that are not reasonably certain.”

The Oakland-based judge also criticized the government’s “absolute failure” to set a threshold triggering a biological review -- and possibly a cut in irrigation water to Klamath farmers -- if coho salmon began to die or the river declined to such a degree that fish could be sent skidding toward extinction.