[env-trinity] Viewpoints: A healthy Klamath River benefits California fisheries and farms

[Tom Stokely]

http://www.sacbee.com/2013/12/03/5964912/viewpoints-a-healthy-klamath-river.html


Viewpoints: A healthy Klamath River benefits California
fisheries and farms
 
By Curtis
Knight and Glen Spain
Special
to The Bee
Published: Tuesday, Dec.
3, 2013 - 12:00 am
Recent droughts, wildfires and floods throughout
the West point to one stark
reality: An integrated approach to water management is
essential to securing our region’s long-term prosperity. A long history of
divvying up water too freely among competing interests has
left none satisfied. We continue to live with an over-appropriated water system that pits
farmers against fisheries and urban users against agriculture.
If we are to thrive, or even survive, it’s time
to step out of our narrow perspectives. We must embrace a more coordinated
approach that recognizes that many of our rivers are altered landscapes.
Today’s working watersheds provide drinking water, produce
hydropower, grow food, provide recreational opportunities and support valuable
fisheries for commercial, sport and tribal interests. Saving these working
watersheds can no longer mean rewinding them back to some pristine, romantic
past. We must instead craft comprehensive and durable water management
solutions for the modern world.
This type of integrated thinking is being put to
work in the Klamath River Basin, straddling the California-Oregon border. There fishermen and farmers
have alternately suffered through severe water shortages. In 2001,
tens of millions of dollars in farm productivity was lost
when water was diverted to protect migrating salmon. The next year, the water
went to the farmers. The result was a record-breaking fish kill on the Klamath
River, leaving 70,000 adult salmon dead before they could spawn. That disaster
had long-term economic consequences for much of California and Oregon,
including widespread fisheries closures in 2006 that cost coastal economies an
estimated $200 million.
These conflicts were the result of old ways of
thinking. At the time, the belief in the Klamath Basin was that one side could
win the “water war,” typically in the courts, at the expense of all others. But
history proves that zero-sum thinking cannot create a promising future, either
for farmers or for fisheries.
Recognizing this reality, dozens of disparate
stakeholder groups worked for years to negotiate a water-sharing deal for the
Klamath Basin that would restore healthy salmon populations while providing
more water certainty to farmers. These stakeholders negotiated a pair of
settlement agreements that would give the basin’s farmers, fishermen, tribes
and electricity customers of Pacific Power – which owns several hydroelectric
dams on the river – an opportunity to create a stable regional economy.
The Klamath Settlement Agreements dedicate
significant resources to river restoration, including unblocking the river and
restoring access to more than 420 miles of historic spawning and rearing
habitat for steelhead and salmon. Farmers and ranchers helped to craft and
continue to support this deal because it provides them with more certainty
about how much water they would receive in both wet and dry years.
Although the Klamath Settlement Agreements have
been in place since 2010, they cannot be fully implemented without
congressional approval. Unfortunately, Congress has been slow to act. But
recent efforts signal hope that the agreements are likely to be taken up soon
in Washington, D.C.
The 2013 water year was very dry, straining
farmers and ranchers, fish and fishermen alike. Without the agreements, more
water had to be kept in the Trinity River – a major Klamath River tributary
whose water supports California’s Central Valley agriculture – to prevent
another massive fish kill. The connection between the Trinity and Klamath
rivers underscores the fact that an unhealthy Klamath impacts many
Californians.
The Klamath is also intimately linked to the
health of coastal fishing economies from Monterey up to Washington state. But
without congressional approval of these vitally important agreements, the
future of the Klamath will continue to be one of conflict and economic loss,
not solutions, with broad implications up and down the West Coast.
A comprehensive Klamath Basin recovery is good
for the economies of both California and Oregon. Putting the Klamath Settlement
Agreements into action would support a healthier West Coast salmon fishery,
provide enhanced water security to farmers and ranchers, and protect tribal
trust rights. Throughout the previous decade, the Klamath Basin was in constant
conflict. But local stakeholders have made it clear that they are ready for a
productive and cooperative future.
With congressional approval, we can implement one
of the most important water management, river restoration and economic
stabilization efforts in the United States, resulting in 4,600 new jobs and
restoring more than $750 million annually in Klamath Basin economic activity.
Putting these landmark agreements into action would signal a new day for the
Klamath Basin, and light a new path forward for water management throughout the
West.
 
Curtis Knight is conservation director for
California Trout, a nonprofit fish and watershed advocacy organization. Glen
Spain is northwest regional director of the Pacific Coast Federation of
Fishermen’s Associations.
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