[env-trinity] Klamath stories- Klamath TMDL Public Meetings, Klamath Basin Conference News

[Tom Stokely]

http://www.times-standard.com/Stories/0,1413,127~2896~1954313,00.html

Water quality standard plans for Klamath River being aired at public meeting 
The Times-Standard 


California and Oregon water quality agencies will hold public meetings on the development of water quality standards for the Klamath and Lost rivers. 

The rivers are both considered impaired by temperature problems and nutrients. Some parts of the rivers also have problems with pH, dissolved oxygen, ammonia toxicity and bacteria. 

Specifically, the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality are working collaboratively to develop plans for the Lost River, Klamath Straits Drain, and the Klamath River from Link River to the Pacific Ocean. 

The standards, called Total Maximum Daily Loads, assess the condition of rivers and water bodies, quantify pollutants, and develop plans to restore their health. 

The TMDLs are among others being developed in the watershed, including for the Tule Lake and Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge, and the Shasta, Scott and Salmon Rivers.  




                    
                 
                 
                 
                    

           
     

The North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board will hold a workshop in Fortuna at the River Lodge's Steelhead Room on March 2 from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.


>From Dan Keppen dkeppen at cvcwireless.net  :
 
Two recent stories regarding the recent Klamath Falls science conference and visit by senior federal and state water policy officials to the Upper Basin.... 

Official interest shown
Oregon, California governors send representatives to join Basin research conference
Klamath Falls (OR) Herald & News - 2/8/04
By Dylan Darling, staff writer
The governors of California and Oregon both sent high-level officials to the Klamath Basin to learn about water issues last week.

Coming from California were Mike Chrisman, secretary for resources, and Jim Branham, undersecretary for the state's Environmental Protection Agency.

Representing Oregon was David Van't Hof, sustainability policy advisor to Gov. Ted Kulongoski.

They joined about 150 scientists and agency managers who had gathered for a four-day conference to discuss ongoing research in the Klamath Basin.

The conference was convened to help coordinate the science that supports frequently controversial management decisions regarding water that is shared by farmers, endangered species, power companies and recreationists.

Among the most controversial decisions was the one that suspended delivery of irrigation water in the Klamath Reclamation Project in 2001 in order to protect threatened salmon and endangered suckers.

"We want to try to avoid those crises we've been in," said Chrisman, who was appointed by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to advise him on the state's natural, historical and cultural resources.

Chrisman oversees a budget of $4.1 million for 24 state departments.

Kulongoski appointed David Van't Hof to his position, which is a new one, on Dec. 19. Before that Van't Hof served in Kulongoski's natural resources office as a policy adviser on water, land use and energy.

Chrisman said the governors of Oregon and California want their administrations to work with federal agencies to seek solutions for the Basin.

Branham said he and Chrisman have dealt with situation likes the one in the Basin before, and they wanted to become acquainted with its particulars by making a visit. He said it is important for the California officials to work with their Oregon counterparts because, while the Klamath River flows mostly through California, most of its water comes from Oregon.

"We manage what we are left with," he said.

During their time in the Basin, the officials met with leaders of the Karuk and Klamath tribes for breakfast, members of the Klamath Water Users Association for lunch and, in between, sat in for the wrap-up meeting of a science conference that was held at the Shilo Inn last week. They also toured the A Canal headgates and took a flight over the Klamath River.

But the officials' visit wasn't the first time that leaders from the neighboring states talked about the Klamath issue, said Arthur Baggett, chairman of the California Water Resources Board.

"We've been talking for about a year and a half," he said.

He said they are trying to come up with an agreement that will help all parts of the Basin.

Baggett said crafting a solution will take cooperation from all sides.

"It is up to all of us - the stakeholder groups and regulators," Baggett said.

Steve Thompson, Fish and Wildlife Service regional director, said there is now a window open for a solution in the Basin.

Thompson said groups are lucky to get an hour of a secretary's time, and those in the Basin got a day and a half.

"We'll see what the next step is," he said. "For me, I want to see some action on the ground that makes a difference."

He said he was sharing a flight with the California officials on the way back and wanted to talk to them more about Klamath issues on the plane.

Dan Keppen, water users executive director, said the visit could be the start of the two states working together with the federal government to provide leadership for the stakeholders.

"There is an opportunity to put all the pieces together and solve the puzzle," he said.#

Another blow delivered to Klamath theory

By TAM MOORE Oregon Staff Writer
cappress at charter.net


KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. - The props under U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Klamath Project operations were blasted again Feb. 3 as federal agencies opened a four-day Upper Klamath Basin Science Workshop.

"We could find no hint of relationship between lake level" and three technical factors commonly blamed for killing sucker fish in Upper Klamath Lake, said William Lewis. The University of Colorado aquatic specialist was chairman of a National Research Council review of federal biological opinions designed to protect two sucker fish species and a coho salmon run. Those opinions and a drought-shortened water supply triggered the April 2001 denial of irrigation water to 1,100 project farms.

Lewis spoke during the opening session of a federal workshop aimed at defining the gaps in scientific knowledge needed to end long-simmering controversies in the 10-million-acre basin shared by Oregon and California.

>From 1992, when U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued its first biological opinion on irrigation operations, specifying end-of-the-month lake levels has been the primary measure to assure sucker habitat. Scientists have called lake levels "surrogates" for a complex ecosystem that isn't fully understood but obviously is in trouble for both water quality and water quantity.

Upper Klamath Lake, a 90,000-acre impoundment at full pool, is the primary reservoir for the project. The suckers, once so numerous they were fished commercially, crashed in the 1980s. By 1988 they were given Endangered Species Act protection. 

USFWS' most recent opinion, in June 2002, repeats mandatory minimum lake levels. 

Neither USFWS nor BuRec has indicated plans to seek revision of the opinion despite Lewis' comment and the written NRC report issued in the fall of 2003. 

Lewis, who specializes in limnology, the science of lake water quality, said massive changes in land use around Upper Klamath Lake caused changes in the water, and triggered a blue-green algae that about 40 or 50 years ago began dominating the summer lake. Among other things, the algae soaks up oxygen needed for fish, changes the acid level of the water to make water less hospitable and generates so much chlorophyll that light transmission is interrupted.

Lewis suggested that those seeking recovery of the struggling sucker fish populations look beyond the lake to other strategies such as improving spawning habitat and creating summer refuges with oxygenated water.

The lake level theory has some defenders, including Larry Dunsmoor, chief biologist for the Klamath Tribes. Dunsmoor argues that habitat for the smallest sucker fish, called larvae, includes the edge of Upper Klamath Lake and marshes connected to it. If lake levels fall, he said, habitat for larval fish shrinks.

Farmer Steve Kandra, representing water users at the science conference, said he's pleased with the debate between Dunsmoor and Lewis. "It's much better raised here, in this forum, than in the 9th Circuit Court."

Kandra said litigation isn't a solution, while technical collaboration encouraged by the conference will help. What will also help, he said, is an understanding by government officials and academics of all elements involved.

"Don't ask me to turn my irrigation project off in the middle of the summer unless you know about the plants I'm taking care of and what will happen to them," he said.

Kandra said there was cooperation among stakeholders before the 2001 water cutoff. "Then the door closed. The rapport was destroyed. Now we are starting to build some confidence."

While this week's science conference concentrated on Upper Basin issues, on Feb. 24, a three-day meeting involving all watersheds in the 10-million-acre basin will be held at Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls. Denise Buck, an organizer, said some of those sessions will reach beyond the technical questions raised by the researchers and agency managers at this week's gathering.

The federal officials are under pressure to resolve Klamath issues, including prodding from a Cabinet-level task force that President Bush tasked to deliver long-range recommendations in the fall of 2003. Their report has yet to surface, but the Bush budget delivered last week lists nearly $200 million of basin spending thought to be related to recovery of the massive watershed.

Tam Moore is based in Medford, Ore. His e-mail address is cappress at charter.net. 



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