[env-trinity] Times Standard: Klamath rules have changed

[Tom Stokely]

http://www.times-standard.com/news/ci_23458858/klamath-rules-have-changed 

Klamath rules have changed

Jeff Barnard/The Associated Press
Posted:   06/14/2013 02:27:13 AM PDT
Updated:   06/14/2013 02:27:14 AM PDT


GRANTS PASS, Ore. -- Taylor and Becky Hyde have water rights dating to 1864, but that didn't save them from having to shut down irrigation to meet the demands of senior rights being exercised by the Klamath Tribes to protect fish.
The Hydes were among the first ranches getting the bad news that drought and newly recognized water rights for the tribes mean hundreds of square miles of irrigated pastureland supporting some 70,000 cattle will go dry this summer.
”I think we're going to get through it, but we sure didn't sleep last night,” Mrs. Hyde said Thursday. “If you were to come out here today, you are not going to see the drying out for a few weeks. It looks green and nice right now. We are surrounded by neighbors who have wells who are all going to still be irrigating.”
During past droughts, ranchers in the upper Klamath Basin could keep irrigating until the rivers ran dry. This year, the rules have changed.
The Klamath Tribes have been formally recognized by the state as having the oldest water rights in the region and they are demanding they be enforced on behalf of endangered fish that the tribes hold sacred.
River levels are so low from drought, and the in-stream water rights of the tribes so large, that watermasters are having to shut off a lot of other water rights to meet them, said Douglas Woodcock, field services administrator for the Oregon Water Resources Department.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation

has also exercised 1905 water rights to supply its irrigation project downstream. Despite making a call on water rights dating to the 1920s, national wildlife refuges downstream of the irrigation project were far short of water to fill marshes for migrating waterfowl.
Watermasters on Wednesday started going ranch to ranch along the Sprague River and its tributaries notifying them they had to stop irrigating, because their water rights were junior to the tribes' rights. And under time-honored water law, first in time is first in right.
The Hyde's 9-year-old son greeted the watermaster when he came up the drive on their Yainix Ranch, a Klamath word meaning the edge between mountain and valley. The watermaster left his card, and when Becky Hyde called, he said it was time to turn off their irrigation, despite water rights dating to 1864.
They have shipped some cattle off to ranches of family members, and the remaining cattle will have about six weeks of grass before it dries up. There will still be water to drink.
”I think it will be a month and a half to two months from now when things really start to fall apart,” she said.
Don Gentry, chairman of the Klamath Tribes, acknowledged that the shutoffs were painful for irrigators, which include some tribal members. But he said the tribes have to protect their resources and make sure their water rights are enforced.
The shutoffs on the Sprague are expected to take another week and a half. Shutoffs on the Wood and Williamson rivers are to follow.
The Klamath Basin has been the site of some of the most bitter water battles in the nation as scarce water is shared between protected fish and farms. In 2001, angry farmers confronted federal marshals called in to guard headgates shutting off water to the Klamath Reclamation Project, a federal irrigation project straddling the Oregon-California border, to protect fish. The next year, water was restored to farms, but tens of thousands of adult salmon died downstream in the Klamath River.
The shutoffs are the first for the upper Klamath Basin, where 38 years of litigation ended in March with recognition by the state Water Resources Department that the tribes have the oldest water rights on rivers flowing through lands that were once their reservation, dating to time immemorial.
The next oldest rights dating to 1864 are lands sold by tribal members, and relate to the signing of a treaty with the United States that took the tribes off their ancestral lands and put them on a reservation. The federal government dissolved the tribes in the 1950s, and paid settlements for reservation lands, most of which were turned into national forests.
Hyde, other ranchers, state, federal and local officials, and representatives of conservation groups will appear before a hearing next week in Washington, D.C., called by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

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