Fertile farmlands turned to dust under the summer sun. Some farmers whose families farmed here for generations lost everything and filed for bankruptcy. A wildlife refuge nearly dried up. In response, citizens as part of the “Bucket Brigade” took water symbolically out of Lake Ewuana and passed it through 15,000 people into the A Canal, symbolizing this horrible thing that the government had done to the farmers.  

   Since that time, various proposals, including the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement and the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement, have been offered to address these important issues and bring water certainty to the Basin. But so far nothing has achieved broad enough support in the Basin or the halls of Congress.

   Take things one step at a time

   A better strategy is to find smaller pieces of the agreement that have broad support, and work on those first, one step at a time. That would bring us one step closer to the day the federal government provides long-term certainty and stability for the stakeholders in the Basin.  

   A major contribution to the failure of previous solutions is the lack of public support. Now, parties in the Upper Basin have come together to offer a solution, a positive step in the right direction. But for any solution to work, stakeholders must build public support for their plan. The public — the hardworking families of the Klamath Basin — is too often left out of this debate, hampering progress towards the goal.

   Reigning in abuses of the Endangered Species Act: When all is said and done, farmers, ranchers and other citizens need certainty that we won’t agree to a plan, only to face new litigation over the Endangered Species Act in the Basin. That could put us right back where we started. Any solution must include ironclad language that ends the status quo of gridlock and   uncertainty.