THE OREGONIAN EDITORIAL

Water crisis in the Klamath Basin isn't just about suckers vs. farmers: It's about a century of unresolved problems

Sunday, May 13, 2001

A 3-year-old girl, daughter of one of Klamath Basin's desperate farmers, stood amid 8,000 people at the bucket-brigade protest in Klamath Falls thisweek clutching a sign that read simply "We need water."

The little farm girl, Peyton Hager, her family and hundreds of other families cut off from irrigation water face a bitter summer. But if their farms are to ultimately survive, they need more than a token share of what little water is available in Upper Klamath Lake.

They need immediate drought relief, and they need responsible leadership to resolve a tangle of problems rooted in the basin's history and its dry soil.

So far, all these farmers are getting are cover crops to prevent thousands of acres of dry fields from blowing away in the hot summer wind. That, and the political equivalent of cover crops -- big talk, lots of bluster about amending the Endangered Species Act, but no effort to dig deep into all that needs to be done for the people, the land and the wildlife of the Klamath Basin.

The Klamath crisis won't be solved by elected officials who fly into town on borrowed corporate jets to join protests and shout about how farmers are more important than endangered sucker fish. Political hay isn't a cash crop for Southern Oregon farmers.

This crisis is not just about the worst water year in recorded history in the Klamath, and not just about the federal government's decision to use the available water to protect endangered sucker fish and threatened coho salmon.

It is about decades of failure to resolve conflicts over water rights that allow some upstream irrigators to take more water than they are entitled to, while others are left high and dry.

It is about the facing the reality that the government long ago promised settlers and farmers more water than it could deliver without destroying some of the most significant marsh lands, wildlife refuges and wild salmon runs in the nation. There's not enough water, even in years of average rainfall, to sustain all of the farms in the Klamath Basin. The government must work with willing sellers to retire some farmland.

These farmers need water, but they also need federal agencies to stop warring over their particular turf -- fish runs, or irrigation delivery, or waterfowl refuges -- and begin working in concert to restore wetlands, improve water quality, screen irrigation canals and conserve water.

The Klamath drought is a true crisis, and perhaps a catalyst for a serious reexamination of the Endangered Species Act. Put a picture of that little farm girl with the plaintive sign, "We need water" up against a shot of a slimy sucker fish, and for many people it's not even a close call.

Yet it's not that simple, and nearly everyone close to the Klamath crisis understands that. It's also about the people and communities downstream from the Klamath Basin, the commercial fishermen and their families who have lost their livelihoods, their way of life, because of the way water is diverted, sprinkled and polluted across the arid basin. The Klamath River system once was the third most productive salmon river in the United States. Now it's a warm shadow of what it once was, the Klamath coho is a threatened species and fishermen are out their jobs.

It's about the Klamath refuge system, among the nation's oldest and most important waterfowl refuges. These refuges host 80 percent of the waterfowl that migrate along the Pacific Flyway, and are home to the largest wintering population of bald eagles, yet they are abused. They are last in line for water, behind suckers, salmon and farmers, and what little arrives through myriad dikes and ditches is polluted. This winter, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is worried that as many as 950 bald eagles -- it's hard to even imagine that many of the great birds in one basin -- will be harmed by the drought.

There is a better way. It must begin with responsible elected officials, a strong local community open to change and a real commitment from the federal and state governments.

It should end with restored wetlands, a lake clean and sufficient enough for fish, a river with enough cool flow for coho salmon, and last but not least, a Klamath Basin with a sustainable level of irrigated family farms.