Klamath irrigators: Action needed on ‘pressing issues’

July 17, 2024

The Klamath Water Users Association is urging the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to address operational issues including water-supply challenges affecting agriculture, sediment from dam removal and regional impacts to waterfowl and aquatic species.

In a July 12 letter to U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton, the association outlined “pressing issues” in the Klamath Basin farming region along the California-Oregon border.

“We’re sounding an alarm for action,” said KWUA Executive Director Paul Simmons. “There are solutions readily available if we can get past treating water like tug of war.”

Noting that Klamath Project irrigators have received little or no water for the past three years, the association said farms totaling more than 50,000 acres face unnecessary curtailment of water deliveries this year. Hot and dry conditions could mean that 260,000 acre-feet allocated to the Klamath Project will be exhausted in September, the association said.

“We need to avoid disaster for agricultural communities and bring this year’s crops to full production and harvest,” Simmons wrote in the group’s letter.

KWUA expressed concern about the Lost River sucker and shortnose sucker fish populations, which it said are in “steep decline” in Upper Klamath Lake.

In addition, the association said water temperatures in the Klamath River exceed levels lethal for salmon and other fish. It asked Reclamation to confer with refuge managers and irrigation districts to establish a sufficient flow of water through the refuges to mitigate risk of disease outbreaks and mass waterfowl mortality in the Lower Klamath and Tule Lake National Wildlife refuges.

The group also took issue with sediment discharge into the Klamath River when a coffer dam at Iron Gate is due to be breached. It said the Klamath Project “should not and cannot be held responsible for mitigating impacts of dam removal.”

“We are aware that discussions are underway among federal agencies, tribes and the Klamath River Renewal Corporation about the possibility of special releases from Upper Klamath Lake to transport sediment that will be discharged into the mainstem Klamath River,” the association said. “Such flows are not provided for under the Bureau of Reclamation’s current interim operations plan or the new proposed action.”