High Country News: Will history repeat in a dry Klamath Basin this summer?
Analysis by Anna V. Smith | June 14, 2021
Low level of summer streamflow; estimated at 21%.
In mid-May, Klamath Tribal members and supporters stood at Sugarman’s Corner in downtown Klamath Falls, Oregon, holding signs like “Ecocide is Cultural Genocide,” “Save the Klamath” and “Honor the Treaty” as part of a caravan rally. The goal was to highlight Indigenous voices and priorities for the Klamath River basin, like protecting culturally important c’wam (Lost River suckers) and koptu (shortnose suckers) endemic to shallow Upper Klamath Lake.
Tensions were high in the basin, which spans the Oregon-California border. Just a day before the rally, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation had announced that it wouldn’t release water in the basin to irrigators or national wildlife refuges because of dire drought forecasts.
Joey Gentry, a member of the Klamath Tribes who helped organize the event, nervously braced herself for an armed counterprotest, like the ones that happened in Klamath Falls during Black Lives Matter marches last year. To Gentry’s relief, however, no counterprotesters materialized. “Everyone empathizes with the plight of our farmers,” said Gentry, who farms hemp in the region. “But we also now know that food systems and agriculture systems must support ecosystems for all of us.”
This summer’s strife recalls the events of summer 2001, when drought caused the Bureau of Reclamation to cut off water to the majority of fields in the area and farmers staged a standoff to restore the flow. Now, the basin is facing an even worse drought: A large-scale fish kill has already happened, and, for the first time since 2001, the majority of farming in the basin must cease for lack of water.
Another factor reminiscent of 2001 is a new iteration of an old theme: An extremist element is present in the region, more energized and better organized than in the past. But there are critical political and legal differences between this year and 2001: Years of negotiations on large-scale settlements have built relationships between tribal nations, politicians, agencies and irrigators that didn’t exist before. And a slew of court cases over the past two decades have affirmed that the federal government must prioritize tribal nations’ water rights and protected species’ needs. “The state and the federal government, I believe, have a real responsibility to help folks,” said Klamath Tribes Chairman Don Gentry. (Don and Joey Gentry are siblings.) “It’s an environmental injustice ... This is our homeland; all the things that were placed here should be here. We shouldn't have to fight over them.”
“The state and the federal government, I believe, have a real responsibility to help folks.”
THE KLAMATH BASIN contains Upper Klamath Lake, which supplies part of the water for the Klamath Project, a Bureau of Reclamation irrigation operation that waters 1,200 farms and over 240,000 acres of farmland. Water from the lake flows southwesterly via the Klamath River through the ancestral lands of the Klamath Tribes, Hoopa Tribe, Karuk Tribe and Yurok Tribe, emptying into the Pacific.
But more of that water is spoken for than actually exists. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates water flows would need to be 135% of average to fulfill all of the rights in the basin. Forecasts put this summer’s streamflow as low as 21% of average. “There’s really not enough water in a good water year,” said Adell Amos, Clayton R. Hess Professor of Law at University of Oregon, who worked as a staff lawyer for the U.S. Department of Interior during 2001. “But when we get a year like this year, it becomes really profound.”
Read the full article at:
https://www.hcn.org/articles/north-water-will-history-repeat-in-a-dry-klamath-basin-this-summer