U.S. Water News Online
KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. -- The federal government said it was backing off a decision to cut off irrigation deliveries to farmers and ranchers who draw water from the Upper Klamath Lake and will instead work with irrigators to conserve enough water for endangered sucker fish.
The Bureau of Reclamation will instead send letters to irrigators who farm and ranch on more than 200,000 acres of the Klamath Reclamation Project asking them to sharply reduce their water use, said Jeff McCracken, spokesman for the bureau.
``We think we can squeeze through,'' he said. ``If we cut off all the water for a week (to save suckers in Upper Klamath Lake), it could significantly impact suckers in other places.''
After word of the water developments got around town, about a dozen people gathered at the A Canal headgates, site of angry confrontations with federal marshals over an irrigation shutoff two years ago, said police Capt. James Hunter.
``They voiced their displeasure with the Bureau of Reclamation, then they left peacefully,'' Hunter said.
The Bureau of Reclamation recently allocated more water for endangered suckers and threatened coho salmon, citing a wet April that boosted water tables.
But the weather has been warmer and drier than predicted and less water is available than officials originally thought, McCracken said.
``This is not over with yet,'' he said. ``The amount of water we expected in the reservoir simply did not show up. We're in a lot of hurt.''
The developments are the latest chapter in the long struggle between farmers, ranchers and environmentalists to control a limited water supply on the project, which spans an arid region in southwestern Oregon and northern California.
Dan Keppen, executive director of the Klamath Water Users Association, said irrigators have tried to limit water use.
``We have done everything we can to cut the demand,'' he said. ``I can guarantee you that we are going to be in this spot again in July.''
Steve Pedery, a spokesman for WaterWatch, an environmental group that monitors Klamath Basin irrigation, said the Bureau of Reclamation overestimated how much water would be available this summer.
He also questioned why the bureau didn't allow more irrigators to sign up for a ``water bank,'' in which farmers were paid to set aside 50,000 acre feet of water usually used for irrigation.
``The bottom line is there's just not enough water left in that basin,'' Pedery said. ``We've promised too much water to too many people.''
Interior Secretary Gale Norton recently listed the basin in the second tier of regions nationwide that will likely face ``water wars'' in the next 25 years over insufficient water supplies.
During a drought in 2001, the Bureau of Reclamation cut irrigation to the Klamath Project to reserve water for coho salmon and sucker fish, sparking angry confrontations between farmers and their supporters and federal marshals guarding the headgates controlling releases from the lake.
Last September, during a particularly dry summer, 33,000 chinook salmon died in the lower Klamath River as they returned to spawn. Chinook are not federally protected, but several hundred threatened coho salmon also died.
Biologists said they suffocated from gill rot diseases that spread quickly as large numbers of fish crowded together in warm pools while waiting to move upstream.
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