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DAILY ONLINE Ranchers, Tribes, State Clash Over Shasta River Water

The land that Jim Scala and his family have been ranching for three generations is parched and brown as far as he can see. The pond where his cattle used to drink is now a puddle, ringed with cracked mud.

In other years, water pumped from the Shasta River would have periodically flooded this land, keeping his pasture alive and pond full. But the state had ordered Scala and other ranchers and farmers in rural Siskiyou County to stop irrigating when the drought-plagued river dipped below a certain level.

With bills mounting from trucking in water and buying hay to replace dead pasture, and facing the prospect of selling half his herd, Scala and others made a decision to defy the state’s order.

“We said, ‘To hell with it,’” Scala said. “We’re starting the pumps.”

In a single day in mid-August, the Shasta River’s flows dropped by more than half and stayed there for a week, which could jeopardize the salmon and other fish that spawn there.

Klamath River tribes — including the Karuk and Yurok on the North Coast — were outraged, and California water regulators sounded the alarm. The State Water Resources Control Board ordered the Shasta River Water Association, which serves roughly 110 farms and ranches in central Siskiyou County, to stop pumping. Fines would start at $500 per day but could rise to $10,000 after a 20-day waiting period or a hearing.

“The unlawful diversion sets a terrible precedent that irrigators can egregiously violate state water rights and impact listed and tribal trust species,” said Jim Simondet, Klamath branch chief for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fisheries division.

A week later, on Aug. 24, Scala and the other ranchers and growers turned the water pumps off.

“We accomplished what we set out to do,” said Rick Lemos, a fifth generation rancher who also is a board member of the rural water association. “We got relief for the cattle that were out of water and wading out in the mud and getting stuck.”

The weeklong standoff crystallized a warning from California water watchers: The state has limited power to speedily intervene in urgent conflicts over water, which are expected to flare across the state as drought squeezes water supplies for ranches, farms, tribes, cities and fish.

“This is about the Shasta and it’s about Klamath salmon and it’s about tribes in the Klamath. But this is really about: Can the state protect its water supplies, or is it just going to be the Wild West? Is it going to be every cowboy for himself?” said Craig Tucker, a natural resources consultant for the Karuk Tribe, the second largest Native American tribe in California.

Scala is the president and Lemos sits on the board of the Shasta River Water Association, a private, nonprofit water distributor that operates in the heart of Siskiyou County in the shadow of Mount Shasta. In normal years, the water association pumps from the Shasta River from April to October, sending the water through a network of canals to irrigate roughly 3,400 acres.

The county, where locals have long chafed under Sacramento’s authority, was primed for simmering tensions over water to boil over.

“The dictatorial whims of (the) State Water Board has no authority to tell the people of Siskiyou county what to do with their property they own,” U.S. Congressmember Doug LaMalfa, a Republican whose district includes the county, said in an emailed statement. “This violates our constitutional guarantee against unlawful seizure. I encourage anyone to stop ‘voluntarily complying’ with government looters.”

This has been the fourth driest year to date in a region where drought has been tightening its grip for years. Even in 2020, the local agricultural commissioner reported an increase in fallowed acres and limited irrigation that reduced yields. Wildfires have burned through rangeland and timber.

But agriculture, too, has taken its toll on water in the region — warming the Shasta River and degrading its water quality, according to the Shasta Valley Resource Conservation District.

These changes impact key spawning and rearing grounds for fall-run Chinook salmon and threatened Coho salmon. Other fish culturally important to tribes in the region, such as steelhead and Pacific lamprey, rely on the river as well.

Salmon runs have been declining for decades and few adult coho return every year, NOAA’s Simondet said. “Fish,” he said, “are not doing fine.”

The Shasta River empties into the larger Klamath — a small source of its flow but an outsized producer of its fish.

In Happy Camp along the Klamath River, about 75 miles west from the pumps that the ranchers turned on, Karuk Tribal Council Member Arron “Troy” Hockaday has been watching the river and its salmon populations change over his lifetime.

“(If) those fish are gone, our people suffer. Those fish don’t spawn, our people suffer. We live off that — it’s our culture,” said Hockaday, a fourth generation traditional fisherman.

Hockaday has been dipping handmade nets into the rapids at Somes Bar to catch salmon since he was a child, and worries that his grandson won’t be able to continue the tradition.

“There ain’t going to be no fish for him to fish. He’s never going to learn how to catch fish and be a Karuk Tribal fisherman.”

Seeing the salmon populations decline even as water continues to flow through irrigation canals “hurts. It hurts so bad to see that,” Hockaday said. “And then to put pain into my soul, into our family, into the river — the farmers open the floodgates on the Shasta River.”

From his vantage point, he said, “Nobody gets into trouble for it.”

Last year, the State Water Resources Control Board adopted emergency regulations that allow state regulators to curtail water users in the region when summertime flows in the Shasta River drop below 50 cubic feet per second near Yreka.

The aim is to protect salmon and trout species, including steelhead, fall-run Chinook and threatened Coho salmon. But the limit is fiercely contested by area ranchers, who note that it’s higher than the average historic flows in August since 1933.

The Shasta River Water Association petitioned in early August to continue diverting water to fill stock ponds for approximately 5,000 cattle plus calves and other assorted animals, according to a copy of the petition the water board shared with CalMatters. The water board said the request was still under review.

Lemos said the ranchers couldn’t afford to wait.

“How long do they review it while the cows are dying of thirst?” Lemos said. “We didn’t just fly off the handle and say hey, we’re going to break the law and get into a big mess. We tried the other way first.”

In a letter dated Aug. 17, the water association notified state regulators that they planned to violate the curtailment that day.

“We were in a critical situation. We have cattle out of water … We have nowhere to move them. You can’t just get them in and sell them tomorrow,” Lemos said. “So that’s why we started diverting (water).”

The pumps rapidly sucked away river water, dropping flows by more than half in a day, state officials said.

“It’s an egregious and blatant disregard for the environment and for our regulations … We are really, really interested in taking some swift action because we do take this so seriously,” said Julé Rizzardo, permitting and enforcement branch manager for the water board’s division of water rights.

The board is still investigating and determining whether to seek fines.

It took only a day after flows began dropping for the agency to notify the water association that they had violated their curtailment and could face fines of up to $500 per day. But under state law, the ranchers had 20 days to respond and request a hearing.

Only after the 20 days are up or a hearing has occurred can the water board adopt a final cease and desist order and raise the fines to $10,000 a day. By then, fall-run Chinook salmon would have been migrating through the river.

“It’s really unfortunate that we have those limitations,” Rizzardo said.

Felicia Marcus, a visiting fellow at Stanford’s water in the west program and former chair of the California water board, was more blunt: “In theory the water board has a lot of authority to deal with illegal diversions. In practice, they have to do it blindfolded and with one hand tied behind their back.”

— Rachel Becker/CalMatters POSTED 08.30.22 Read the full version of this story at www.northcoastjournal.com.

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