River Impossible (Cont.) | Outside Online

Outside Magazine August 2003

Page:

The Water Issue: Fueds
River Impossible (Cont.)

SALMON v. SPUDS
FIRST THERE'S THE A CANAL. Just to review, the A Canal carries water from Upper Klamath Lake, a shallow sheet of snowmelt, into the B, C, D, E, and F canals, as well as the A-3 and A-4, the C-4, the F-1, the High Line and Low Line canals, two canals named North, and two named West, not to mention the East Lateral, the South, and the Center canals. That's 185 miles of canals total.

Then there are the ditches—the bigger, named ones like the Van Brimmer and the Yonna, plus 300 miles of anonymous, unlined farm trenches. There's also something called the Klamath Straits Drain, along with scores of channelized creeks, uncountable dikes, and an aqueduct called the Lost River Diversion Channel. The water is pushed and prodded by 11 major and at least 45 minor pumping stations and fed onto 210,000 acres of farmland through sprinklers, pivots, pipes, wheel lines, and, though far less often than in the past, flood irrigation, the wholesale dumping of water on the ground. The result of all this diversion is the spuds for your freedom fries, the dehydrated onions in your pizza shaker, the peppermint in your Dentyne Ice, and most of our nation's supply of horseradish.

Any water that isn't sucked up by crops flows downhill through a network of sumps and reservoirs, into a pumping station, through a tunnel passing beneath a ridgeline, and out into the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge, where, despite carrying a heavy load of pesticides, it nurtures cattails and sedges and birds. Then it gets dumped back into the river 11 miles downstream from where it started, near Keno, Oregon. Though supporters of the Klamath Project like to claim that this diversion consumes only 4.5 percent of the river's annual flow, that's a misleading statistic. The water is removed during the critical dry months leading up to the fall salmon run, when it can reduce the river's total volume by up to 50 percent.

The river itself doesn't look like much at first. Below the headgates of the A Canal, during drought summers, you can easily wade across it. But the Klamath is parched only at the top, where all the good farmland is. After passing through five dams crowding the Oregon-California line, it gets down to business, snaking through the Siskiyou and Scott Bar ranges, the Klamath Mountains, the Marble Mountains, the Salmon Mountains, and the very wet Trinity Alps, carving deep canyons as it gathers water and force. Down toward the Pacific, where there isn't enough flat land to farm anything, the Klamath is pelted with rain. It finishes as a monster, the longest whitewater river in California, with salmon runs that in good years are larger than even the mighty Columbia's.

The Klamath's legal and political landscape is incredibly convoluted. When the newly created Bureau of Reclamation launched the Klamath Project in 1905, government surveyors encountered more than 500 disputed water claims, some dating back to the 1860s. Klamath lawsuits started early—by 1917, the courts were settling rights on the Lost River, which flows from Clear Lake Reservoir into Tule Lake—and they tend to last a while. United States v. Adair, a suit that affirmed the water rights of the Klamath Tribes, was filed in 1975, decided in '79, upheld by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court in '84, left standing by the Supreme Court in '85, and reopened and upheld in 2002, with all parties now awaiting yet another appeal. There are currently eight major lawsuits in play, filed by tribes, commercial salmon fishermen, farmers, and environmental groups—a collective morass that I took to calling Everybody v. Bureau of Wreckthenation.

Klamath lawsuits "are going to be with us for the foreseeable future," says Carl Ullman, 54, a Klamath Falls-based attorney who has represented the Klamath Tribes for 15 years. "Certainly for the rest of our lives and our children's lives."

Enter George W. Bush as the latest president who has to try and sort this out. Based on the administration's track record, you'd expect any Bush-brokered solution to favor farmers. Gale Norton tried that in 2002, and the result was stinky sushi on the Interior Department steps. OK, on to Plan B. According to a Department of Interior official who declined to be named, the Klamath offers a chance to "put the pieces together" for a compromise solution. It could be a model for resolving other water wars.

In a spiffy, chart-heavy May 2003 report called Water 2025, Norton outlined a grim future for the American West, where a mix of Klamath-style problems will come to a head in 17 states over the next 20 years. The hot spots include the region's most embattled rivers: the Colorado, the Columbia, and the Rio Grande. But thanks to its rowdy farmers and decomposing salmon, the Klamath is coming first.

The White House may wish it had sent Norton to pose beside some other river. Maybe the Colorado, where the powerful thirst of Californians might overwhelm all resistance. Or the Rio Grande, where New Mexico's political establishment has vowed to fight a recent court decision protecting the endangered silvery minnow, taking the issue to the Supreme Court or even pressuring Congress to revise the Endangered Species Act. On the Klamath, Norton's task force is hemmed in by stone walls: On one side is a body of case law insisting that tribal rights and endangered species come before irrigation. On the other is the administration's rigid ideology, which forbids federal buyouts of farms and water rights. That leaves room for only half-measures.

Then there is the cold logic of money. The Klamath Project generates about $100 million annually in agricultural sales. Meanwhile, the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that sustainable fishing, recreation, and other renewable activities on the Klamath bring in $800 million a year and could bring in as much as $36 billion with significant restorations to water quality. So the math of Salmon v. Spud strongly favors the salmon.

None of that, Bush opponents charge, will stop the administration from placating farmers if it can find a way to do so. "You see it on the Rio Grande; you see it on the Klamath," says Kristen Boyles, a 38-year-old Seattle attorney for Earthjustice, a national nonprofit that has litigated Klamath lawsuits since the early 1990s. "In areas where there are too many demands for too little water, instead of balancing it out, their answer is 'Irrigation comes first.' "

Until the task force files its report in September, that status quo continues. Heavy 2003 rains have temporarily eased the drought, putting off the Klamath's breaking point for another year. The farmers will get water, but not as much as they say they're owed. The river will get higher flows, but not as much as biologists say the salmon need. And when Interior chimes in, if Water 2025 is any guide, the public will get a nice Web site and very little in the way of federal money or new ideas.

So for now, at least, the lack of a plan is the plan.

Page: