http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centr...ws/4700032.htm

River dispute rages despite salmon deaths
BY MARILEE ENGE
Knight Ridder Newspapers


KLAMATH, Calif. - KRT NEWSFEATURES

(KRT) - The Klamath River runs high in its channel these days, after
the first big fall storms washed away all traces of a salmon die-off
that left more than 30,000 rotting fish scattered on beaches and piled
in back eddies.

Autumn colors and plentiful water have mellowed the riverscape, but
two months after the worst salmon kill on record in the West, the
political controversy grows.

Residents along the river, which flows across the northwest corner of
California, say federal policies that diverted too much water to
farming have created an environmental disaster here. Following a
drought in 2001, when farmers staged symbolic bucket brigades to
protest a halt to water deliveries, the salmon die-off and subsequent
revelations have placed the Klamath at the top of a list of national
issues that starkly separate conservationists from the Bush
administration.

Environmentalists, American Indian tribal leaders and others contend
that the Klamath water crisis is evidence that the White House is more
interested in catering to the influential farm lobby than protecting
the environment. Government officials deny the charge.

Among the recent developments:

_A federal fisheries biologist in Arcata filed for whistle-blower
protection, saying his recommendations for higher river flows were
rejected by superiors under political pressure to favor the farmers.

_A report by the U.S. Geological Survey said economic losses to
downriver fishing and tourism industries far exceed the benefits of
agriculture in the upper basin. The study was leaked amid allegations
that the administration had suppressed it.

_In a sharply worded letter, California Resources Secretary Mary
Nichols called on Interior Secretary Gale Norton to increase river
flows, and accused federal water officials of complicity in the salmon
die-off "tragedy."

_An Oregon State University study said a national science panel's
review that was used by the administration to justify cutting back
river flows this year was badly flawed.

The Interior Department's top official for Klamath matters denied that
politics is driving decisions there or that sound scientific facts are
being ignored. Sue Ellen Wooldridge, Norton's deputy chief of staff
and counsel, said a shortage of research has contributed to the
charges, but the administration is working to fix that.

In the Klamath Basin, the administration faces one of the most complex
water disputes in the West and two straight years of crises that have
polarized the region.

Nearly a century ago, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation began to build a
system of canals, pumps and dams to divert water from the Klamath
River and irrigate cropland in the high, arid Klamath Basin, which
straddles the California-Oregon border. The government gave land - and
promises of water - to returning World War I and II veterans willing
to work in a remote place where the frosts come early and stay late.
Many of those homesteads are still farmed by the children and
grandchildren of the original settlers.

In recent years, tensions mounted between the farming communities on
both sides of the border and a host of other groups that rely on
Klamath water who point to the irrigation project as largely to blame
for the ecosystem's decline. In the aftermath of the salmon kill,
farmers and ranchers still recovering from last year's losses felt
they were unfairly blamed for a natural occurrence.

But the consequences of 100 years of damming and depleting one of the
West's great salmon rivers seem equally devastating to the downriver
interests. A perilous decline in naturally spawning salmon means
commercial fishermen are no longer allowed to catch fish destined for
the Klamath River. Sport fishing guides and other local businesses
have watched a once-vibrant tourism industry wither. Environmentalists
are concerned about the vanishing fish species as well as migratory
birds that gather in the wildlife refuges of the basin. And Indian
tribes including the Yurok, Hupa and Karuk can no longer rely on the
salmon, which are central to their cultures.

Tension culminated in summer 2001 when the Bureau of Reclamation,
acting on the opinion of biologists trying to protect three species of
endangered fish, stopped sending water to the project. A record
drought parched fields of alfalfa and potatoes, and farmers faced
large financial losses. Then, in a dramatic show of support for the
farmers and ranchers, Norton traveled to Klamath Falls, Ore. and
turned the water on again.

Federal water officials based their decision on a report by a research
panel of the National Academy of Sciences. That group concluded there
wasn't enough data about the endangered fisheries to justify halting
water to agriculture. Months later, water officials relied on that
report to dramatically lower the amount of water that would be allowed
to flow into the river throughout the year. The new policy alarmed
members of California's Yurok tribe, the only group that fishes
commercially for Klamath salmon.

"We pleaded with the bureau to release more water because we knew we
had a decent run coming," tribal executive director Troy Fletcher said
from the tribal offices in Klamath, near where the Klamath pours
across a wide sandbar into the Pacific Ocean. Tribal biologists
worried that returning salmon would encounter a river that was too
shallow and too warm.

"We never in our worst nightmare imagined this would happen," Fletcher
said, referring to the September die-off. "This is a terrible
`I-told-you-so.'"

Fishermen and tribes weren't the only ones protesting. A federal
biologist heading the scientific team in charge of dividing the
basin's water said his recommendations for higher river flows were
ignored. Michael Kelly of the National Marine Fisheries Service has
filed for whistle-blower protection after charging that an analysis of
water levels needed to sustain threatened coho salmon was thrown out,
in violation of the Endangered Species Act.

In a written statement, Kelly says it was clear to him that his
superiors in the fisheries agency succumbed to political pressure to
give more water to irrigation.

"As a consequence of this political pressure," Kelly wrote, the
fisheries service "failed to meet its legal obligations to diligently
examine the needs of coho salmon." Kelly and others allege that the
new levels won't provide enough water for coho until the ninth year of
a 10-year plan.

But Kelly's supervisor disputed his account. Decisions about flows are
always reached in consultation with the reclamation bureau, said Jim
Lecky, a fisheries service official in Long Beach.

"There's political pressure, of course," he added, "and there's
interest up to the White House." But the decision was supported by
science, he said.

Government water and fisheries officials say it is still too early to
determine what killed the estimated 33,000 Klamath fish in September.
It is not clear that more water from the Upper Klamath Basin would
have prevented the die-off, they said.

But fishermen and California and tribal biologists maintain there is
no question that more water in the river would have prevented a
disaster unprecedented on the Klamath. Tribal elders cannot recall
anything of its kind.

The Bureau of Reclamation is preparing a new effort aimed at restoring
the Klamath's endangered fish, modeled on a program employed on the
Colorado River. The government is hopeful that by bringing the
agencies, tribes, farmers and environmentalists together it can reach
some kind of consensus on how to divide the Klamath's limited supply
of water.

But many of the players remain doubtful. As long as the government is
committed to irrigating farmland in the Klamath Basin and rejects
calls for buying back water rights and farmland, there will not be
enough water to restore the Klamath River's troubled fisheries, said
officials with the state of California, the Yurok tribe and some
environmentalists.

"In the Klamath Basin, the administration has decided they're going to
give 100 percent of water deliveries to irrigators, consequences be
damned," said Steve Pedery of Water Watch, an Oregon conservation
group. "What happens in the Klamath is precedent-setting. Either we
figure out how to deal with the fact we've promised too much water to
too many people or we have train wrecks like this all over the West."

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