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By TAM MOORE Oregon Staff Writer
KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. — Economic theory may point to buying and
selling water as a solution in water-scarce areas such as the
Klamath Basin, but local leaders last week rejected a market-based
solution as not ready for prime time.
The discussion came in a conflict resolution conference put on by
the Property and Environment Research Center and Jeld Wen Corp.,
owner of the Running Y Ranch with 6,800 acres of irrigated pasture
and cropland dependent on an uncertain water supply.
“I need ... a certain, reliable supply of water there” to farm, said
Mark Campbell, manager of the ranch.
Jim Huffman, dean of the Lewis and Clark College Law School, made
the case for the ability to buy and sell water as a property right.
He also said in the Klamath, where federal involvement, pre-historic
tribal water claims, demand for fish habitat, irrigation for farms
and water for hydro power generation compete for the same natural
runoff that “I don’t think private property is a solution, it is a
part of the solution.”
Economist Terry Anderson, who is on the property rights center
staff, said when the day-long forum was over that the real lesson is
that the Klamath Basin needs “incremental” solutions, not massive
fixes, “because if we screw it up, it is only a little change” that
can be halted.
In both Oregon and California, water rights by law relate to the
land receiving the irrigation or other benefit of water. The system
is overlain with irrigation projects that store water in one
location, then move it to others, often during summer months when
natural flows are low.
“Separating water rights from land and selling it is somewhat like
clearcutting a forest and not replanting,” said Doug Whitsett,
president of the rancher-dominated advocacy group Water for Life.
The real problem in 2004, said Leslie Bach, a hydrologist with The
Nature Conservancy, is that pre-1909 water rights in Oregon’s part
of the basin aren’t settled. The adjudication begun in 1975 remains
years from resolution.
Water markets might work, Bach said, if parties settled the Oregon
adjudication.
Said Anderson after listening to the Klamath stakeholders, he’s
convinced that for any solution to work it will be by “the knowledge
of people who have their feet on the ground,” not those
participating in federal task forces in Washington, D.C.
“If I were here I would be more fearful of political solutions,”
Anderson said. “Those will be driven by people far from here.”
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