11 July 2001

MEMBERS OF THE US SENATE

RE: OPPOSE Sen. Gordon Smith's Klamath Basin 'ESA Exemption' Amendment
to Interior Appropriations (H. R. 2217)

Dear Senator:

You will shortly be voting on a last-minute amendment to the Interior Appropriations Bill (H. R. 2217), offered by Oregon Senator Gordon Smith to 'solve' the drought-induced water crisis in the Klamath Irrigation Project, located in the Upper Klamath Basin of Southern Oregon and Northern California.

What that 'Trojan horse' amendment really would do, however, is turn back the clock on much needed water reforms by mandating a return to a failed species recovery plan of 1993, ignore and over-ride all the last 10 years of scientific research behind the 2001 Fish & Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) Biological Opinions, carve out a special de facto permanent exemption from the Endangered Species Act and other federal laws for blatantly unsustainable irrigation practices and institutionalize denial, delay and scientific ignorance -- all so federally subsidized Klamath Irrigation Project farmers can once again take all of what precious little water is available, in a record drought in an arid desert, from the economically valuable lower Klamath River recreational and commercial fishing industry, from four federally recognized Tribes and in violation of the Clean Water Act.

Needless to say, PCFFA, as the west coast's largest organization of commercially fishing families, representing thousands of salmon-dependent downriver jobs in ports and coastal communities all along the west coast, STRONGLY OPPOSES THIS AMENDMENT. We urge you to do likewise.

The science in the Klamath Basin is quite clear: more water has been promised to irrigators by the Bureau of Reclamation than is actually there. The Upper Klamath Basin's limited water supply has been grossly over-committed. In the past the Bureau was only able to provide water in most years by ignoring all of its other legal obligations to fish and wildlife, Tribes and the National Wildlife Refuges. Decades of Bureau of Reclamation water mismanagement and overdevelopment of very limited water resources is what really caused the current bout of Klamath Basin ESA listings. A return to 'business as usual' irrigation in this over-appropriated and bloated federal water project, particularly in this historic drought, would further jeopardize at least two species of lake fish which are protected by Tribal treaty obligations; downriver salmon important to downriver Tribes and to the commercial and recreational fishing industries, and; several hundred bald eagles in the basin's National Wildlife Refuge (the largest population in the lower 48 states). For some of these species this amendment would condemn them to extinction.

This amendment, if passed, would also destroy the livelihoods of thousands more downriver commercial salmon fishermen from at least Fort Bragg, California to Florence, Oregon, and additionally would violate the US government's legal and treaty trust obligations to the Klamath Tribe, the Hoopa Tribe, the Yurok Tribe and the Karuk Tribe.

This 'final solution' would create economic and biological havoc in an already deeply distressed Klamath Basin ecosystem. It would also make it that much harder to resolve the real problems of the basin: over-appropriation, Klamath Project over-development, decades of deliberate destruction of natural wetlands water storage, and conflicts created by the Bureau of Reclamation through decades of water mismanagement.

Eventually even federally subsidized farmers growing federally subsidized crops must learn to live within the unforgiving biological limits of available rainfall. Even if there were no ESA, no Tribal obligations and no Clean Water Act, in this record drought year there would still not be enough water in the Upper Klamath Basin to get crops to market.

The Upper Klamath Basin is an arid, high-elevation desert which gets less than 12 inches of rain even during a normal year. In this record drought year, rainfall has been less than even onethird of that. Unfortunately, no amount of political posturing nor railing at the ESA is going to create more rain. The Smith amendment is not going to magically eliminate either the drought or the fact that the Klamath Irrigation Project is simply out of water. It would, however, make an already bad situation that much worse.

On top of that, the list of institutional obligations the amendment specifies are unfunded, some of them are likely impossible to accomplish and at least one (item (c), an aeration scheme for running huge oxygenation pipes under Upper Klamath Lake to form a giant bubble machine) has been repudiated by a number of reputable scientists as a fundamentally flawed idea that would provide little or no benefit at great taxpayer expense.

Institutionalizing a policy of inflexibility, ignorance and denial has never worked. Please OPPOSE the Smith amendment.

Sincerely,
Glen H. Spain
Northwest Regional Director
For PCFFA

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