April 14, 2015

The Honorable Greg Walden, et al

U.S. House of Representatives

2185 Rayburn House Office Building

Washington, D.C. 20515

Re: Klamath Settlement Agreements

Dear Congressman Walden:

This is a response to the letter Family Farm Alliance recently sent you and which is attached below for reference.

As typical, virtually all of the proponent rhetoric painting a regional picture of widespread concurrence regarding the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement, (KBRA) link directly back to the same self-benefiting originating KBRA minority few, and this is again no exception.  The FFA letter is professionally written, carefully parsed, and artfully presented with attractive graphics. Unfortunately, also typical, the letter’s implied conditions are blatantly untrue.  The most affected regional majority are against the KBRA and its orchestrated Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement (KHSA) and Upper Klamath Basin Comprehensive Agreement (UKBCA), cumulatively called the KBRA.  Unlike that affected majority of whom none are known to be compensated and are often vilified by virtue of their stand, the comparatively few affected KBRA advocates are invariably found to be paid or directly benefit through their position.  Here are just a few of the KBRA related present facts:

Contrary to the letter’s inference of no bias, Alliance’s executive director Dan Keppen is an author of and a directly benefitting participant of the KBRA, paid to impose selective special-interest confiscatory KBRA profiting authority regardless of effectiveness or consequential regional and environmental cost.  That agenda is pushed even if it requires the use of carefully crafted deceptive percentages (ie over 90%’) of unquantifiable numbers to engender public assumption of a non-existent community majority of KBRA support;

Without authority, the KBRA unilaterally contravened the existing legislated jurisdiction and balanced resource management of the Klamath Basin Compact, and without due process formed ‘agreements’ affecting unrepresented public and private rights and vested resources;

The ‘ground-up’ inference is a lie.  The KBRA was illegally formed and self-appointed in secret with governmental directives from the start.  It set unsubstantiated pre-defined agenda conditions of dams removals and hierarchal resource uncompensated confiscation as a requisite for participation.  It then offered promise of preferential survival to a select few of vested agriculture willing to subjugate to those pre-conditions and the KBRA consequential environmental imposition against their unrepresented neighbors;

The KBRA set up a self-appointed self-benefiting largely non-vested structure based upon unalterable hypothetical environmental agenda theories and policies, and grants itself 50 years of legislated unaccountable chartered publically funded authority once approved, with no effective recourse for the regionally affected apart from approaching the KBRA’s own self-appointed special-interest Council; 

KBRA policy theories have resulted in ZERO statistical sucker and Coho improvement in over 15 years of admitted memorandum of understanding raison d’etre implementations.

Those KBRA implementations have seen the attrition of thousands of regional homes and futures lost with no accountability, mitigation, or consequence for damages caused from failed imbedded policies, with those uncompensated losses legislatively guaranteed to exponentially increase given sanctioned KBRA authority and funding.

KBRA contractually intractable premise has failed in every promised aspect except for the profit potential of participating members and the anticipated precedent-setting potential for expanding unaccountable agenda driven uncompensated confiscation throughout the nation upon legislative sanction of an unconstitutional act.

Ensuing years have seen site specific scientific studies disproving the false KBRA premise, studies vindicating that dismissed affected regional majority along with their historical documentation and knowledgeable experience, thereby placing them in opposition to the KBRA.

Tremendous resources have been directed to compel this forced agenda of attrition upon the affected regional majority using any means possible including lies, deception, coercion, manipulation, and suppression.  Environmentally and historically knowledgeable vested regional residents unwilling to trade social integrity for individual preference have remained steadfast to principles of truth and holistic benefit despite the millions of public dollars being directed at forcing that KBRA imposition.   Regionally knowledgeable realization of the corrupt and failed KBRA premise is why nearly 80% of the most dams-affected Siskiyou County voted AGAINST Klamath dam removals, and why Klamath County recently voted their Commissioners INTO office running solely on a platform of OPPOSITION to the KBRA. 

Apart from the years of self-benefiting KBRA posturing and media, numerous proven integrated truly regionally developed and locally supported alternatives enhancing ALL beneficial uses at a fraction of KBRA cost have been designed but which options are unable to reach fruition under the intractable policies and selective profits of the KBRA.

We would pose yet another in a litany of past unanswered questions… Since the regional majority are solidly against the already failed premise and corruption of the KBRA; since years of already implemented KBRA policy have completely failed in their promises, benefitting NOTHING except for a KBRA self-appointed select and profiting few; since the current site specific studies have already DISPROVEN KBRA contractual and proposed codified premise; since thousands of regional homes and futures have ALREADY been lost due to KBRA incorporated failed policies providing NO accountability or mitigation for continuing consequential damages and loss caused in execution of that preferential benefit; and since historically, environmentally, and economically  viable proven alternatives  addressing ALL beneficial uses are available, but which alternatives under  KBRA enacted policies are impossible to realize; WHY are our ‘representatives’ endorsing a KBRA/KHSA/UKBCA environmentally flawed confiscatory agenda of attrition forcibly imposed upon their most affected constituent majority in opposition?

Considering the above verifiable realities, please explain why you might not support the most affected regional majority voting against implementation of an environmentally and economically destructive special interest KBRA.

Sincerely,

Richard Marshall

President, Siskiyou County Water Users Assoc.

cc:          U.S. Senator Ron Wyden

              U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley

              U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein

              U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer

              U.S. Representative Doug LaMalfa

              U.S. Representative Tom McClintock

U.S. Representative Devin Nunes

California Governor Jerry Brown

Oregon Governor Kate Brown

Deputy Interior Secretary Mike Connor

Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Estevan Lopez

John Bezdek, Department of the Interior

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