Our Klamath Basin Water Crisis
Fighting for Our Right to Irrigate Our Farms and Caretake Our Natural Resources

The Northwest Environmental Defense Center at Lewis and Clark College - one
of the groups responsible for the Klamath Basin and now for the Snake River
notice of Intent to Sue - blatantly proclaims their goal: to shut down
commercial agriculture in the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge.

Mac Lacy, NEDC Co-Executive Director, Writes: 

NEDC recently submitted comments to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) in response to its proposals regarding management of the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge’s agricultural program. NEDC hopes that FWS will ultimately consider completely phasing out commercial agriculture form the Refuge, but in the interim, NEDC's comments urged FWS to take a number of steps to ensure the biological integrity and environmental health of the Refuge. 

A Little History

In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt established the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge along the Oregon-California border. The basin was once a collage of lakes, wetlands, forest, and grasslands, home to a
diverse array of fish and wildlife species, including endangered salmon, bald eagles, and tens of thousands of other migratory birds. Within two years of the Refuge’s establishment, however, the federal Bureau of Reclamation began to "reclaim" the lakes and marshes of the Lower Klamath and Tule Lake areas, converting them to "productive" agricultural lands. Only a year before the President’s executive order, Congress had passed the Reclamation Act, which established the Bureau of Reclamation in the Department of the Interior. The Act’s purpose was to provide water for irrigation in the arid western states, and its social and agricultural goals were part of a national federal policy of disposing of western lands. 

In a chapter titled "Engineering Nature" of an environmental history of Oregon’s settlement, historian William Robbins notes an early irrigator’s description of his reclamation work in the Klamath Basin: "The headgates
were opened when the spring runoff waters came, and those fields were flooded and pumped dry again. We were reinventing the land and the waterflow patterns of the valley on a model copied from industry, and irrevocably altering the ecology of everything."  

Over the years, the Bureau’s Klamath Project has converted wetlands in the Klamath Basin to lands newly suitable for agriculture. Today, only one-quarter of the historic wetlands remain. The Bureau operates facilities across the seventeen western states, including 348 storage reservoirs, 59 hydroelectric power plants, over 250
diversion dams, and over 200 reclamation projects. The Bureau delivers approximately 30 million acre-feet of
water annually, over 85 percent of which goes to irrigators. 

The conflicts between reclamation, irrigation and instream water use for the wetlands, Klamath River and Upper
Klamath Lake, again rose to desperate levels last September. To protect endangered coho salmon in the
Klamath River and endangered Lost River and shortnose suckers in Upper Klamath Lake, the Bureau ordered
the Refuge to seal off its refuge wetlands and pass the water flows through a canal system directly to the
Klamath River. This order was the result of recent lawsuits in which the Ninth Circuit concluded that the Bureau’s
operations must yield to subsequent acts of Congress, including the Endangered Species Act (ESA). 

Although the court’s order benefited endangered fish, it could have been devastating for the wildlife—including
threatened bald eagles—that depend on the Refuge’s wetlands, had the Bureau not determined a week later
that enough water would in fact be available. Still, at least ten of the Klamath Basin’s remaining salmon
populations are at risk of extinction, while others remain severely depressed. For this reason, it is paramount
that the Refuge adheres strictly to its statutory obligations, as well as the federal government’s trust obligations
to the Indian tribes that have fished in the Klamath Basin for over 10,000 years.

National Wildlife Refuge System Requirements

The Refuge is subject not only to the ESA’s requirements, but also to the requirements of the National Wildlife
Refuge System Administration Act, which sets out the standards for administration of the National Wildlife
Refuge System. The Administration Act permits the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to allow "secondary uses" of
the refuges to the extent that such uses are determined to be compatible with the primary purposes for which
the refuges were established. 

President Roosevelt’s 1903 order establishing the Lower Klamath Refuge dedicated the area "as a preserve
and breeding ground for native birds." A 1964 congressional act permanently dedicated the lands to wildlife
conservation and provided that the major purpose of the Refuge was waterfowl management. The Fish and
Wildlife Service may lease land for farming on the Refuges, provided that the farming program is "consistent
with" waterfowl management. 

The presence of commercial farming on Refuge lands has repeatedly demonstrated throughout the last decade
that in dry years, refuge fish and wildlife are deprived of an adequate water supply and always suffer for it. The
water that is left is often contaminated with pesticides. This is hardly consistent with the mission of the National
Wildlife Refuge System. 

In comments recently submitted to the Fish and Wildlife Service in response to the Service’s proposals
regarding management of the Refuge’s agricultural program, NEDC maintained that in order to ensure that the
biological integrity and environmental health of the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge is maintained for the
benefit of present and future generations, the Service must manage commercial farming as a strictly secondary
use—which means that irrigation for farming must always yield when fish and wildlife are threatened. NEDC
urged the Refuge to adopt an operating plan that allowed for mid-season curtailment of irrigation withdrawals, in
order to ensure that the Service does not have its hands tied by pre-set irrigation withdrawal quotas that could
devastate fish and wildlife populations in times of drought. Ultimately, NEDC hopes that the Service will
seriously consider completely phasing out commercial agriculture from the Refuge.

While the region remains one of the premier stops along the Pacific Coast Flyway migratory bird corridor, and
still hosts several species of salmon, it is a shadow of its former self with respect to terrestrial and aquatic
species habitat. NEDC has urged that the Refuge demand, and the Bureau deliver, water to the Refuge to
support the Refuge's primary purposes and satisfy the requirements of threatened and endangered species
that use the refuge wetlands. At the same time, the Service and the Bureau must insure that those refuge needs
are satisfied before lease land irrigators are permitted to withdraw federal water. One hopes that the federal
government will take a forward-looking view of the crisis in the Klamath Basin and choose sustainable,
long-term ecosystem health and honor the federal government’s affirmative statutory and trust obligations, over
short-term, highly subsidized, irrigated agriculture that supports a commodity with low demand and high
environmental cost.

Mac Lacy, NEDC Co-Executive Director