ON THE COVER
Crisis on the Klamath
This participant in the 2019 Klamath Salmon Festival parade led chants in support of tribal water rights, dam removal and environmental protection. Photo by Mark Larson
With too little water to go around, the fighting has begun in a zero-sum game pitting farmers against fish and endangered species against one another By Jessica Fu
newsroom@northcoastjournal.com
T
he federal government is strictly curtailing irrigation this year in an attempt to protect endangered fish important to Indigenous tribes. Farmers say this will make it all but impossible to farm, while tribal groups say the plan doesn’t go far enough to save their fisheries. In mid-April, a farming region in southern Oregon began to release water from the Klamath River into its irrigation canals. According to the local water authority, this was a standard move to jumpstart the farming season during one of the driest seasons in recent memory. But according to the federal government, it was an illegal maneuver that could further jeopardize the survival of multiple endangered species and food sources important to Indigenous tribes and fisheries in the region.
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Because of severe drought conditions in the region and low snowpack levels, the Upper Klamath Lake — a large, natural reservoir of freshwater that drains into the Klamath River — has experienced historically low inflow this year. That means there’s not enough water to go around for everyone who needs it: tribes that depend on the lake to sustain culturally important species of suckerfish, commercial and tribal fisheries downstream who depend on flow from the lake to support salmon populations, and farmers and ranchers who rely on irrigation to harvest crops. On April 14, the Bureau of Reclamation (USBR), a federal agency that oversees the Klamath irrigation project, announced that farmers would only get 33,000 acre-feet of water this year due to drought conditions — the lowest allotment in its history. The
NORTH COAST JOURNAL • Thursday, May 6, 2021 • northcoastjournal.com
project spans from southern Oregon to northern California. For context, farmers say they need 400,000 acre-feet in drought years. That didn’t stop the Klamath Drainage District (KDD) in southern Oregon — a public entity contracted to deliver water in the region — from turning on the spigot for its constituents two days later. “We tried to hold off [diversion] as long as we could,” said district manager Scott White. White said the district board faced immense pressure to divert water from farmers in the region dealing with low soil moisture. “Our landowners were just champing at the bit.” White said that the district was accessing water from the Klamath River through a state water permit rather than through the federal government’s allocation, which
he claimed was standard operating procedure. The federal government doesn’t see it that way. In a letter addressed to the district shared with The Counter, USBR ordered White to stop making the diversions, which it called unlawful. “[The] water that is currently in the Klamath River is committed to satisfying the Endangered Species Act (ESA), an obligation that supersedes irrigation deliveries and rights,” the agency wrote. “Therefore, KDD’s diversion of water … is contrary to the ESA and may subject KDD to legal action if it does not immediately cease diversions.” The releases mean that there’s less water to go around for everyone else who needs it, in a year where there was already little to begin with. According to a USBR spokesperson, the agency is making up
