Klamath water sketchy this year

The Times-Standard ^ | March 12, 2003 | John Driscoll

[farmfriend]

Klamath water sketchy this year

By John Driscoll The Times-Standard

A National Research Council report on the Klamath River won't be ready until summer, and won't review two key studies related to the federal government's water policies.

The council's report on the agency opinions that prompted the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to cut water to farms in 2001 is about to be sent out for peer review. That means it will be June or July before it's released.

It won't review an important flow study, or a planned U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report on the causes behind a huge fish kill in September 2002. Utah State University researcher Thomas Hardy's study, which is thought will advocate more water for salmon than the bureau has allotted, was held up in a "contract office appropriations issue," said Interior Secretary counsel Sue Ellen Wooldridge.

Fish and Wildlife reported only that its fish kill report is "coming along."

Wooldridge said even if the research council report had been out in March, that's too late to make changes to this year's operations plan.

"We have always known for the 2003 irrigation season that the NRC study wouldn't come out in time," she said.

Suzanne van Drunick, the National Research Council study director, said the council's final report will not be amended later to include the documents.

The council's initial report in the late fall of 2001 was touted by the bureau, but criticized by detractors as providing the Bush administration with the answers it wanted.

The bureau supplies water to some 200,000 acres, mainly around Upper Klamath Lake in south-central Oregon. This year is the second year in the bureau's 10-year guidelines. It is also a very dry year on the Klamath, with scant snowpack and low reservoirs.

The bureau is scrambling to find more water that might be used to protect fish in the river, though Wooldridge said that is not an admission that the bureau's Klamath operations caused the fish kill.

A water banking project in the upper basin aims to buy 50,000 acre feet of water from farmers, and farmers have offered to idle twice the amount of land the government can pay for. The bureau is reviewing applications that cover about a tenth of the Klamath Irrigation Project.

The water bank doesn't guarantee farmers will have enough water to see them through the growing season.

The Interior Department is also asking a Fresno U.S. District Court judge for higher flows for the Trinity River, the Klamath's main tributary.

Wooldridge said jokingly that a regional bureau chief is "collecting tomato cans of water" to meet spring flow obligations.

Some think it may take more than that.

Fishing and environmental groups are due before a U.S. District Court in Oakland in late April and will likely ask for more water to be sent down the Klamath. Part of that would be to guard against large-scale juvenile salmon mortality, which has occurred several times in the past decade.

"The tribes and people downstream have been shaken to their cores seeing their cultural icons being destroyed before their eyes," said Tim McKay of the Northcoast Environmental Center, a party to the suit.

Humboldt, Del Norte and Trinity counties along with the cities of Arcata, Eureka and Fortuna are acting as friends of the court in support of the suit, which claims the Reclamation Bureau's operating plan is illegal and will harm threatened coho salmon.

[farmfriend]

ping. Indexed for Klamathbasincrisis.

[hispanarepublicana]

Rio Grande Water owed to us by Mexico per a 1944 treaty probably is sketchier, given Mexico's hard-to-get act on Iraq.

[tubebender]

I spend as much time watching the weather reports for the Klamath Basin as I do for the Redwood Coast. There is a possibility of a good series of storms starting tomorrow. Up to 10 inches of rain for our coast range.

[blackie]

Bump!

Be Well - Be Armed - Be Safe - Molon Labe!

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!!

[GladesGuru]

"- shaken to their cores, seing their cultural ikons being destroyed before their eyes."

In Biblical time, slaying was done with the jawbone of an ass. Now we are subjected to the braying of an ass.

Somehow I have difficulty believing the Indians worship fish. Now in the case of some of the more addicted dry fly trouters - maybe.

Come to think of it, where was Comrade McKay when thousands of fish were clubbed to death in a hatchery due to suits by such enviro-socialists as himself?

If he was genuine in his concern for the Indian fish harvest, why didn't he (and the rest of the nature Nazis) ask that the fish that were beaten to death with clubs at the hatchery be given to the Indians?

And where were those who claim to "feel the animal's pain" during the fish clubbing? Too busy writing Yassar Arafat about an ass blown up in a Palistinian terror bombing, perhaps?

But we perhaps can understand that as the normal and proper unhappiness when a relative is killed.

Remember Edmund Burke's "Those loudest for the public good have it least at heart".

[SierraWasp]

Well... I'll tell ya... When Billy Bass wuz in the oral orofice an got inta truble with Monica... he probly wudda took qwite a likin to them there Short Noses Sucker Fish!!!

Matter of facts, I wuz sprised he din't erect a monumunt to wunna them trailer trash fish... rite there under his desk an issue anuther Presidentshul order declarin 'em sumthin eternully pertecked in perpituity reguardless uv whut Injuns thot uv 'em!!!

[Carry_Okie]

If he was genuine in his concern for the Indian fish harvest, why didn't he (and the rest of the nature Nazis) ask that the fish that were beaten to death with clubs at the hatchery be given to the Indians?

Because the only fish to which the Indians have a claim are the wild fish, not hatchery fish.

[hubel458]

Carry- I thought us taxpayers raised those chinook for the tribes and sport fisherman...90% that died were Trinity
hatchery chinook.And if Tribes really cared about fish they wouldn't have pulled half of their gill nets before the big run came in and make the crowding worse.On Klamath site I
have been giving that asshole judge, that let all Trinity water get tied up,HELL. He could have put some management
effort and guidelines out for BOR, so that a little of the
1.5 million acre ft of cool water stored in Trinity Lake,
could have been released when those fish were coming in.
Would have only needed about 4% of it.Trinity Lake had 10 times the water that upper basin had when fish came in.
Tubebender-Let us hope it rains cats and dogs in Upper basin
as well as the coast.Ed Hubel.

[Carry_Okie]

Carry- I thought us taxpayers raised those chinook for the tribes and sport fisherman...

A portion of what is raised in hatcheries is to replace those wild fish displaced by dams upon which the tribal claim stands. I don't understand how the arrangement works beyond that; I merely report what I was told by someone who should know.

[hubel458]

Folks please go to this site and help out.

A site called the Refuge that I just found that is
overwelmed by a very few greens on the Klamath basin issues, as they pertain to the coast flyway.It has thousands of members mostly waterfowlers, a lot who are members of the CWA..Go to the CWA section..I posted Henry
Christensons letter there.And a whole rebuttal to the resident green honcho's green propaganda. He has worked up
to apoplexy about an hour ago.Here is a chance to get
a large organization's members a chance at the truth.Ed.

http://www.refugeforums.com/refuge/index.php

[Carry_Okie]

Sorry Ed, but I don't understand the format.
Which of the forums are you addressing here?
Looks like a nice site.

[hubel458]

They have a California Waterfowl Forum.The first couple threads past the permanent ones.Ed.