I have read with interest the various recent editorials, guest viewpoints and news coverage The Times-News has provided relative to the challenges your area faces along the Snake River. My organization, the Klamath Water Users Association, represents those irrigators who were denied Klamath Project water in 2001 by regulatory agencies in the name of protecting sucker and salmon populations via the federal Endangered Species Act. The Klamath Project is a 200,000-acre area of small family farms and ranches that straddles the Oregon-California border.

The 2001 water cutoff had immediate and far-reaching impact on the local community. Loss of irrigation supplies devastated farmers and imparted an estimated $200 million economic "ripple" effect through the broader community. Impacts continue as farm lenders now question the credit worthiness of growers whose century-old water supply has been put at risk. The 2001 cutoff also tragically underscored the vital linkage that exists between irrigated farmland and wildlife. Water that would normally flow through farmland habitat was directed instead toward three species protected under the federal act. The vitality of more than 430 other wildlife species was threatened when subjected to the same fate as farmers.

This tragic decision has been called into question by two studies developed in the past year by the National Academy of Sciences. An academy committee concluded that there is "no substantial scientific foundation" for the 2001 decision to maintain higher lake levels for the endangered suckers or higher minimum Klamath River flows for threatened coho salmon.

Despite the infusion of improved science like the NAS report into Klamath management issues, a coalition of environmental activists, many of the same groups that have now set their sights on the Upper Snake River Basin in Idaho, has flooded the Klamath Basin with legislation, litigation and press attacks aimed at removing Klamath Project farmers and ranchers from their land.

The hard-working landowners I represent have been on the receiving end of a cruel and long-distance war being waged by environmental activists who zealously assert that our water project -- representing only 2 percent of the total land base of the Klamath River watershed -- is somehow responsible for all of the environmental woes of the river system. These advocates are intent on portraying the Klamath Basin as a poster child to help fuel outside efforts that are focused on litigating, legislating and publicly condemning our community for doing what it has done for 96 of the last 97 years -- irrigating farm and ranch land.

These interests know that federal water projects are an easy target of litigation, since federal environmental and clean water laws govern project operations. The lawsuits are often aimed at federal agencies -- such as the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and fishery agencies -- which, on the surface, give the appearance that the environmental plaintiffs are simply interested in correcting errors made by some non-descript governmental agency. The true intended target of these actions, however, ultimately becomes the landowners and water users who fall under the management jurisdiction of the federal agencies. It is the farmers and ranchers that pay the price of litigation through altered management practices, increased uncertainty and escalating legal expenses to defend their interests.

Some environmental activists take umbrage when besieged landowners tag these litigious actions as "anti-farming." I have yet to receive a satisfactory response from activists when I ask how these actions could possibly be perceived as being "pro-farming." In our basin, things have gone this far: Activists earlier this year sent landowners a cruel, threatening letter telling them to sell out.

Without a doubt, constructive environmental organizations exist. But they do not, by any means, control the dialogue in the Klamath Basin.

Heads up, Idaho. Take a look at the coalition that has been developed to attack our rural community on www.klamathbasin.info. A broader, West-wide environmental coalition that is likely very interested in the Snake River can be studied on the Web site belonging to the Western Water Alliance.

Some of the organizations that form these alliances will no doubt be familiar to you. One vocal organization that has lined up against Idaho water users -- EarthJustice -- has been a primary mover of litigation intended to take water away from Klamath Basin irrigators. Many of our irrigators are descendants of world war veteran homesteaders that were promised reliable water supplies in the early half of the 20th century.

Idaho agricultural water users must ask the so-called "conservationists" a simple question: are you for us or against us?

If they are for you, and if they want to fix the perceived problem, they will embrace a watershed-wide approach to solving your area's problems. Such a solution would look at all of the stressors to fish and would avoid placing a disproportionate burden of "fixing" the perceived problems on any one sector of the community.

I wish you luck in your challenging endeavors.

Dan Keppen is executive director of the Klamath Water Users Association, a nonprofit corporation that has represented Klamath Irrigation Project farmers and ranchers since 1953.