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

COMMENTARY, By Barb, Klamath Bucket Brigade 4/9/03

  I don't know where Driscoll gets his figures on the total July Klamath River flows for 2002, but I went to : http://waterdata.usgs.gov/ca/nwis/dv...  and got the real figures.  According to USGS, total cubic feet per second flow on the Klamath River (recorded at the USGS gage at Klamath, California) during the entire month of July, 2002 equaled 98,806 cfs.  Divide that number by 31 days and it equals a 31 daily average of 3,187.29 cfs.  We can turn 98,806 cfs into acre-feet by this formula:  98,806 / 100 X 198.935 = 196,559.72 acre-feet of water flowed out the Klamath River into the Pacific during the month of July, 2002.  Not during one day of July did the Klamath River flows drop down to 815 cfs as Driscoll reports; lowest flow for the month was on July 31st, but USGS recorded it at 2,600 cfs.

The total amount of water used by the Klamath Project (including water from the Klamath River that went into the National Wildlife Refuges) from the Upper Klamath Lake watershed (not Clear Lake, Gerber, nor Lost River) equaled 348,217 acre-ft for the entire irrigation season in 2002.  Do the math:  the flows out the Klamath River during July, 2002 equaled 56% of the total Project use for the entire irrigation season.  ~  Barb (Klamath Bucket Brigade)


 

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