U.S. Water News Online
PORTLAND, Ore. -- A National Research Council report saying the federal government was unjustified in withholding Klamath Basin water from farmers in 2001 is riddled with errors, a paper submitted for publication in the journal Fisheries concludes.
The panel chose data selectively in a rush to support its conclusions, and in one instance its chairman referred to a species of fish that does not exist in the Klamath Basin, the paper says.
``Politicians have assumed that (the review) has primacy in the scientific debate, when in fact its speedy construction contributed to multiple errors that detract from its scientific usefulness,'' say the authors, fisheries professor Douglas Markle and graduate student Michael Cooperman at Oregon State University.
They are among the first outside scientists to scrutinize the work of the panel formed by the National Research Council at Interior Secretary Gale Norton's request after the Klamath Basin's bitter water struggles of 2001.
The researchers said it is wrong to treat the panel's finding as the ``definitive opinion for Klamath Basin water management,'' as federal agencies have done.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation used the findings to justify cutting back water for fish this year. That left less for salmon, which later suffered a massive die-off in the Klamath River.
The paper also has circulated among the Klamath Basin farmers. Dan Keppen of the Klamath Water Users Association said it ``appears to be more a political assessment instead of an objective look at the science.''
Farmers and politicians had welcomed the national panel's finding as proof that cutting off water to farms was not based on ``sound science.'' They have used it to argue for reform of the Endangered Species Act.
But Markle and Cooperman cite a series of factual errors in the National Research Council panel's conclusions, such as giving incorrect years when water quality in the Upper Klamath Lake was especially poor, using faulty fish population models and selecting data that supported ``a conclusion they had already reached.''
Five months after the panel was formed, its chairman referred to problems involving longnose suckers -- a fish species that does not exist in the Klamath Basin, they said.
One of the 12 members of the panel said the group would weigh the Oregon researchers' criticism when compiling a final Klamath Basin report, due out in January.
``It's like everything else; we'll read it, and we'll think about it,'' said Michael Pace of the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y.
The paper was submitted to the journal Fisheries about two months ago and reviewed by seven anonymous scientists, who returned it with comments and criticisms. Markle and Cooperman revised the paper to address the comments and resubmitted it to the journal, where it is awaiting publication, they said.
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