[env-trinity] Klamath dam articles

Tue Nov 1 15:11:36 PDT 2011

Klamath dam removal uncertain

http://www.oregonbusiness.com/articles/105-november-2011/6057-klamath-dam-removal-uncertain 
By Linda Baker

The hydro settlement agreement calls for PacifiCorp to remove four Klamath dams in 2020. Stakeholders are still waiting to move forward on projects connected to the agreements. 

// Photo by Robert French

When the Klamath Restoration Agreements were signed in February 2010, the documents were hailed as a historic solution to decades of conflicts over water rights and environmental management in the Klamath Basin. Almost two years later, many stakeholders are still waiting to move forward with projects connected to the agreements, which include both the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement and the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement. At issue is whether legislators will authorize the agreements and allocate the $500 million for implementation.

“We are coming forward at a very difficult political moment,” says James Honey, program director with Sustainable Northwest, a Portland nonprofit that helped facilitate the agreements. Signed by more than 40 groups, including irrigators, tribes, fishermen, conservation groups, and state and local governments, the Klamath agreements underscore the power of collaboration to overcome entrenched conflict, Honey says. But today budget deficits and “political mudslinging over dam removal” could derail all that. “It’s all in Congress’ hands at this point,” he says.

Under the terms of the hydro settlement agreement, PacifiCorp’s four Klamath dams would be removed in 2020. The utility “is already implementing large portions of the agreement,” including imposing surcharges on Oregon ratepayers to help pay for the removal and “exchanging engineering drawings with the feds,” says spokesman Bob Gravely. “But this all hinges on the political side and the ability to secure funding.”

The political lines were drawn this fall, starting with the U.S. Department of the Interior’s release of a much anticipated Environmental Impact Statement, which showed that removal of the dams would provide significant economic, environmental, social and cultural benefits. Specifically, the report cited the creation of  1,400 new jobs and additional water for the Klamath National Wildlife Refuge. It also pegged the cost of dam removal at $290 million — down from the $450 million originally predicted.

Despite the findings, key U.S. congressional representatives immediately went on the record against dam removal, which cannot move forward until Congress authorizes both the hydroelectric and restoration agreements. For example, Sen. Tom McClintock (R-California), who last winter lobbied successfully to reduce funding for Klamath dam studies, opposes removal on the grounds that the U.S. is facing skyrocketing energy prices and that the Klamath facilities are a cheap and abundant power source.

Another hurdle is the estimated $100 million that cash-strapped California will have to pay for its share of the dam removal costs.

Until Congress takes action on the agreements, other projects are also in a holding pattern. “Parties are doing what they can with what they have,” says Honey, citing as examples fisheries restoration planning and analyses on the part of the Klamath Irrigation Project to figure out “how to keep farmers farming with decreased water in the future” — one of the Klamath agreement directives.

Had the settlement agreements been in place during the 2010 Klamath drought, “we wouldn’t have had the economic disaster we did,” says Tara Jane Campbell Miranda, policy coordinator for the Klamath Water Users Association. Under the Klamath agreements, local farmers would have received 385,000 acre-feet of water last year, with an obligation to deliver 45,000 acre-feet to the wildlife refuges, Miranda said. Instead, farmers only received 185,000 acre-feet of water, forcing the federal government to dole out $9.5 million in aid.

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is supposed to make a final determination on dam removal in March 2012, but that decision requires legislation to be in place first. And although Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) has crafted draft legislation, it is unclear when it will be introduced — or whether it will pass. The stakes are high, Klamath signatories agree. Says Miranda: “Until legislation is implemented, we won’t have water certainty in the basin.”

Read more: Klamath dam removal uncertain - Oregon Business http://www.oregonbusiness.com/articles/105-november-2011/6057-klamath-dam-removal-uncertain#ixzz1cUguWuUd

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http://www.calwatchdog.com/2011/10/31/rural-rebellion-brewing/ 

Steven Greenhut: Rural rebellion brewing

By STEVEN GREENHUT

SACRAMENTO – The nearly five-hour drive from the Sacramento area to Yreka, in Siskiyou County by the Oregon border, was a reminder not just of the immense size and beauty of California, but of the vast regional and cultural differences one finds within our 37-million-population state.

Sacramento is Government Central, a land of overly pensioned bureaucrats and restaurant discounts for state workers. But way up in the North State, one finds a small but hard-edged rural populace that views state and federal officials as the main obstacles to their quality of life.

Their latest battle is to stop destruction of four hydroelectric dams along the Klamath River – an action driven by environmentalists and the Obama administration. Most locals say the dam-busting will undermine their property rights and ruin the local farming and ranch economy, which is all that's left since environmental regulators destroyed the logging and mining industries.

These used to be wealthy resource-based economies, but now many of the towns are drying up, with revenue to local governments evaporating. Unemployment rates are in the 20-percent-and-higher range. Nearly 79 percent of the county's voters in a recent advisory initiative opposed the dam removal, but that isn't stopping the authorities from blasting the dams anyway.

These rural folks, living in the shadow of the majestic Mount Shasta, believe that they are being driven away so that their communities can essentially go back to the wild, to conform to a modern environmentalist ethos that puts wildlands above humanity. As the locals told it during the Defend Rural America conference Oct. 22 at the Siskiyou Golden Fairgrounds, environmental officials are treading on their liberties, traipsing unannounced on their properties, confronting ranchers with guns drawn to enforce arcane regulatory rules and destroying their livelihoods in the process.

The evening's main event: a panel featuring eight county sheriffs (seven from California, one from Oregon) who billed themselves as "Constitution sheriffs."
They vowed to stand up for the residents of their communities against what they say is an unconstitutional onslaught from regulators in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. In particular, they took issue with the federal government's misnamed Travel Management Plan, which actually is designed to shut down public travel in the forests.

Plumas County Sheriff Greg Hagwood related the stir he caused when he said he "will not criminalize citizens for just accessing public lands." Siskiyou County Sheriff Jon Lopey reminded the crowd that county sheriffs are sworn to uphold the Constitution "against all enemies, foreign and domestic." These are fighting words.

Sheriff Dean Wilson of Del Norte County said he was "ignorant and naïve about the terrible condition our state was in." He came to believe that people were being assaulted by their own government. "I spent a good part of my life enforcing the penal code but not understanding my oath." Wilson and other sheriffs said it is their role to defend the liberties of the people against any encroachments – even if those encroachments come from other branches of government.

As someone who has covered law-enforcement issues in urban Southern California, it's refreshing to hear peace officers enunciate the proper relationship between themselves and the people. Increasingly, law enforcement is based on an authoritarian model, whereby police have nearly unlimited power, and citizens must obey, period. It's rare to hear peace officers who are willing to stand up against more powerful arms of the government in service to their oath to their state and county and who affirm that their job is to protect their citizens' inherent rights. It's even rarer to hear sheriffs complain about the excessive use of force by fellow officers, which was a theme on the panel when referencing federal agents.

I could pick nits. For all the complaining about the feds, Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko had just been quoted in the newspaper praising the Obama administration for its crackdown on medical-marijuana clinics, even though California law clearly allows them. One's either for state control or not. I'm tired of conservatives who claim to be for states' rights when it suits them, but against states' rights on issues such as the drug war. Still, it was clear whose side the sheriffs were on regarding a battle that goes beyond the sparsely populated northern regions.

The people in Siskiyou were echoing points I've heard throughout rural California. As they see it, government regulators are pursuing controversial policies – i.e., diverting water from farms to save a bait fish, the Delta smelt, clamping down on carbon dioxide emissions to address global warming even if it means driving food processors out of the Central Valley, demolishing dams to increase a population of fish that isn't endangered – without caring about the costs to rural residents.

When resource-related jobs leave rural areas, there aren't many other ways for residents to earn a decent living. Society collapses, and poverty expands. There aren't enough tourist-oriented gift shops to keep everyone gainfully employed.

I hadn't been in Yreka long before someone related a popular joke: A federal agent shows up at a farm and demands to check out the property. The farmer says OK, but tells him not to go over to one pasture. Then the agent arrogantly tells him he has a badge from the federal Environmental Protection Agency and can go wherever he darn well pleases. The farmer says OK. A few minutes later, the agent is running for his life from a bull. The agent calls for help, so the farmer goes to the fence and yells: "Show him your badge."

It's funny but anger-inducing. We've got a real sagebrush rebellion brewing in rural California. Urban legislators can ignore it at their own peril.

Steven Greenhut is editor of www.calwatchdog.com; write to him at sgreenhut at calwatchdog.com

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