[env-trinity] Water forecast poor for Klamath farmers, fish

[Tom Stokely]

Water forecast poor for Klamath farmers, fish

Napa Valley News - 3/17/05

By Jeff Barnard, Associated Press

 

GRANTS PASS, Ore. -- The water forecast for the Klamath Basin continues to worsen, with a skinny snowpack that is quickly melting and little rain in sight, but federal irrigation managers say they hope to meet most of their obligations for both farms and endangered fish.

Snowpack in the mountains above the Klamath Reclamation Project is 28 percent of normal, declining about 1 percent a day. The latest forecast for water running into the primary reservoir serving the federal irrigation system dropped by 20 percent the past two weeks to 210,000 acre-feet, Klamath project manager Dave Sabo said Wednesday.

"That is putting us down into one of the three or four driest years on record since 1961," Sabo said.

The Klamath Reclamation Project serves about 1,400 farms on 180,000 acres straddling the Oregon-California border south of Klamath Falls. It has been the focus of intense political and legal battles between farmers, commercial fishermen, Indian tribes, environmentalists and the Bush administration over allocating limited water.

A 2001 drought led the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to shut off water to most of the project to meet Endangered Species Act demands for fish. Though water was restored later in the summer of 2001, the shutoff kicked off an uproar from farmers. Federal marshals were called in to guard headgates where water to the main canal was shut off.

"There will not be a shutoff this year," for the bulk of the project, Sabo said. "I can say that with some definition."

However, 30,000 acres served by the Gerber and Clear Lake reservoirs on the east side of the project may not get any water this year, though they got water in 2001. Forecasts call for no water out of Clear Lake and 50 percent of normal out of Gerber Reservoir, Sabo said.

He is asking farmers on the remaining 150,000 acres served by Upper Klamath Lake to suggest ways to cut their water use by up to 20 percent when irrigation season begins in April.

"Some farmers who may have been planning on planting new fields may want to hold off this year," Sabo said. "Some who want to expand production may not be able to."

The bureau is spending about $7.5 million dollars on a water bank to assure 100,000 acre feet of water for endangered suckers in Upper Klamath Lake and threatened coho salmon in the Klamath River under terms of the Endangered Species Act. The water bank is filled by buying water from private wells and paying people to leave their farmland dry.

Oregon Natural Resources Council spokesman Steve Pedery complained that in the four years since the 2001 shutoff, nothing has been done to significantly reduce water demand, such as buyouts or longterm leases to idle farmland.

"Every year is a drought year for fish and wildlife in the Klamath Basin," Pedery said. "As bad as it is this year for agriculture, it was just as bad last year for fish. We've promised too much water to too many interests."

But Sabo said buying farmland to permanently reduce water demand would not produce increased flows at the times they would benefit fish, such as the spring, when juvenile salmon swim to the ocean.

Bob Gasser, a fertilizer and pesticide supplier with the Klamath Water Users Association, said Clear Lake was down because water was sent down the Klamath River two years ago for salmon.

"It's going to be very tight," Gasser said. "... Drying up land is the last option we like to see. But it is going to happen this year." #

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