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The Oregonian's "Silver Bullet": Buy out
Project Farmers
- Despite any evidence that supports their
argument, the editors have long advocated that buying out Project farms
will some how solve the water crisis. They - and the environmental
activists who most strongly promote this idea (ONRC and WaterWatch) - have
failed to demonstrate HOW retiring Klamath Project farmland will generate
new water, particularly since the environmental groups would like to
convert those lands to wetlands, which we know use 1 AF/acre more water
than farms in the Klamath Project (source: UC Extension Office, Tulelake,
CA).
- The latest editorial uses a new justification - alleged impacts to
Klamath Basin groundwater - as the reason for resurrecting the buy out
option. Past justifications by the paper for this argument include the
2001 water curtailment and the 2003 fish die-off on the lower Klamath
River.
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The Klamath Project is not the only consumptive user of water in the
watershed. Ignoring water that is used by private and public wetlands and
refuges, and water that is exported to the Central Valley and the Rogue
River Valley, Klamath Project agriculture only accounts for 41% of all the
irrigated acreage above Iron Gate Dam (source: NRCS, 2003). The Project
itself only covers 2% of the entire 10.5 million acre watershed.
- The Oregonian fails to acknowledge what the National Academy of
Sciences final Klamath Report concluded: "Recovery of endangered
suckers and threatened coho salmon in the Klamath basin cannot be achieved
by actions that are exclusively or primarily focused on operation of
USBR's Klamath Project" (Page 9, "Endangered and Threatened Fishes in
the Klamath River Basin, 2003, NRC of the National Academies). Despite
this crucial finding, the editorial board continues to focus solely on
Klamath Project farming, or, rather, the elimination of said farming, as
its solution.
Klamath Project Demands are Not the Reason
for "Too little water"
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The editorial assumes that agricultural
demands are the reason for there being "too little water in the Klamath".
In the past 40 to 50 years, while the cropping pattern in the Klamath
Project has varied from year to year, the overall planted acreage has
remained consistent. On the other hand, the 2002-2012 biological opinion
created by NOAA Fisheries for coho salmon established the river flow
schedule and the water bank – which ratchets up to 100,000 acre-feet in
2005, regardless of actual hydrologic conditions – that is the primary
source of new demand for water in the Klamath River watershed. The result:
stored water that has flowed to farms, ranches and the refuges for nearly
100 years is now sent downstream at such high levels, that groundwater
pumped from the Lost River basin is being used to supplement the resulting
“coho salmon demand” in the Klamath River.
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It is not the farmers who have imposed new
water demands that, in essence, have made groundwater the default
supplemental supply to the Klamath Project. It is the opinions of agency
fishery biologists who have fundamentally altered how our century-old
water project operates, and who have apparently failed to anticipate the
resulting impacts to our community.
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The National Academy of Sciences found no
justification for the higher lake levels and higher flow levels contained
in the 2001 biological opinions that led to the curtailment of Upper
Klamath Lake supplies. The emphasis in the current biological opinions
continues to be on high lake levels and high flow levels, despite limited
empirical evidence that correlates these factors with sucker fish health
in Upper Klamath Lake and coho salmon health in the mainstem Klamath
River.
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Changing the flawed biological opinion would
appear to be a reasonable alternative to the “final” solution offered up
by the Oregonian.
The Oregonian's Failure to Cover "The Rest of
the Story"
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In 2002, after Rep. Walden and others in the
House of Representatives worked to secure $50 million in Klamath
conservation funding as part of the 2002 Farm Bill, the Oregonian's
editorial board ripped Walden and the Klamath Water Users Association for
not supporting the Senate version of the Farm Bill, which would have
provided $175 million to support buying out Klamath Project farms.
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Also in 2002, within one week of the
2002 Klamath River fish die-off, The Oregonian editorial board immediately
pegged the blame for this unfortunate event on the Klamath Project and the
Bush Administration, well before the facts were in. “The Bush
Administration and Congress thought it could resolve last year’s crisis in
the Klamath Basin by challenging the science of salmon protection and
simply ordering more water to irrigators,” said The Oregonian editors
on September 28, 2002. “Here is the result: thousands of
rotting salmon, including hundreds of threatened coho, stacking up in the
lower river.”
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In 2003, The Oregonian featured a
front page story that attempted to link White House officials with
micromanagement of Klamath Project operations. Karl Rove's name was
featured prominently in that article, as well as in two editorials that
implied Bush Administration policy makers were somehow responsible for the
2002 fish die-off. Earlier this year, an Inspector General's report
dismissed these allegations. No response from the Oregonian.
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In 2003, Governor Kulongoski's Department of
Agriculture recognized the Klamath Water Users Association with its
"Leadership in Conservation" Award for its proactive efforts. As far as we
know, Karl Rove did not have a hand in this matter. No response from
Oregonian editors.
Factual Errors / Omissions in the
Editorial
- The editorial states that Project
supplies were cut off in 2001, but when deliveries resumed in 2002, tens
of thousands of salmon died in the "too-low, too-warm" Klamath
River. The editorial does not mention that Judge Saundra Armstrong in
2003 found no linkage between Klamath Project operations and the fish
die-off. Nor is mention made of the National Academy of Sciences final
report released later in the year, which noted "It is unclear
whether low flows actually blocked upstream migration or, as suggested
by literature, that most of the fish stopped moving because of high
temperature".
- The editorial points out that the
refuges last summer went six straight weeks without any water
deliveries. It does not note that for the past two years, the Lower
Klamath refuges have received 37,900 acre-feet and 36,000 acre-feet of
water deliveries, respectively, well over the 40-year average refuge use
of 26,700 acre-feet (Source: USBR, 2004).
The Oregonian editorial also did not mention
a U.S. Interior Department solicitor’s opinion that puts perceived
Endangered Species Act (ESA) and tribal trust water needs above those of
Klamath Project irrigators and the national wildlife refuges. In
essence, according to this opinion, farmers get the water that’s left
over after lake and river level conditions are met, and the refuges get
what’s left over after that. The refuges are short of water - like the
farms - because stored water intended for crops and waterfowl has been
reallocated away to meet perceived fishery needs.
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