Project History

The original Klamath Water Users Association was organized on March 4, 1905 under Oregon statute and capitalized in the amount of $2,000,000. That Association was created by local farmers, livestock producers, businessmen, bankers, attorneys, and community leaders interested in seeing the Klamath Reclamation Project constructed with the least amount of cost and for the lasting benefit of the entire Klamath community.

Working in cooperation with Reclamation the stockholders of the Association contracted with the U.S. Secretary of the Interior to assume the responsibility of payment to the United States the cost of the Klamath Project irrigation works on November 3, 1905. The Association was active in bringing in lands to be served by the Project and addressing water right matters of those lands. By the 1950's much of the construction costs of the project had been reimbursed to the United States, and irrigation districts assumed the contractual obligations for maintaining and operating the Project.

The current Klamath Water Users Association (KWUA) has its origins in the Klamath Water Users Protective Association, bylaws adopted June 22, 1953, organized to address water right and electrical power issues for Klamath Basin irrigators. The Protective Association reformed itself March 16, 1993 with amended bylaws, and incorporated in 1994 as the modern Klamath Water Users Association.

The KWUA represents private rural and suburban irrigation districts and ditch companies within the Klamath Project, along with private irrigation interests outside the Project in both Oregon and California in the Upper Klamath Basin. The KWUA is governed by an eleven-person board of directors elected from supporting irrigation districts, private irrigation interests, and the business community. The KWUA now represents over 5,000 water users on 1,400 family farms.

The Rest of the Story

The Klamath Project at 100 > (PDF, 1.0 MB)