[env-trinity] Portland Oregonian - Revised outlook cuts water for Klamath fish

[Tom Stokely]

Revised outlook cuts water for Klamath fish 
Farmers and salmon alike will be hurting this summer in the Klamath Basin as expected spring runoff fails to materialize 
Portland Oregonian - 5/20/04
By Michael Milstein, staff writer
Ample mountain runoff predicted earlier in the year has not shown up in the Klamath Basin, leading federal managers to sharply scale back water for protected fish while urging farmers to conserve every drop. 

The shortage has grown especially acute over the last month, reviving tensions in the region bedeviled by drought. Klamath farmers lost irrigation water in 2001 because federal agencies reserved what little there was for protected fish. 

"The bottom line is we've got less water -- everyone's got less water," said Dan Keppen of the Klamath Water Users Association. "People are obviously going to tighten up their belt as much as they can, but I'm not sure what else we can do." 

The government's current strategy could put less water in the Klamath River this fall than in the fall of 2002, when more than 33,000 salmon died crowded in its lower reaches. 

Federal officials earlier this month paid farmers to pump millions of gallons of well water onto crops after realizing Upper Klamath Lake will not fill with water as many had hoped. The water table has since fallen in some parts of the arid basin. 

With the year increasingly parched, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation redefined the water year as drier than expected. That reduces by about one-third the amount of water that must be directed to threatened coho salmon in the Klamath River. 

Reclamation officials are sending extra water down the river for young salmon leaving hatcheries. But Northern California tribes that rely on fall salmon runs are troubled that water releases this fall could drop below 2002 levels, which they blamed for one of the largest adult salmon die-offs in U.S. history. 

"We're really concerned, basically because we're setting ourselves up for a similar situation," said Toz Soto, fisheries biologist for the Karuk Tribe. 

Northern California's Trinity River also contributes water to the Klamath River, but much of its flow is diverted to farms in Central California. 

Klamath farms typically require more irrigation water in dry years, meaning they will compete with the needs of the salmon and endangered suckers in Upper Klamath Lake. 

"This is just becoming a routine event," Keppen said. "It happens every summer," he said, because minimum flows for fish have little flexibility. 

Dave Sabo, manager of the Klamath Project for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, said he will urge the roughly 1,400 farms in the 200,000-acre reclamation project to save water so forced cutbacks in irrigation water do not loom later in summer. 

"I'm real nervous about how this is going to turn out," Sabo said. "It's critical that people pay attention to what they're using." 

He said about half the water freed up by a so-called water bank, which paid farmers to idle cropland and irrigate with well water, will be exhausted by the end of May. He has asked federal biologists at NOAA-Fisheries, which oversees protected salmon, how to spread the rest out over the remainder of the year. 

The tighter supply hinges on early projections of healthy runoff into Upper Klamath Lake that led officials to release more water downstream through winter and early spring. The projections have since fallen to 38 percent below average. 

"We were counting on having a high spring inflow, and it hasn't materialized," Sabo said. 

The amount of water held in mountain snow around the basin fell from near normal at the beginning of the month to about 40 percent below average this week. Experts think melting snow is either evaporating or soaking into the parched ground without reaching rivers and streams. 

Farmers said they are doing all they can by adopting new conservation measures and joining in the water bank. 

The government last year began asking farmers to irrigate from wells as a stopgap measure to leave more lake and river water for fish. But the pumping has lowered a water table already suffering from three dry years. 

The water level in a Malin city well, just north of the California line, had fallen from 22 feet below ground in 2000 to 45 feet earlier this year. After the government began paying farmers to pump well water May 3, the level fell more than 10 additional feet, said public works director Rob Grounds. 

Although the city draws water from 250 feet below ground, protecting it against shallow fluctuations, Grounds said smaller domestic wells may be more vulnerable. 

Malin lies a few miles from large wells operated by the Tulelake Irrigation District just inside California. Federal officials suspended the extra pumping last week, as water savings from idled land and other sources became more apparent. And officials at the 

irrigation district, which records show could earn as much as $1.9 million for pumping, said they would adjust to minimize the effects on other wells. 

Meanwhile, a splinter group of members from the Klamath Tribes filed claims against PacifiCorp for the loss of chinook salmon fisheries cut off when hydroelectric dams blocked the Klamath River almost a century ago. 

The Klamath Tribes Claims Committee, which is separate from the tribal government, said it also seeks restoration of salmon runs during upcoming relicensing of the dams by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. #

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