2005 Klamath Water Plan Puts Fish in Peril

PRESS RELEASE FROM:
PACIFIC COAST FEDERATION OF FISHERMEN'S ASSOCIATIONS, INSTITUTE FOR FISHERIES RESOURCES, WATERWATCH OF OREGON, OREGON NATURAL RESOURCES COUNCIL
Contacts: 8 April 2005

Glen Spain (PCFFA): (541)689-2000
Bob Hunter (Waterwatch of Oregon) (541)772-6116
BUREAU OF RECLAMATION ISSUES
2005 KLAMATH WATER PLAN
Too Little Water For Fish Once Again Jeopardizes Future Fisheries
Wildlife Refuges Still Starved For Water
Klamath Falls, OR --- On April 7th, the federal Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) released its 2005 Operations Plan for the massive Klamath Irrigation Project on the Oregon/California border.

With the Klamath Basin already facing a severe drought, the Plan will dictate how much water is allowed to flow down the Klamath River to support valuable lower Klamath river salmon fisheries and fishing-dependent Tribes and communities, how much will be reserved for American bald eagles and other birds in several national wildlife refuges, and how much will be diverted to politically powerful irrigation interests.
This year, in spite of a continuing drought, Klamath Irrigation Project irrigators will still receive 299,000 acre-feet of water, roughly 70 percent of a normal water year's allocation, even though rainfall in the Upper Klamath Basin was less than 35 percent of average during this year's serious drought. If you add back in the Project irrigation water supposedly retired by the water bank (45,500 acre-feet from paying farmers to idle 29,500 acres) this would mean the remaining portions of the Project would be receiving the equivalent of 80 percent of a normal water year's deliveries " one of the largest allocations in any similar dry year in the past 41 years of record.


The extra water earmarked for irrigation will be taken directly from the lower Klamath River and Klamath Lake where it is desperately needed to support economically important recreational, Tribal and commercial fisheries, and from the most important wildlife refuges in the Western United States.

Too little water left in the river has been a continuing source of fisheries disasters. Very low water flows in the spring of 2002 killed more than 200,000 juvenile fish in the lower river, cutting deeply into the number of adult fish returning this year and triggering severe ocean salmon fishing closures over nearly 800 miles of coastline, from central California to northern Oregon. The fish kill and resulting closures could cost the fishing industry as much as $100 million dollars in lost income this year alone. Fewer than half as many fish are likely to be landed this year as compared to 2004 because of the need to protect weakened Klamath fall chinook.

In the fall of 2002, similar low flows in the Klamath caused the death of at least 70,000 adult spawners before they could get to the spawning grounds, impacts that will hit the fishing industry next year as their progeny also fail to return as harvestable adults. The fall 2002 fish kill, called the worst adult fish kill in U.S. history, was also attributed to very low river flows in 2002 by two independent scientific reviews. During that whole year, the federal Bureau of Reclamation held back water from the lower river in order to fully supply what many have called excessive irrigation demand in the upper basin, in spite of major drought.

"Once again the lower river will be starved for water, jeopardizing salmon fisheries and damaging many lower river and coastal communities who depend on salmon for their livelihoods," noted Glen Spain, Northwest Regional Director for the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations (PCFFA), the west coast's largest organization of commercial fishing families.

The west coast fishing industry is already reeling from port closures caused by too little water in the river in past years. All the federal government is doing is setting the stage for more fisheries closures and more massive fish kills in the river in the future.

We've promised too much water to too many different interests in the Klamath Basin, and now even in wet years there isn't enough to go around, added Steve Pedery, Klamath Wildlife Advocate with the Oregon Natural Resources Council.

Rather than working to bring the demand for irrigation water into balance with supply, the Bush administration is continuing to strangle river flows and leave bald eagles in the Klamath National Wildlife Refuges high and dry.

The 2002-2012 Biological Opinion ("BiOp") of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), which governs how the Klamath Irrigation Project should be run to prevent the extinction of ESA-listed coho salmon, requires achieving recommended "target flows" that BOR is supposed to provide by no later than 2010 in order to prevent extinction of coho salmon.

The BiOp also provides for a year-to-year "water bank" program that requires taxpayers to lease water from irrigators as one way of helping to achieve those target flows.

However, even with the addition of 100,000 acre-feet of water bank water this year, the Bureau of Reclamation and the Bush administration will only meet those target flows for 12 days in April (see chart attached). Summer flows in late June and July will be roughly half of these "target flows," and thus far below what NMFS biologists say is necessary to protect lower river fish.

The federal government has simply promised too much water to too many different interests in the Klamath Basin. There is simply no way to put enough water back into the river without restoring the balance between supply and demand," added PCFFA's Glen Spain. "There is only so much rain in this arid basin, and even federal water projects must eventually learn to live within their means. The federal government is still in denial, but all the denial in the world will not make more rain."

The 2005 water plan also comes just one week after a report by the Government Accountability Office on the water bank that found serious problems with the program. The report concluded that over its initial 10 years, the water bank will cost US taxpayers approximately $65 million. The GAO found that a program to purchase the Klamath Basin's most marginal agricultural lands at fair market value and retire them could permanently free up 100,000 acre-feet of water for as little as $15 million dollars. The water bank will spend over $7.6 million to temporarily secure 100,000 acre-feet of water for 2005 alone.

"It's a shame that the basin is now facing another severe drought without a permanent program in place to bring water use in the basin back into balance with what is sustainable," said Bob Hunter of WaterWatch, a river conservation organization." A fair program, that would be far cheaper to the taxpayer in the long run than the current water bank program, is to permanently buy water from the basin'Äôs many willing sellers and dedicate it to fish and wildlife."

The Klamath National Wildlife Refuge system will also get far less water this year than it needs, a trend that has continued for many years. Lowered refuge water allocations will dry up wetlands, reducing nesting and feeding areas and crowding birds into conditions where avian botulism and other diseases are likely to run rampant. The Klamath National Wildlife Refuge system is the most important migratory bird refuge in the western U.S., used by more than 80% of all migratory birds traveling the Pacific Flyway. Problems in the refuge have reduced migratory bird populations by millions over the years.

"Under this operating plan the fish and wildlife of the Klamath Basin's National Wildlife Refuges, Klamath River and Upper Klamath Lake will again take a very hard hit," said Bob Hunter of WaterWatch. "It's a shame that the basin is now facing another severe drought without a permanent program in place to bring water use in the basin back into balance with what is sustainable."

Water problems in the Klamath have gotten worse over time, not better. For instance, the Oregon Water Resources Department has given away at least 93 additional water permits in the Upper Klamath Basin totaling nearly 300 cfs of additional water flows since June 2002, in spite of clear indications that the basin is already severely over-appropriated. As a result, water conservation efforts by Project farmers are being undercut by state water policies that ‚Äúnever say no"Äù to more water diversions. Oregon has an additional 21 such permits currently pending, including one huge application for water equal to nearly one-third of what the Project already uses. For more information about these pending permits contact Bob Hunter of WaterWatch. The State of California and Siskiyou County have also been issuing more water diversion and well permits in the Klamath.

Additional Resources and Klamath Basin information:

Government Accountability Office (GAO) Report GAO-05-283, March 2005: "Klamath River Basin water bank report," available at: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05283.pdf

The Klamath Basin Coalition: http://www.klamathbasin.info

TABLE COMPARING PLANNED 2005 FLOWS TO BIOP TARGET FLOWS IS ALSO ATTACHED