[env-trinity] (no subject)

[tstokely at trinityalps.net]

RELATED 
Klamath River could fare better this year 
Water bank and flows on Trinity improve the picture 
Eureka Times-Standard - 4/12/04 
By John Driscoll, staff writer 

This year's water picture on the Klamath River appears to be a bit 
brighter than in other recent years when farms lost irrigation water and 
salmon went belly up. 

Farms in the Upper Klamath Basin will receive full deliveries of water, 
provided extremely hot or very wet conditions don't set in, said the 
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. And water being purchased from farmers by 
the federal government should improve the lot for salmon downstream. 

The operations plan was released at a Klamath Water Users Association 
meeting this week. 

Reclamation is buying some 75,000 acre feet of water -- 24 billion 
gallons -- from farms in the upper basin for about $4.2 million. That 
water bank will bolster flows from Iron Gate Dam to the lower Klamath 
River, flows that might otherwise mimic conditions in the fall of 2002, 
when 34,000 salmon died in the hot, shallow river. 

"We need to have that water available to meet the biological opinion for 
downstream flows," said Reclamation spokesman Jeff McCracken. 

The size of the water bank has increased since its inception last year, 
when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ordered the 
program. The water will be bought not just from people in the federal 
irrigation project, McCracken said, but from other farms above Upper 
Klamath Lake too. 

The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations said the water 
bank is beginning to improve flows. But the group, which is suing 
Reclamation after the 2002 fish kill, also said the base flows to which 
the water bank is being added aren't based on science and are 
artificially low. Irrigation deliveries, considering the water year, are 
the highest in 40 years, the association said. 

Flows down the Trinity River, the Klamath's main tributary, are also 
going to be higher this year. The year is being considered a dry year, a 
classification one step up from critically dry. 

Last year, as fall approached and conditions seemed to threaten another 
fish kill on the Klamath, the federal government asked a judge 
overseeing Trinity River litigation to make available 50,000 acre feet 
to improve the situation in the Klamath. About 33,000 acre feet was 
released as salmon began their fall migration. 

McCracken said he doesn't think the government has asked for that water 
again. 

Humboldt County is still trying to get control over 50,000 acre feet it 
was promised when the Trinity River project was approved in the 1950s. 
Progress has been slow on that front. # 



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