From: The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations (PCFFA)
To: California State Senate - Committee on Natural Resources & Wildlife

Date: 9 July 2001

RE: OPPOSE Assembly Joint Resolution 14 (Klamath Project 'God Squad')

Dear Member of the Senate Committee:

PCFFA, as the west coast's largest organization of commercial fishing families, must adamantly oppose AJR 14 in its present form. It is based on a number of false premises and misunderstandings of the true situation in the Klamath Project and Klamath Basin and would ultimately be counterproductive as well as lead to economic disaster for the California salmon fishing industry. While we strongly support the disaster relief portions of the Resolution, there are a number of facts that should be considered before voting on AJR 14, including the following:

(1) WATER CUTOFFS IN THE KLAMATH PROJECT ARE NOT PRIMARILY DRIVEN BY ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT (ESA) CONSIDERATIONS, THEY ARE DRIVEN BY DROUGHT:

The Klamath Project area gets less than 12 inches of rain even in a normal water year, which classifies the land as 'desert.' This year Upper Klamath Lake has received only 21% of that normal amount, making this a record drought. Even had there been no ESA, no Tribal obligations, no Clean Water Act and no other legal constraints, this year's rainfall is so low that there would STILL not be enough water for the majority of farmers to get crops to market. Unfortunately, no amount of political posturing, no amount of lawyers and no amount of blame leveled at federal agencies and federal laws can make more rain. For that reason AJR 14 is largely pointless.

(2) EVEN IN THIS RECORD DROUGHT, MANY UPPER KLAMATH BASIN FARMERS HAVE FULL WATER DELIVERIES:

The Klamath Irrigation Project sits atop a very large aquifer. At least 200,000 acres of surrounding NON-Project lands have long relied upon groundwater pumps for their water supply. NON-Project lands are now getting as much water as they wish, and are in fact under contract to sell as much as 35,000 acre-feet of surplus water to the Bureau of Reclamation for the Project.

Additionally, Project lands near Clear Lake and Gerber Reservoir have been allocated 70,000 acre-feet of water as well, and will have reasonable water deliveries this year in spite of the drought. This amount of water, delivered to Project farmers, is about 20% of the normal water year Project allocation of 350,000 acre-feet. In other words, in this record drought, with the Upper Klamath Project receiving only 21% of normal lake inflow, the Project farmers as a whole are still receiving 20% of normal water year water deliveries. They are, in fact, receiving a share of the water that is proportional to the rainfall.

The reason the Project cannot receive more is that there is simply no more water available without violating Tribal Treaty obligations, the Clean Water Act, drying up the refuges or killing massive numbers of fish in the lakes and lower river to the detriment of other major economies and interest groups. In other words, in a severe drought, no one interest group is entitled to take it all.

(3) THIS IS NOT JUST ABOUT LAKE FISH, IT IS ABOUT THE INTEGRITY OF THE WHOLE UPPER BASIN ECOSYSTEM AS WELL AS THE SURVIVAL OF COASTAL SALMON-DEPENDENT COMMUNITIES:

The farmers tend to simplistically characterize this conflict as 'people vs. fish,' but in fact nothing could be farther from the truth. This water conflict has been decades in the making, and is largely the result of the Klamath Project growing too large for the water that was actually available, and taking that water at the expense of every other water need in the upper and lower Klamath Basin.

At stake also is the survival of much of the west coast salmon fishing industry. So little water is now allowed to flow below Iron Gate Dam, with the Project routinely taking as much as 85% of the total flow of the Upper Klamath Basin, that downriver salmon fisheries, including Iron Gate Hatchery, routinely suffer massive salmon fish kills. As a result, the salmon-dependent economy of the lower river and coastal communities has been systematically strangled, with economic losses estimated at 3,780 family wage jobs at an economic cost of at least $78 million/annually. Without major water reforms in the Upper Klamath Basin, thousands more coastal jobs are at risk.

Downriver fishing community economic losses are comparable to, and may in fact exceed, those projected for the farms that are now without water. This Legislature should reject the notion that coastal fishermen's families are somehow less valuable than farmers’ families, or that their livelihoods should be sacrificed to keep farmers operating like it was a normal water year. Particularly in a serious drought, like this one, the basin’s limited water supply must be shared. What the farmers are trying to do, under the cover of AJR 14, is to take it all.

We too support a better balance between water users along the Klamath River. However, that balance must also include sufficient water left in the river to support downriver fishing-dependent business, families and economies. To date it has not, and what the Upper Klamath Basin farmers are demanding, using AJR 14 as a vehicle, is essentially that this Legislature condone ignoring everyone else's water needs but their own. To call this 'balance' is at best disingenuous.

(4) A 'GOD SQUAD' IS NOT THE ANSWER:

There are FOUR species at risk because of over-appropriation of water by the Klamath Project: two upper basin lake fish, downriver coho salmon, and at least 1100 bald eagles, by far the largest population in the lower 48 states. The bald eagles and the wildlife refuges do NOT depend on Project water, as the farmers have frequently asserted, and the Bureau of Reclamation could independently flood the refuges whenever it chooses, but refuses to do so except as a lower priority to Project irrigators. Let’s be clear here. A 'God Squad' exemption in a drought year would doom all these creatures to extinction, and for eagles it would set back the ESA recovery efforts for our national symbol by at least 20 years.

At risk also are Tribal obligations of the US Government, both for maintaining fish in the Upper Basin and for maintaining salmon in the lower basin. A 'God Squad' exemption would mean the abrogation of those legal obligations at a huge cost (estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars) in reparations that would have to be paid by the US Treasury and by taxpayers. These sorts of Treaty abrogation claims are routinely upheld by the US Supreme Court.

Not only ESA listed coho salmon, but ALL salmon in the lower river, including the hatcheris, are suffering from low water flows released by the Project at Iron Gate Dam. A 'God Squad' exemption reversing critical water reforms in the Klamath River would doom more downriver salmon fishermen and their families to economic ruin, leave a coastal legacy of lost jobs, more devastated port communities and economic havoc for coastal communities as coho salmon and all other severely depressed salmon fisheries in the Klamath River suffered their final collapse into extinction.

Finally, even eliminating the ESA entirely would not eliminate equivalent water obligations under prior Tribal water rights, the Clean Water Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and several other statues. Under those laws, independently of any ESA claims, the same water would have to be provided to other users, who also have as legitimate a claim on that limited water as do the Klamath Project farmers.

(5) THE ANSWER IS NOT TO ATTACK THE SCIENCE OR TO ATTACK THE AGENCIES BUT TO ATTACK THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DROUGHT, LACK OF FEDERAL DROUGHT PLANNING AND AN OVER-APPROPRIATED FEDERAL WATER PROJECT:

The science behind the Biological Opinions has already been thoroughly reviewed, both inside and outside the agencies, and will be independently peer reviewed by several scientific review panels in the near future. In fact, the scientific justification behind those two Biological Opinions is very strong. Objections to that science raised by the Klamath Water Users Association and irrigation district lobbyists has, in fact, been thoroughly considered and simply does not hold up scientifically.

The real problem with water allocation in the basin is that too many farmers are now chasing too little water to the point where the Project's water obligations will exceed the available water supply (according to the Bureau's own models) in 7 out of 10 future years. The Project has quite simply over-appropriated the available water supply.

Other examples of Bureau of Reclamation mismanagement abound. The Bureau of Reclamation has never had a long-term operations plan for the Klamath Project, but continues to limp along on single-year plans. Nor has the Bureau ever screened its irrigation ditches, long known to be a major source of fish mortality, in spite of prior legal obligations to do so. Likewise the Bureau allowed the conversion of 79% of the Upper Klamath Basin's natural water storage, in the form of wetlands, to be converted to agriculture, thereby both increasing demand while decreasing supply. These wetlands were the natural water storage system that would ordinarily buffer the effects of drought, but now this buffer is mostly gone.

As Oregon's Governor Kitzhaber recently affirmed, the water crisis in the Klamath Project was decades in the making, the result of gross mismanagment by the Bureau of Reclamation, and cannot be blamed on the ESA. (See Governor' Kitzhaber's statement, link attached below). The ESA is merely the messenger. It is inappropriate government policy, and ultimately counterproductive, to shoot the messenger and ignore its warning. That is exactly what AJR 14, in its present form, does by attacking the law, attacking the agencies but not in any way attacking the underlying problem.

(6) THE ANSWER TO ECONOMIC DISTRESS IS DISASTER RELIEF, NOT WATER THAT DOES NOT EXIST:

PCFFA supports disaster assistance for the farmers unfortunately caught in the cross fire and who are innocent parties who have suffered from the poor planning and over-extension of the Klamath Project. However, in one of the region's most serious droughts, there is simply no water to be had.

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In summary, we support efforts to ask for disaster relief for Klamath Basin farmers, who are innocent victims of the Bureau of Reclamation's lack of planning and over-expansion as well as serious drought. The other portions of AJR 14 which attack the science, attack the agencies and seek a 'God Squad' exemption would only perpetuate these problems, plus risk massive economic damage to downriver coastal communities and salmon-dependent industries, the loss of the majority of bald eagles in the lower 48 states, and risk abrogation of Tribal obligations which are a sacred obligation of the U.S. government and for which the taxpayers of this country would ultimately bear enormous liabilities.

Farmers are not unfamiliar with drought and all the economic problems this can create. The answer to an economic disaster is economic relief. The Klamath Basin farmers should get that relief. The fish, however, have only one river, and once gone they will be gone forever, along with all the jobs and communities they also support, communities whose families are just as deserving of survival as those of the farmers.

We ask you to amend AJR 14 accordingly, or alternatively to vote against it.

Sincerely,
W. F. “Zeke” Grader, Jr.
Executive Director
Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Assns. (PCFFA)

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