|
Klamath Basin not ready for
water marketing solution
By TAM MOORE Oregon Staff Writer
KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. — Economic theory may
point to buying and selling water as a
solution in water-scarce areas such as the
Klamath Basin, but local leaders last week
rejected a market-based solution as not
ready for prime time.
The discussion came in a conflict resolution
conference put on by the Property and
Environment Research Center and Jeld Wen
Corp., owner of the Running Y Ranch with
6,800 acres of irrigated pasture and
cropland dependent on an uncertain water
supply.
“I need ... a certain, reliable supply of
water there” to farm, said Mark Campbell,
manager of the ranch.
Jim Huffman, dean of the Lewis and Clark
College Law School, made the case for the
ability to buy and sell water as a property
right. He also said in the Klamath, where
federal involvement, pre-historic tribal
water claims, demand for fish habitat,
irrigation for farms and water for hydro
power generation compete for the same
natural runoff that “I don’t think private
property is a solution, it is a part of the
solution.”
Economist Terry Anderson, who is on the
property rights center staff, said when the
day-long forum was over that the real lesson
is that the Klamath Basin needs
“incremental” solutions, not massive fixes,
“because if we screw it up, it is only a
little change” that can be halted.
In both Oregon and California, water rights
by law relate to the land receiving the
irrigation or other benefit of water. The
system is overlain with irrigation projects
that store water in one location, then move
it to others, often during summer months
when natural flows are low.
“Separating water rights from land and
selling it is somewhat like clearcutting a
forest and not replanting,” said Doug
Whitsett, president of the rancher-dominated
advocacy group Water for Life.
The real problem in 2004, said Leslie Bach,
a hydrologist with The Nature Conservancy,
is that pre-1909 water rights in Oregon’s
part of the basin aren’t settled. The
adjudication begun in 1975 remains years
from resolution.
Water markets might work, Bach said, if
parties settled the Oregon adjudication.
Said Anderson after listening to the Klamath
stakeholders, he’s convinced that for any
solution to work it will be by “the
knowledge of people who have their feet on
the ground,” not those participating in
federal task forces in Washington, D.C.
“If I were here I would be more fearful of
political solutions,” Anderson said. “Those
will be driven by people far from here.”
|
