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https://www.heraldandnews.com/members/forum/letters/late-water-information-sickening-for-users/article_91d4dad3-8248-525f-95ec-121504421dfe.html

Late water information sickening for users

Bill Heiney, letter to the editor of Herald and News 3/21/18. Heiney is board member of Tulelake Irrigation District, and former board member of Klamath Water and Power Agency/KWAPA.

2018 feels like a repeat of 2001. Our current watershed conditions are similar to 2015, but we have no allocation, no start date, and no tools to develop a water bank.

I read in the Herald and News that the Bureau of Reclamation is once again going to release a start date at its next public meeting. This is unprecedented and unacceptable.

In 2015, we were extremely busy collecting bids and developing programs with water users to augment lake levels and river flows for endangered species. The program were a huge success. This allowed the project irrigators to use water that historically flowed unquantified to their lands.

We have spent millions of dollars on projects to allow all species to survive, i.e. farmers, fish, waterfowl, businesses and tribes. Now to abandon those projects and programs and circle back around to what looks like a 2001 water shutoff make me sick.

2001 was a year when I saw many homesteader veterans lose faith in our system, a year when I saw many of my friends and neighbors go broke, a year when I lost hunderds of thousands of dollars myself, and a year when I told my kids (potential fourth generation farmers) that they would never farm. I am extremely sick of the repeat that I see coming.

Bill Heiney

(Former board member of

Klamath Water and Power Agency)

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