NEWS RELEASE
from the
Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations
Northwest Regional Office
PO Box 11170 Eugene, OR 97440-3370
(541)689-2000 Fax:(541)689-2500

Release Date: 4/30/01
Distribution: ALL MEDIA
Contact: Glen Spain (PCFFA) (541)689-2000
or Wendell Wood (ONRC) (707)465-6541 or cellular: (541)891-4006

COURT RULING AGAINST KLAMATH IRRIGATORS GIVES LOWER
RIVER SALMON FISHERMEN A CHANCE FOR SURVIVAL

FISHERMEN SUPPORT DISASTER RELIEF FOR KLAMATH FARMERS

Eugene, Oregon – A ruling by US District Court Judge Ann Aiken today against the Klamath Water User’s Association, Tulelake Irrigation District and Klamath Irrigation District over water distributions by the Klamath Irrigation Project gave new hope to lower Klamath River fishing communities struggling to recover depressed coho and chinook salmon.

“There are a lot more jobs at risk here than just farm jobs,” commented Glen Spain of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, the west coast’s largest organization of commercial fishing families and the organization that started the lawsuit that lead to recent water cutbacks for farmers so that lower river salmon could avoid extinction. “There are whole downriver communities whose livelihoods depend on water and fish kept in the river, economies that have been nearly strangled by too much water going to Klamath Project farms for too many years. This is a drought, and there is not enough water for everyone. The Court simply refused to give all the remaining water solely to the farmers. This ruling at least gives some hope to coastal and lower river communities that both salmon and their economies will not be forced into extinction to feed a bloated federal water project. This ruling represents a common sense balance of interests in the Klamath Basin.”

Two thirds of the Klamath Basin is in California, but much of the water for the Basin originates in the upper third, which is in Oregon and which is where the Klamath Irrigation Project diverts most of the lake storage and river flow to irrigated farmlands. Over the years farming in the upper basin has expanded and too much water has been devoted to agriculture, leaving too little in the Upper Klamath Lake and Klamath River to support fish and wildlife. As a result, two species of upper lake fish and lower river coho salmon are now listed as threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA). Massive fish kills caused by Klamath Project operations in the past have been a major factor in coho becoming listed in the Klamath Basin. Because of the coho listing, even abundant hatchery run fisheries have to be closed down because ESA listed coho may intermingle with hatchery fish. As a result, coho salmon declines have resulted in direct and indirect economic losses to coastal fishing communities running well into hundreds of million of dollars. The Klamath River system was once the third most productive salmon river in the United States. Now most of the lower Klamath River’s once prosperous salmon fisheries have long since been closed down or severely restricted.

“As family food providers ourselves, we certainly feel for the plight of farming families that will be affected in this drought, but all the lawyers in the world cannot make more rain. The question the court had to address was whether it was legal and appropriate to give nearly all the remaining water, in a serious drought year, to these particular farmers, and in the process dry up the river and most of the lakes, or whether enough water should be kept back to prevent huge economic losses – and even extinction – for downriver fishing communities that are every bit as valuable to society,” noted Spain. “In a drought, farmers can get by in a hard year with drought assistance from the federal government. However, fish have only one river, and if they go extinct they are gone forever, and so are the communities which depend upon them for food and for their livelihoods.”

Lower river communities have lost an estimated 3,780 family wage jobs representing an annual loss of more than $75 million/year in economic benefit as a direct result of salmon losses in the Klamath River. Though many factors have lead to these declines, a large part of these declines has been caused by past Klamath Irrigation Project operations which have reduced total river volume as well as damaged its water quality. The water released by the Project below Iron Gate Dam is often too hot, laced with pesticides and nitrates, and of too little volume to provide adequate access to spawning and rearing habitat for salmon. In many years large portions of the Klamath River become fatal to salmon for as far as 80 miles downriver from Iron Gate dam.

Additionally, most of the remaining commercial chinook salmon fishery in the Klamath Management Zone (the coastal area from Fort Bragg, CA to about Florence, OR) is maintained by the Iron Gate Hatchery. Iron Gate Hatchery also fails, and hundreds of thousands of hatchery fish also die, when there is too little water being released by the Klamath Water Project below Iron Gate Dam. Last year (2000), for instance, poor water quality and high water temperatures caused by inadequate instream flows killed off more than 300,000 juvenile salmon in the lower river. These fish kills affect the economies of salmon-dependent ports and coastal communities all up and down the coast. Some 30 percent of all chinook salmon harvested from Fort Bragg, CA to Florence, OR typically come from the Klamath basin, primarily Iron Gate Hatchery. When these fish die in the river, these communities suffer economically.

The Klamath Project, a federally subsidized irrigation project, takes as much as 90 percent of the flows of water that would ordinarily come through Iron Gate Dam, particularly in a dry year, amounting to as much as one-third of the whole flow of the Klamath River at its mouth during critically dry parts of the year. The Klamath Irrigation Project has also totally distorted the natural hydrology of the river system, resulting in much more hostile conditions for fish living in the river and upper basin lakes. The National Marine Fisheries Service has called for additional minimum instream flows to be retained in the river for ESA listed coho salmon to prevent their extinction in its recent Biological Opinion, the result of consultations with the Bureau of Reclamation required under the ESA. The US Fish and Wildlife Service has also called for maintaining lake levels to prevent the extinction of two other species of fish in the upper Klamath Basin lakes, fish which are just as important to the Klamath Tribes as salmon are to the lower Tribes and commercial fishing ports, and for protection of ESA listed bald eagles in the national wildlife refuges.

This is also a record dry year, perhaps the worst in Klamath Project history, with Upper Klamath Lake water inflows at only about 21 percent of normal. Even so, the Klamath Project irrigators will be receiving approximately 70,000 acre-feet of irrigation water, representing about 20 percent of the 350,000 acre-feet of water they would use in a more normal year. In this drought year, normal water deliveries are simply impossible, and even all the remaining water would not be enough to keep all the farms operating normally.

Even so, there is still too little water in the system in this critically dry drought year to meet all the needs of fish and wildlife, particularly the National Wildlife Refuges in the basin where ESA listed bald eagles are also being placed at risk. The Bureau of Reclamation can provide water to the wildlife refuges directly whenever it wants to, but has always considered irrigation water to be a higher priority. The Klamath Basin wildlife refuges provide habitat and food for the largest population of bald eagles in the United States outside of Alaska. This year an estimated 950 bald eagles will be severely stressed and many of them will die for lack of water in the refuges.

The ruling was a result of a suit brought by the Klamath Project irrigation district and some individual farmers to overturn the governmental decision to keep water in the lakes and rivers for fish and wildlife. A number of environmental and fishing industry groups intervened to oppose that effort: in addition to PCFFA, Intervenors in the case included The Wilderness Society, Oregon Natural Resources Council (ONRC), and the Institute for Fisheries Resources. The Intervenors were represented by Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund. The Yurok Tribe and Klamath Tribes also intervened separately in support of the government’s position and in defense of their Tribal Treaty rights to have both fish and water in the river.

The Klamath Project farmers have also been under economic stress in recent years from international trade problems which have resulted in more competitive world markets, including a world wide glut of potatoes, one of the major products of the Project farmers. In recent years, potato farmers all over the western US have been unable to sell all their product, and some have plowed their potatoes into the ground to cut their losses. “The question has to be asked: Is it good public policy to extinguish whole lower river communities as well as commercially and culturally important fish species just in order to grow potatoes that will likely rot in the ground?” noted Spain. “We are in a serious drought, but there will be better water years. Ultimately, farmers have much more to fear from NAFTA than they do from the ESA.”

The Final Biological Opinion for Coho Salmon for the Klamath Irrigation Project can be found on the Internet at: http://www.mp.usbr.gov/kbao/esa/38_cohobo_4_6-01.pdf

Electronic case files for the case are available at: http://ecf.ord.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/DocketSheet.pl?3824. The Court's Order denying the injunction itself is at: http://ecf.ord.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_case_doc?112,3824.

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