PacifiCorp, which built a series of dams on the river below Klamath Falls, says it won’t agree to any settlement that costs its customers anything.
Basin irrigators who get water from the Klamath River system but are not part of the Klamath Reclamation Project fear they’ll lose grievously through the proposal likely to surface, but can’t be more specific because they’re bound by a confidentiality agreement.
In addition, at least a couple of environmental groups that once were part of the process but left it say they’ll oppose guarantees of water to irrigators that come at the expense of fish. Yet guarantees of water are what agriculture needs.
Twenty-six organizations have
been in a process that was initiated by PacifiCorp three
years ago. What started as something to deal with the
Portland-based utility’s application to renew its license
for the dams on the river has broadened to include other
issues such as fish, stream flows, habitat restoration and
economic development.
Dams at fault?
The dams are seen by downstream tribes and fishermen
as salmon killers because they prevent salmon from moving
into the upper Klamath to spawn. There is no fish passage
for migrating salmon on four of the six dams. The one
farthest south is Iron Gate Dam, a few miles south of the
Oregon-California border and 190 river miles from the
ocean.
PacifiCorp’s 50-year lease was up in 2006, but has
been renewed on a temporary basis as the parties struggled
through a complex process on a particularly complex river
system.
At its core, the issue is simple — there isn’t enough
water for all of the uses the federal government promised.
Those promises came at a time when the government — and
most other people — didn’t pay a lot of attention to such
things as tribal treaties and endangered species. Such
things now have moved to the front of the line. In those
earlier years, much of the wetlands in the Klamath area
were converted to farm lands as the Basin was part of a
successful effort by the United States to produce homes,
jobs and inexpensive food. The Basin has changed in
ways that are likely to be impossible to completely undo,
even if the will and money is there to try.
That doesn’t mean that change — even radical change —
can’t happen. Getting rid of the constant litigation and
creating certainty of water is worth something.
That’s where we’ll leave the issue until we see what’s
in the proposal.
Today's editorial was written by Pat Bushey