[env-trinity] Fw: Three More opinion pieces on Klamath Crisis

Wed Aug 11 18:11:08 PDT 2004

In order to provide a balanced perspective, I'm providing more opinions on the Klamath situation, courtesy of Mr. Dan Keppen of KWUA.

Tom Stokely

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Dan Keppen 
To: Dan Keppen 
Cc: KWUA 
Sent: Tuesday, August 03, 2004 12:42 PM
Subject: Three opinion pieces on Klamath 

The Oregon Natural Resources Council (ONRC) continues its efforts to downsize the KIamath Project and eliminate lease land farming near Tulelake and Lower Klamath Lake. Two editorials written by local landowners in response to a recent ONRC opinion piece that appeared in last week's Herald and News follow. Also, another ONRC letter to the Sacramento Bee, "Wildlife vs. Potatoes" - familiar theme - is included below.

Herald and News: Klamath Falls, Oregon

http://www.heraldandnews.com/articles/2004/08/02/viewpoints/op_ed/9915.txt

ONRC using Basin issues to raise money for itself

Published August 2, 2004

By LANE ROELLE - Guest columnist

I would like to address a few of the issues that Jim McCarthy talks about in his commentary in the July 19 Herald and News. In my opinion, his entire commentary was full of half-truths, innuendo, misinformation and outright lies.

Maybe the Endangered Species Act needs to be dismembered. Of the millions, maybe billions, spent on implementing the act, how many species has it saved? How many species have been delisted? Why do the environmentalists consider peer review dismembering? What do they have to conceal? Is it maybe their scientists know the outcome of their studies before they begin?

I don't believe anybody thinks that the "water woes will disappear" by any one measure. I do believe what the elected officials want is true science behind the listing of any species. And if the Oregon Natural Resources Council was really concerned about wildlife, I would think they would want the equivalent.

As for the "major campaign contributors," I didn't realize what a political powerhouse the Klamath Basin is, or that the Rockefellers and Nelsons farmed in the Basin.

When it was reported that 34,000 fish died, the upper Klamath Basin received all of the blame for the entire fish kill the next day. McCarthy states that "...the Bush administration chose to ignore the reality that there wasn't enough water to safely supply all of the Basin's competing needs. As a result, 34,000 Klamath River salmon died."

More than a year later it was reported in several articles that the fish die-off was caused by several mitigating factors. The environmental groups involved in the fish die-off first held responsible the upper Klamath Basin, and subsequently distorted their study to agree with their biased outcome. That is how these groups work: Find someone to blame, and then make their study fit their outcome. What wonderful science they practice.

But the most ambiguous statements he makes are about the financial aspects of the lease lands. I will give him the benefit of the doubt that his figures are correct, but he doesn't once mention the money that the farmers earn off of the lease lands.

He makes it sound as if these farmers derive absolutely no income off of these lands. He states "...$1.9 million a year in rents." Let's say, on the conservative side, that the lease payments are half of the costs to operate a lease, that indicates that another $1.9 million is going back directly into the Basin economy in seed, fertilizer, fuel, equipment, parts, college tuition and other things.

His hyperbole continues with his saying "Local landowners go bankrupt because they can't pay their mortgages." They are going bankrupt because the banks are apprehensive about financing operating loans with the uncertainty of having water allocated year to year. Private land rental prices are market driven. Profit margins are slim in farming to begin with, and to suggest that not farming these lease lands would change that, is not only asinine, it is a lie. McCarthy would not know this because all of his education has come from a book.

The only real basis for the ONRC to be involved in the Basin's problems is money. Without some type of critical crisis, the ONRC would not be able to dupe people into contributing to its cause.

These environmental organizations, and the people who work for these organizations, contribute nothing to society. They wreak havoc on families that just want to make a living.

When this beautiful Klamath Basin, which I love, is dried up and just another ghost town, these people will attack some place else. They don't even live here, to see the carnage they leave behind. They are no better than the illicit TV preachers who prey on little old widow ladies.

Reality ignored

Jim McCarthy (July 19 commentary) is a classic "windshield manager" from another country.

He is critical of the official United States House of Representative field-hearing process that occurred at the Ross Ragland Performing Arts Center on July 17. This was a very important process of our government.

McCarthy is critical of the proposals to enhance the Endangered Species Act. He uses the ploy of equivoque to polarize the issue. In McCarthy's mind, you are either for the current interpretation of the act, or you are trying to "dismember the ESA."

Not one person involved with the hearing is trying to gut the law. The hearing focus was on ways to make a 30-year-old law better. Everyone on the panel of experts agreed that peer-reviewed science will improve the Endangered Species Act.

McCarthy reminds me of a conversation I had 10 years ago with one of his comrades from Oregon Trout. The conversation ended with the statement to me: "The concept of sound, verifiable science that has been peer-reviewed is a concept that the environmental community will not support."

As a windshield manager, McCarthy looks down on the Klamath Basin and sees a refuge for wildlife that is freckled with productive agriculture. His textbook solution to his perceived problem is to end refuge farming.

While he tries to camouflage his socialist economic agenda with a flavor of capitalism, he ignores reality. Crop production in the Klamath Basin complements wildlife. Elimination of farming on the national wildlife refuges would do little to bolster our economy, and it would not save much, if any, water diverted from storage.

McCarthy is wrong. The Oregon National Resources Council is wrong. We need irrigated agriculture in our nation and in the Klamath Basin. Dismantling our infrastructure will harm our society and it will harm wildlife.

By staying in Ashland and trying to resolve perceived and real problems in Klamath Falls, McCarthy has exposed the agenda of ONRC. The agenda has become a mantra - dismantle productive agrarian communities for the benefit of society as a whole.

I know of one very good example of the result of this direction. Perhaps McCarthy can spend this coming winter in North Korea. Take a whole bunch of photos through the windshield (read bars) and offer a policy analysis to the media in a country that is starving to death.

William D. Kennedy

Klamath Falls

>From July 27th Edition of the Sacramento Bee:
sacbee.com -- Letters to the editor -- Letters to the editor: Enron and California
http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/letters/story/10150394p-11071178c.html
Wildlife vs. potatoes
Re "Water turns to bad blood," July 6: Conservationists, fishermen and Native American tribes support restoring marsh on 22,000 commercially farmed acres (known as "the leaselands") on Tule Lake and Lower Klamath national wildlife refuges to recover critical waterfowl habitat and help correct the destructive water imbalance in the Klamath Basin. But the article was mistaken that the proposal would require a purchase of the lands.The public already owns these lands. Returning them to marsh would only require changing government policy to recognize that our national wildlife refuges are for protecting wildlife not raising potatoes. 
A leaselands solution would help the Klamath's fish and wildlife by reducing summertime irrigation water demand while increasing natural water storage. It would also assist the local agricultural economy by shifting roughly $1.9 million in seasonal farmland rental business from federal government coffers to local private landowners, and reducing or eliminating the potentially astronomical costs of annually pumping water from the leaselands area after the Klamath irrigators' exclusive $10 million electricity subsidy expires in 2006. 

- Jim McCarthy, Ashland, Ore.
Policy Analyst, Oregon Natural Resources Council 

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Dan Keppen
Executive Director
Klamath Water Users Association
2455 Patterson Street, Suite #3
Klamath Falls, OR  97603
(541) 883-6100 - Fax (541) 883-8893
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