Our Klamath Basin Water Crisis
Upholding rural Americans' rights to grow food,
own property, and caretake our wildlife and natural resources.
Our Klamath Basin
Water Crisis
Upholding rural Americans' rights to grow food,
own property, and caretake our wildlife and natural resources.
|
Letter written to federal officials
Rancher, settlement
opponent Tom Mallams recounts confrontations
by Sara Hottman, Herald
and News 11/4/11
Mallams and Mike King,
also a rancher, have made a point to attend most public
meetings related to the agreements, and say supporters have
tried to intimidate and ignore them.
“They don’t like to see
us coming because we hold them to the fire,” Mallams said.
“We wait our turn, we raise our hands. We ask the questions
people wanted to ask but are too afraid to ask.”
Excerpts from
the letter
Here are excerpts from
Mallams’ letter (in italics) and responses from the people
named in it:
“I am writing this
letter to inform you of a very disturbing public meeting I
attended … As I approached the inner door to the Chiloquin
Community Center, where the meeting was scheduled to take
place, a very loud, obnoxious and rude (Upper Klamath Water
Users Association) Board member, Cheri Little, blocked the
door so I was unable to enter. She exclaimed that ‘we needed
to go outside and settle this once and for all!’
“… I motioned to (King),
who was already inside, to come over to the door. (Little)
was distracted for a moment so I was finally able to enter
the room. She kept up a caustic, verbal abuse for another
minute or two, until I was able to find a seat and sit down.
I still have no idea what she was talking about as her
sentences were not even coherent.”
2
Becky Hyde, an upper Klamath rancher, who attended the
meeting said Cheri Little, 56, “gave him a piece of her
mind.”
“But,” she added,
“welcome to the political world.”
Mallams and King were at
the meeting with anti-dam removal signs attached to their
trucks. They had attended several meetings to speak about
the settlement agreements, distracting from the affordable
power program, Hyde said.
“They were there as
agitators,” she said. “That’s the role they’re playing
everywhere we go.
“These were
informational meetings held by (Klamath Water and Power
Agency) to explain how the program might work and allow
(irrigators) to sign onto the power load.”
Mallams said organizers
were promoting “a lie, or some people call it a scam.”
He said he’s certain the
list of irrigators who are interested in the program will
end up in Washington, D.C., as a list of people who support
the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement. “There’s no doubt
in my mind that’s what this is for.”
• • •
“When this meeting in
Chiloquin began, the first order of business was to
introduce (King) and myself as the ‘major opponents of the
KBRA and KHSA.’ This was done by Hollie Cannon, the director
of KWAPA and board member of (Klamath Basin Power Alliance).
(Cannon) was conducting this meeting.”
“(Cannon) was very
abrasive to me in Chiloquin,” King said. “He put us out
there in public as being opponents to the KBRA before the
meeting even started.”
“I’m not a bit sorry I
did that,” Cannon said afterward. “I think it was the right
thing to do.”
3
Cannon opened the meetings clarifying the program was not
about the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement, but about
how irrigators who move water for agriculture can
participate in the affordable power program.
All irrigators can
participate in the program, regardless of whether they
signed on to the agreements.
“It’s very frustrating,”
Cannon said. “After the first two meetings I realized there
were people there not for the information. Their purpose
there was to campaign against the KBRA, so I introduced them
that way.
“… I had to cut them off
at times. I didn’t want to limit questions, but when it got
to the point it was campaigning against the KBRA I had to
cut them off to be respectful of everybody’s time.”
King and Mallams
maintain their comments were pertinent.
“The power program is
out of section 17.2 of the KBRA,” Mallams said. “How can you
say it’s not part of the KBRA when it’s in the KBRA? … They
don’t want the connection because it’s a negative
connection.”
• • •
“After this public
meeting … we went outside to find two signs opposing dam
removal, (which) were attached to a private vehicle,
destroyed. This vehicle was parked directly in front of the
Community Center. Another board member, (Hyde), commented,
“What did you expect coming to a meeting in Chiloquin?”
Apparently our constitutional rights to freedom of
expression are somehow suspended at federally funded events
in Chiloquin.”
Hyde said Mallams took
the comment out of context. She was helping them pick up the
pieces of the sign, apologizing that it had happened, and
empathized, relating to them a time when her
signs were destroyed at
an event.
“It’s not acceptable for
anybody to destroy someone else’s political signs,” Hyde
said.
4
“But it’s obvious
4
“To say our side is unpopular is totally false,” Mallams
said. “The other side is completely losing their temper.”
“I also find it
disturbing that the KBRA is constantly being sold with false
and misleading statements. For example, at the (power
program) meeting in Bonanza, Ore., on Sept. 19, I pointed
out that the KBRA mandates that off-Project irrigators must
allow the Klamath Basin Coordinating Council or a local
partner to access their private property to assess
compliance with the ‘conservation plan’ in order to qualify
for the affordable power program. The president of …
(Klamath Basin Power Alliance) Karl Scronce strongly denied
that the KBRA said any such thing. Over his objection, I
quoted directly from KBRA, (section) 17.3.2, which says
“The program is meant to
bring more affordable power to our irrigators, and we need
that, we desperately need that,” Hyde said. “Ninety-five
percent of the landowners were
just trying to figure
out how to get more (Bonneville Power Administration)
power.”
Cannon clarified the
clause was for enforcement, allowing program administrators
to ensure off-Project irrigators who participated in the
power program were holding up their end of the bargain with
conservation measures.
Irrigators on the
Klamath Reclamation Project and off-Project irrigators who
participate in the Water Use Retirement Program are exempt.
The retirement program is a concession off-Project water
users made in the KBRA, requiring them to retire 30,000
acre-feet of water from irrigation.
“The whole foundation of
the KBRA is conserving water to make it available for
endangered species,” Cannon said. “In exchange for that,
agriculture gets a reliable allocation of water, whereas now
the allocation is very unreliable.”
Mallams disagreed.
3
“It’s a complete
lie. There is no affordable power in this program,” he said.
“If we’re not there (Cannon) calls it ‘affordable power.’ If
we’re there he calls it ‘stable power.’”
Once the program is
implemented, irrigators will
But the program would
stabilize prices by buying power from Bonneville Power
Administration, a federal power-marketing agency that sells
electricity to utilities at a reduced rate. Then PacifiCorp
would distribute power with its infrastructure.
“The reality of the
program is that affordable power for irrigators in the
Klamath Basin is an extremely difficult task to achieve,”
Cannon said. “Our efforts now are probably not going to have
large benefits
initially, but over time they will.
“But if we don’t start
somewhere, sometime, we’ll never get any benefits.”
|
KBC RESPONSE Herald and News included excerpts of Tom Mallams letter recounting abuse toward him at a public meeting on affordable power, part of the KBRA / Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement. 1 HERE is his entire letter from Klamath Off Project Water Users Association to Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. 2 Becky Hyde is married to a rancher in the Off-Project in the Upper Klamath Basin. Hyde's relatively new little group, Upper Klamath Water Users Association, claiming to represent off-Project irrigators, is allowed at the KBRA table and also the PacifiCorp dam removal negotiation table. Hyde works for SNW, Sustainable NW, an environmental group that has worked for the Klamath Tribes. SNW president Martin Goebel was director of World Wildlife Fund, funded by Soros-funded Tides; WWF is partner of United Nations Foundation with Soros and Ford Foundation. Soros helps fund Earthjustice, which provides free legal fees for the environmental groups at the KBRA table, groups who sue resource users. Goebel is Trustee for Summit Charitable Foundation owned by Roger Sant. The company is a five year span granted Sustainable NW $342,875. The funds come from Sant's company AES, worldwide developer of power in 29 countries, power "from coal to gas to renewables such as wind, hydro and biomass." SNW Klamath Programs Director James Honey was born and raised in Mexico and is a graduate of Stanford University. His background includes complex class action litigation, and conservation work with the World Wildlife Fund Mexico and the California Hydropower Reform Coalition." California Hydropower Reform Coalition dam removal magazine "Restore", boasts of the many dams the following groups have caused to remove. Many of the groups below are funded by Soros>Tides> , and a litigant of many of them, Earthjustice, is funded by Soros. nearly half of the steering committee consists of environmental groups that are voting members in the KBRA. Off-Project group Resource Conservancy, which Mallams is a member, representing more than 100,000 acres, was not allowed at the KBRA table by KBRA and dam removal proponents. KOPWUA was kicked off of the KBRA stakeholder group when they refused to sign the KBRA because the others refused to negotiate with them. It was no longer a consensus group. KOPWUA was denied access to any of the dam removal meetings because Mallams refused to sign the additional confidentiality and protocol agreements in the closed-door meetings.
3
Monday Oct 3, Klamath Falls, meeting about signing up for cheaper power rater for irrigators, "Water For Power" (Approximately 50 people attended this meeting. 4 Nearly 80% of Siskiyou County, home of 3 Klamath River hydroelectric dams to be destroyed, opposed the KBRA/dam removal "agreement," 77% of Tulelake opposed dam removal agreement, and 1/2 of Klamath County, home of one dam proposed to be destroyed. In the recent KBRA public meeting with Dept of Interior, 72%, spoke in opposition to the KBRA/dam removal agreement. More polls HERE |
Page Updated: Sunday November 06, 2011 02:37 AM Pacific
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