|
Letter of response to Washington Post
article by Norman MacLeod
July 28, 2004
_________________________________
Home
Mr. Getler —
The opening paragraph of July 28, 2004's editorial on Page A18, titled "The
Basin and the Bay", is deeply flawed, and almost entirely factually
incorrect. I would expect that your editorial staff would be much more
diligent in researching their material prior to penning their editorials.
The paragraph reads...
"IN 2002, DROUGHT led farmers in the Klamath River Basin in Oregon and
Northern California to divert river water to their fields. Tens of thousands
of coho salmon and other endangered fish died as a result. In 2003, a
federal court ruled that river water could no longer be diverted, since
doing so violated the Endangered Species Act. The result, in 2004, was mass
bankruptcy, as farmers' livelihoods literally dried up."
The one part that is correct is the bit about the Klamath River Basin being
located in Oregon and Northern California.
The Klamath Project was initiated by the federal government in the early
1900s specifically to attract farming families to the Klamath Basin to
establish homestead farms. Over the years the farmers paid for the project,
and finished completely repaying the government for the project
infrastructure many years ago...a noteworthy feat, since most investment
money for federal infrastructure projects is never fully repaid to the
federal treasury.
The federal government denied water deliveries to the farmers that get their
annual irrigation water right in 2001 under ESA requirements. The NRC later
found that this shutoff was not warranted.
Water was delivered to the farms in 2002, and this was not done as a result
of drought as the editorial suggests. Water has been routinely delivered to
the farms and wildlife refuges annually as a deeded right of the landowners
for nearly a century.
The fish kill mentioned took place some 200 miles from the Klamath Basin, in
the region around the mouth of the Trinity River. These were determined to
be mostly fish returning to the Trinity River for spawning. Trinity River
water is largely (up to 90% in many years) diverted southward into
California for agricultural and urban residential and industrial use. These
fish did not die as a result of any of the routine annual water uses in the
Klamath Basin.
I am not aware that any court ruled in 2003 that water could no longer be
used for irrigation. We are talking water rights here, and many of the
Basin's farms have some of the most senior water rights possible. Water was
delivered for the farms and wildlife refuges in 2003, and is being delivered
now in 2004. Although there are those who would like to see all water
deliveries to the farms stopped, they have not been able to make that happen
in any year but 2001. That delivery stoppage also prevented water being
delivered to the wildlife refuges, placing more than 450 wildlife species,
some of which are endangered in their own right, under extreme survival
stress.
Although the administrative struggles over water have resulted in some
bankruptcies in the Klamath Basin region, there has been no mass bankruptcy
of farmers in 2004.
Were I in your position as the Washington Post's ombudsman, I would be
picking up the phone at about this point and requesting a meeting with
whoever penned this editorial. It would be most interesting to learn where
the author(s) came up with the "facts" presented to your reading public.
They have not served the public or your stockholders very well with the
first paragraph of the editorial.
You might want to keep your finger off the speed dial for a moment or two
longer, though, as I ask you to consider the following...
Where the editorial says:
"...the largest sources of pollution -- nutrient runoff from some 12,000
farms in Maryland, Virginia, Delaware and Pennsylvania, as well as from
cities -- have hardly been tackled. That's because to do so would be
complicated and expensive, and might put at risk the income of the region's
farmers."
...I think I'd ask the worthy author(s) to prove to you that a significant
portion of the nutrient runoff is coming from farms. Farmers are working
under some of the most stringent economic and regulatory limitations
imaginable. Family farms, in particular, tend to be land-rich and cash-poor.
Most farmers are not going to put any more fertilizer on their fields than
absolutely necessary, and are going to do everything in their power to
prevent any of it moving away from the crop being fertilized. They simply
cannot afford to waste any of those nutrients by allowing them to run off
the fields.
I'd be more inclined to focus on the amount of fertilizers poured on to
suburban lawns and gardens, often only to be almost immediately washed down
storm drains when those same lawns and gardens are over-watered the same day.
Hundreds of thousands of homes, owned by people who often seem to think that
if a little fertilizer works well, more fertilizer ought to work even
better, can place a tremendous amount of nutrient loading into the region's
waterways. Golf courses also have a tendency to use more fertilizer and
water than they need to. Even when over-watering is not an issue, rainstorms
such as those recently experienced around the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays
will wash a lot of unused nutrients straight into the estuaries and bays.
To say,
"In the Klamath Basin, there is no middle road: Either the farmers move
away, or the fish die."
...is to demonstrate complete nearly complete ignorance of the issues facing
either the agricultural or natural communities. There is a balance, and that
balance has been maintained quite well for nearly a hundred years, up until
the recent lawsuit flinging brought about by a coalition of wilderness and
environmental advocacy groups whose agendas involved severely curtailing
farming throughout the Klamath Basin region.
The actual fish in question are two species of suckers that are on the
endangered species list. Whether their actual numbers warrant continued ESA
protection or not is open to question and up for review.
Your author's assertion that most farmers receive taxpayer-funded subsidies
is also very much open to your review. Most of those 12,000 farms referred
to in your region are family farms, and very, very few family farms qualify
for any form of subsidies. (I would be interested in knowing exactly what
percentage of those 12,000 farms are receiving subsidies, and to what degree
those subsidies actually support the agricultural activities on those
farms.) The lion's share of that money goes to corporations and extremely
large landowners, and never sees the light of day in the mid-Atlantic states
or the Klamath Basin. (You might be interested in learning which Senators
and other prominent individuals and corporations rake in farm subsidy cash,
though...it would make a great story...)
The harder political solution to nutrient pollution comes with the
recognition that such a great portion of it comes from the individual
homeowner level. While the agricultural community makes an easy target (you
can see the farms easily, but there are relatively few voters who are going
to be directly impacted by draconian legislation and regulation), large
numbers of homeowners are more painful to land on. Yet most of the
Chesapeake Bay's nutrient overload is likely hauled out the Home Depot doors
and loaded into a parking lot full of cars, minivans, and SUVs...not into
the farmers' mud-spattered pick-ups that have seen better days.
Please keep me advised as to what you learn about how so much groundless
assertion and so little factual information in a single piece managed to
make it into publication on the Washington Post's editorial page.
Thank you very much for your time and kind attention.
Norman MacLeod
Klamath Water Users Association
2455 Patterson Street, Suite 3
Klamath Falls, Oregon 97603
Phone (541) 883-6100
FAX (541) 883-8893
kwua@cvcwireless.net |