I wanted to give you an overview of where you're going to go today, and a lot of the things that you are going to see later will tie into what you've heard earlier. Could I have a show of hands for the folks from Humboldt? Okay, I’ve got a different perspective of things that happened last fall, which I have here for you to take a look at. This is an assessment completed by our biologist of the fish die-off last fall.

The association that I represent represents the irrigation districts, ditch companies, water districts within the Klamath Project.  There are 17 of them. It represents roughly 200,000 acres. My board of directors has representatives who are essentially elected officials; they are board members on their own individual irrigated districts, and are elected by their patrons. The association has been around since 1953.  We were actually created to try to provide some political influence at that time on the power negotiations that were going on with CopCo.

From here, today, you will go to the headgates of the Project and then you will follow the A Canal downstream through the Project, make a couple stops, and you will meet some folks lined up to talk to you on the way. First stop will be at the headgates. I think Christine’s crew will talk about that.  That’s a project we're all proud of, we're proud of what Reclamation has done, what local irrigation districts have done, to try to push the thing forward over the past 10 years. I mean, they built this thing in about 7 months.  It is a $15 million structure. It’s intended to protect the endangered suckers in the lake.

From there we’ll head through town and out to Olene, where there is a gap there where the Lost River comes out from the Poe Valley, the east side of the Project. You won't have time today to go out Gerber and Clear Lake on the east side or Poe Valley, or Langell Valley, but we’ll meet Bruce McCoy in Olene.  He’s the manager of the Horsefly Irrigation District and we’ll get out, and see the Lost River in all it’s pristine beauty today. The Lost River really is no longer a river. Once they drained Tule Lake it became basically a delivery system, but it’s an important part of the Project. Bruce will talk about what’s out on the east side for about 20 minutes so you can get out and stretch.

From the headgates out to Olene, Ken Rykbost will provide an overview of the hydrology of the basin.  He’s just finished some findings that he’s put together on watershed hydrology.  It’s really eye-opening, and Ken did a great job the other night for the county commission, gave a 45 minute power point laying out his findings. Too bad he is not going to have the graphics with him, but it’s a pretty interesting assessment and I think it gets to the truth of some of the hydrology reality of the Klamath watershed. I think you'll be given a different perspective on hydrology. There are some things portrayed in the media that just aren’t right. And Ken’s presentation will hopefully give you some straight information on this topic.

From Olene, we’ll follow the north part of Stukel Mountain along Hill Road. Lost River diversion dam - also called the Horseshoe Dam - you’ll see it. It’s an important facility.  It allows water to be moved from the Lost River to the Klamath River through the Lost River diversion channel, which is essentially flat; water can go both ways.

From there we’ll head south and basically follow the water downstream along Hill Road. This area is pretty important because in 2001, when there was a lot of ground water pumping going on and the canals were dry, some shallow wells dried up in that area. And we found since then, in the last two years, that there’s been some heavy ground water pumping, but we haven’t seen those sort of impacts. It’s probably because there is water in the delivery system and that provides a recharge source for the shallow domestic wells. Harold Hartman who is one of my board members from the Malin area, will talk about that.  He’ll point out some lands in this area that are in the idling component of the current water bank.  You’ll see what idled land looks like; it’s not pretty. There are also some areas out there that are pumping ground water in place of surface water this year, through the environmental water bank, where they are getting compensated. Also, we estimate roughly 50,000 acres feet of ground water is being pumped right now at land owner's expense with no compensation to help meet the lake level requirements for suckers. We're looking for ways to try to get some of those farmers compensated this year.

Harold will pretty much guide the tour all the way through Malin. Malin's an old Czech community and there’s some great history there. Along the way we'll talk a little bit about the impacts of 2001 and how that affected the communities and how we're still reeling from those impacts. That cut off had very real impacts despite efforts here in the last year with certain environmental groups trying to downplay what happened.  It’s very serious and you’ll have a chance today to talk to some people on the bus that went through quite an experience and who are still feeling the effects.

From Malin we’ll head south towards Tulelake Irrigation District and Tule Lake. John Crawford, who is a board member with TID, is going to be on the tour. Deb Crisp with Tulelake Growers Association is also on board, as well as Harry Carlson from U C Extension. We’re going to see things like a canal lining project that TID's put in over the last year to conserve water. They are going to show you some things on the refuge, the flood/fallowing that was mentioned earlier. There’s a ton of birds out there right now, and John’s going to take you in, and you can see the incredible bird numbers. It’s a great time to check that out. You’ll also see the infamous TID wells  the state of California funded and helped install in 2001. I think, Bill, those wells are probably some of the most productive wells in the State in California as far as I know.