Conservation Opportunities and Reality in the Klamath Project
CES Conference, Klamath Falls, Dan  Keppen, P.E. Executive Director
February 25, 2003
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The Klamath Water Users Association (KWUA) is a non-profit corporation that has represented Klamath Irrigation Project farmers and ranchers since 1953. KWUA members include rural irrigation districts and other public agencies, as well as private concerns who operate on both sides of the California-Oregon border. Our association strives to support the mission of our collective members, which is to develop full supplies to the farmers and ranchers who have farmed Project lands with reliable water deliveries in 95 of the past 96 years. Local water users play an important role in Klamath Basin wildlife conservation activities, including efforts to provide environmental water to two national wildlife refuges. We are also actively engaged in environmental restoration activities undertaken in other forums.

The Klamath Project, built nearly 100 years ago and operated by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) covers roughly 200,000 acres that straddle the California-Oregon border. The Project represents 2% of the land area in the entire Klamath River watershed, and depletes a total of 4% of the water that finds its way to the Pacific Ocean, 200 miles downstream. It was built to provide water stored in the federal project (Upper Klamath Lake, Clear Lake and Gerber Reservoir) specifically for irrigation purposes.

In the last ten years, since two sucker species were listed as endangered and coho salmon were listed as threatened under the ESA, biological opinions rendered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (for the suckers) and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS – for the coho), have increasingly emphasized the reallocation of Project water as the sole means of avoiding jeopardizing these fish. The net result of these restrictions on local water users was fully realized on April 6, 2001, when the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) announced its water allocation for the Project after USFWS and NMFS officials finalized the biological opinions (BOs) for project operations in a critically dry year. Based on the actions of those regulatory actions, Reclamation announced that – for the first time in Project’s 95-year history - no water would be available from Upper Klamath Lake to supply Project irrigators.

Concerned about the plight of farmers and the questions raised about the science used by NMFS/ USFWS, U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton commissioned a review of the BOs by a committee of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). An interim report last year concluded that insufficient scientific evidence existed to justify the higher lake and river levels to protect coho salmon and sucker fish. A full report is due next month. While Reclamation’s final 10-year Biological Assessment properly incorporates the findings of the NAS, the fishery agency BOs do not. The USFWS opinion continues to perpetuate the questionable assumption that lake level management is the principle mechanism affecting sucker survival in Upper Klamath Lake. The NMFS jeopardy decision similarly continues to place high emphasis on downstream flows. While Reclamation last June also sharply disagreed with the findings of each agency, it is not yet clear how consultation will be reinitiated and a 10-year operations plan finalized.

The bottom line is this: the driving force behind the water supply challenges we face here in the Klamath Basin is not an overallocation of available supplies: it is a re-allocation of supplies. Stored water – originally intended solely for irrigation purposes, has been reallocated away from this use and towards alleged – and, in our opinion - unjustified fish protection purposes.

A recent assessment (Davids, 1998) of Klamath Project water use efficiency implies that a sophisticated seasonal pattern of water use has evolved in the Klamath Project. One must understand that the Klamath Project has developed into a highly effective, highly interconnected form of water management. For example, Tulelake Irrigation District irrigates 62,000 acres of farmland. Over the past 10 years, the district has diverted an average of 131,000 acre-feet of water. Each year, an average of 80,000 acre-feet is pumped out of the district. Consumptive use within the district is considerably less than the amount of water diverted. The reason is the difference from the return flow from other districts and the reuse of water within the Project.

Within environmental circles, there is a fundamental mis-interpretation of Klamath Project water use efficiency by relying on the classical efficiency approach, a concept developed for irrigation system design. For example, a report prepared in late 2001 by ECONorthwest found that "63 percent of the water withdrawn later evaporated, seeped into the ground, or ran off irrigated lands and returned to canals, streams or lakes." The Report further implies that the predominance of flood irrigation (at least for Klamath County) contributes to the relative low water use efficiency of 45 percent.

While useful in system design and evaluation of comparable systems, the classical efficiency approach has several shortcomings when assessing the effectiveness of water user on a project-wide basis. The most fundamental failing is that the classical formulation does not account for reuse of water that may runoff or deep percolation at the time of original application, but which is consumed at another point or at another time.

The concept of effective efficiency has been developed specifically as a framework for evaluating the effectiveness of water use on a project-wide basis. Effective efficiency explicitly accounts for water that may not be consumed at the point or time of diversion but which is beneficially used at another time or place, and, thereby, contributes to effective project- or basin-wide water management.

The effectiveness of water use in the Klamath Project depends greatly on how the system is analyzed. The 1998 Davids Engineering assessment of Klamath Project water use efficiency found that early in the irrigation season the Project’s diversion and conveyance capacity is used to distribute water to meet immediate irrigation requirements and to replenish soil moisture throughout the Project area. Later, soil moisture stored in the first months of the irrigation season allows the Project to meet peak consumptive use demands even when these demands exceed the Project’s capacity to divert and deliver surface water.

Just how effective historic operation of the Project has been in its water use is best illustrated by examining the values computed for the Project’s effective efficiency. As noted above, effective efficiency computation explicitly incorporates factors such as runoff and deep percolation whose exclusion is the source of much of the variance in the values of classical efficiency. For this reason, effective efficiency values are more uniform spatially and seasonally than the classical values. According to the 1998 Davids study, effective efficiency for the overall Project is 93 percent, making the Klamath Project one of the most efficient in the country.

There is a conception currently popular within the environmental advocacy community, that all reclamation projects are now proven to be ill-conceived acts of hubris, guzzling water to irrigate deserts for anachronistic purposes. The aforementioned ECONorthwest report implies that the Klamath Project is another such example, with "45,500 acre-feet of water….evaporated from Upper Klamath Lake and other reservoirs as it was stored there for irrigation and other purposes."

In fact, careful study will reveal that the Klamath Project is extraordinarily efficient in the use of water, and further that the irrigated farms and ranches support not only families and communities, but abundant waterfowl and wildlife.

Our association further asserts that the Klamath Project has not significantly reduced Klamath River flows during the dry part of the year as a result of reclamation activities, as evidenced by the following:

• The USFWS itself has concluded that pre-Project flood flows that inundated the Lower Klamath area (cut off in the 1910s by construction of a railroad embankment) did not all return to the Klamath River in the summer.

• Pre-development Lost River and overland flows that entered the Tule Lake area fed a closed basin.

• The Lost River Diversion Channel adds flow the Klamath River, albeit primarily in wetter periods.

• Other parties’ recent estimates of "natural" Klamath River flows do not appear to recognize human activities (e.g., diking of Lost River Slough in the late 19^th century) that may have affected the calculation of pre-project flows.

While the overall water use in the Klamath Reclamation Project is one of the most efficient in the nation, and despite the misconceptions trumpeted by extreme advocacy groups, individual irrigation districts are reviewing opportunities to better quantify water use and timing, including installation of new water measurement devices. Also, with the influx of $50 million provided by the 2002 Farm Bill, individual farmers are also aggressively moving forward with projects intended to improve on-farm irrigation efficiency.

After hearing from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) in August 2002 that additional conservation measures would be needed for the remainder of this irrigation season, local water districts urged irrigators to make every reasonable effort to conserve water and to pass that message on. Response from the agricultural community was positive, as irrigators moved forward with actions intended to save water and reinitiate deliveries to national wildlife refuges. Reclamation and irrigation districts urged all water users to further reduce their withdrawals by 10 percent to ensure sufficient water to meet irrigation requirements and generate additional water for the refuges through October 15^th, the end of the irrigation season. Project irrigators decided against new plantings, cut back on pasture irrigation, and used groundwater in place of Project surface water to save water, where possible.

For example, Rick Walsh, who receives water from Klamath Irrigation District, had planned this fall on planting 130 acres of fall alfalfa seed. When he heard about the need to conserve, he decided instead to plant 60 acres of alfalfa, and not irrigate the remaining 70 acres. Walsh, who further decided to hold off on planting 30 acres of mint until next spring, also worked with the State of Oregon to pump groundwater in place of Project water on another 42 acres.

Despite the dry conditions, water users in the last six weeks of the season reduced irrigation to ensure sufficient water to meet irrigation requirements and generate additional water for the national wildlife refuges. Also in September, additional water appeared in local streams and canals that derived from subsurface recharge originating from irrigation water applied earlier in the season. It is largely for these reasons that Reclamation was able to release an additional 12,000 acre-feet of water in early October to provide a "pulse flow" out of Iron Gate Dam intended to trigger overcrowded fish to move out of the diseased lower Klamath River earlier this fall.

Individual Efforts - Klamath Basin landowners are aggressively pursuing projects through funds earmarked by the 2002 federal Farm Bill for Klamath Basin water conservation efforts. Funds will be made available through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), the central conservation program of the new Farm Bill. In the Klamath Basin, special funding is available for such water-conserving purposes as improving irrigation systems, increasing water storage and groundwater recharge and conversion to less water-intensive agricultural activities.

Local interest in the Farm Bill program has generated a flurry of recent activity. In Klamath County, Modoc and Siskiyou Counties, over 400 growers have filed to apply for funds that will be used on over 300 parcels of land. The majority of applications received to date by local conservation districts in both states propose improving on-farm irrigation efficiency by converting flood irrigation lands to piped systems, upgrading sprinkler systems, and laser-leveling land. All applicants are required to develop conservation plans for the affected properties. Importantly, one must realize that participation in these programs requires a 25% cost-share contributed by the landowner. I believe this is an extraordinary demonstration of local commitment to water conservation actions, particularly when you consider that many of these farmers had next to zero cash flow in 2001.

Klamath Irrigation District (KID) Efforts – The 2001 restriction of water deliveries left the "A" Canal high and dry for most of the year. For months, the Project’s largest conveyance facility baked in the summer sun, which dried out the earthen canal and caused significant cracking and surface faulting of the channel. This year, KID has dedicated considerable time and resources to address the seepage problems that have moved water away from intended crop or pasture areas and instead, into residential backyards and non-irrigable lands. KID is currently considering ways to address this problem, including the placement of fine granular material into the canals to "seek" leaks and block them. KID is also looking at lining the canals with bentonite, and may also have to install drainage pumps to pull unwanted drainage away from sensitive areas and route these waters back into the canal.

Klamath Drainage District (KDD) Efforts - KDD is proposing to construct a pumping plant to capture tailwater from upstream areas and re-circulate the water for additional uses. KDD already has a 120-horsepower tailwater recovery pumping plant on the Ady Canal that was installed at the initiative of KDD, using its own funds. That system has been deemed as success by KDD because it has reduced Klamath River water diversions, provided drought mitigation benefits, and improved canal delivery efficiency. KDD has proposed to install a similar system using a 60-horsepower pump on the North Canal, and is currently seeking financial assistance for this purpose.

Shasta View and Malin Irrigation Districts - The Shasta View and Malin Irrigation Districts have converted a large part of their open-channel conveyance system to a subsurface piping system, making its irrigation delivery system one of the most efficient in the state. Irrigation district managers are currently assessing opportunities to convert more open ditches to piped distribution.

Tulelake Irrigation District (TID) Efforts - Tulelake Irrigation District (TID) is assessing opportunities to further develop new projects that will reduce conveyance losses to its customers. Last year, in partnership with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation), TID completed the largest project within Reclamation using a state-of-the-art canal lining material called Ethylene Propylene Diene Monomer (EPDM). Over 400,000 square feet of this material were used to line nearly 2 ½ miles of open canal. Prior to the lining project, the yearly seepage losses in the canal were estimated at 1,000 acre-feet. TID officials are pleased with the water savings generated by this project, as well as the ease of construction and maintenance. The project was completed under a program initiated by Reclamation that promotes low-cost, low-tech lining systems that can be installed and maintained by irrigation district personnel without the need for specialized contractors.

Based on the interest of local irrigators to participate in recent Farm Bill conservation programs, it is clear that water use efficiency improvements will play a role in meeting Klamath Project surface water shortfalls. However, the relative importance of water conservation within the Project has yet to be determined, and it is but one of several actions required to reach a balanced solution for the Klamath Basin.

Local irrigators will continue to push for the incorporation of strong science in forging a Basin solution. We will promote meaningful restoration activities throughout the Klamath Basin for listed species and the refuges. We will continue our strong support for improved storage and other water management actions – including efficiency enhancement, where possible - to satisfy multiple competing demands. We believe that these actions will ultimately alleviate the disproportionate Endangered Species Act burden now borne solely by Klamath Project irrigators.

Klamath Water Users Association
2455 Patterson Street, Suite 3
Klamath Falls, Oregon 97603
Phone (541) 883-6100
FAX   (541) 883-8893  
kwua@cvcwireless.net