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What went wrong and how it was
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Link River Dam was built in 1921 to
raise the level of Upper Klamath Lake
and direct water into Klamath Project
diversion canals. Copco, the
predecessor of PacifiCorp, installed
generators at the dam and operated it
on cue from BuRec.
In 1926, the state of Oregon designed
fish ladders to restore upstream
passage at Link River Dam. Mark
Buettner, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service biologist, said trout
specifications, with two-foot jump
pools, were used. The ladder was on
the Link River’s left bank, across the
stream from the dam’s most frequent
discharge point.
That meant the ladder attracted few
fish, and more important it was too
steep for the sucker fish sacred to
the upstream American Indians.
“They don’t jump,” said Buettner of
sucker fish.
USFWS wrote orders to BuRec to install
screens keeping fish out of the
irrigation canals, and to replace the
Link River fish ladders. Both of those
orders were ignored for one reason or
another until the spotlight turned on
the Klamath Project in 2001. The new
fish screens came first, the fish
passageway second.
To make this one work, Buettner said a
3 percent grade is used and instead of
jump pools, the long passageway has a
group of baffles that let sucker fish
rest before battling the current.
Already, said Buettner, two suckers
tagged a couple of years ago below the
dam have migrated into Upper Klamath
Lake. He expects the migration to
upper watershed spawning grounds will
pick up speed as fish discover the new
facility.
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Klamath Project celebrates 100 years with
promise
Tam Moore
Oregon Staff Writer
KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. – Celebration of the
centennial of the Klamath Reclamation Project
began Oct. 11 with homage to cooperation that
fixed an 84-year-old fish passage problem.
There was also a reminder from three American
Indian tribes that if the United States had
honored terms of an 1864 treaty, the fish
wouldn’t be in trouble.
“This is a recognition that the federal
government is finally beginning to live up to
its trust responsibility to the Klamath
tribes,” said Allen Foreman, chairman of the
tribal council that includes Klamath, Modoc
and the Yahooskin band of Paiute Indians.
U.S. Reclamation Commissioner John Keys joined
Foreman on the podium next to the Link River
Dam. The first thing he said was “We know
these fish are sacred to your tribe.”
BuRec came late to the issue of fish passage
for the Lost River and shortnosed sucker fish,
native to several of the Klamath Lakes and
once a significant fishery for the tribes. In
the 1864 treaty they were promised “hunting,
fishing and gathering” rights as they existed
in pre-treaty times.
This month in 1905, less than one mile from
where Keys and Foreman spoke, BuRec’s
predecessor agency turned the first shovelful
of dirt for what is now known as the “A Canal”
of a project that brings water to about
200,000 acres of cropland on both sides of the
California-Oregon border.
The sucker fish went on the Endangered Species
List in 1988. In 2001, a drought year, the
national spotlight shifted briefly to the
Klamath Project when, under orders from U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service and what is now NOAA
Fisheries, BuRec refused to honor its
irrigation delivery contract to about 1,400
farmers; the government found the scarce water
needed as habitat for the sucker fish and
endangered coho salmon downstream in the main
Klamath River.
For all the recent problems, said Merrill
farmer Steve Kandra, president of the Klamath
Water Users Association, the project has
benefited the community.
“We need to acknowledge what a good thing this
project is; the Bureau of Reclamation has been
good to this community for all these years.”
Kandra, like Foreman, also celebrated the
partnership between tribes, farmers,
government agencies and others that resolved
the fish ladder problem.
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