A Eugene, Oregon Register-Guard Editorial 
May 27, 2001

Don't blame the fish: Government policies created
Klamath Basin crisis

It's tempting - oh so tempting - to oversimplify and distort the Klamath Basin water crisis by declaring that it's all about protecting sucker fish and salmon at the expense of farmers.

That's no more accurate than saying, as many did, that the Northwest timber crisis was solely about protecting the spotted owl at the expense of timber workers, an explanation that ignored the government's primary role in allowing decades of overharvesting of national forest lands.

It's that same federal government - and not the suckers and salmon - that bears the ultimate responsibility for the Klamath crisis.

It's that same federal government that dug dams, drained marshes and built hundreds of miles of canals and ditches in the early 1900s, and then promised farmers that they would forever have irrigation water to feed crops across the breadth of what once had been an arid basin.

It's that same federal government that for years has ignored its own scientists' warnings about the Klamath Project's devastating impact on the region's fish runs and waterfowl refuges.

It's that same federal government that has failed to craft a cohesive water policy that balances the needs of farmers against those of fish and wildlife - and the Native American tribes, fishing industries and downstream communities that depend on them.

The understanding that it's the federal government - and not the sucker and salmon or those fighting for their survival- that is the true culprit is critical to understanding new developments.

An example is environmentalists' demand last week that the government stop the trickle of water that continues to flow to a few of the more than 1,000 farms served by the Klamath Project.The environmentalists say water is needed to save more than a thousand bald eagles and other waterfowl that depend on wildlife refuges in the Klamath Basin and that were the very reason these refuges were created. Without this water, they say, eagles may perish in the months ahead.

Federal wildlife biologists have issued similar warnings. Yet the federal government, at the insistence of Vice President Dick Cheney, allowed the symbolic diversion of 70,000 acre feet of water to irrigate cattle pastures in the Langell Valley east of Klamath Falls. It was an irresponsible, unscientific and blatantly political decision that could devastate the largest winter population of threatened bald eagles in the lower 48 states.

Ironically, the plight of the eagles could serve a useful purpose. It's harder to blame a beloved national symbol for farmers' predicament than it is to blame the sucker and salmon - and the Endangered Species Act that protects them.

Klamath Basin farmers can make it through this crisis intact, provided the federal government gives them the financial assistance they need and deserve, and moves quickly to develop a long-term strategy that balances the needs of the basin's people, its wildlife and the land itself.

But government grants and low-interest loans won't get the eagles, salmon and sucker fish through the dry months ahead; they must have the water they need to survive.

It was the federal government that laid the groundwork for the Klamath water crisis. Now it's the federal government that must fix this mess.

Source: http://www.registerguard.com/news/20010527/ed.edit.klamath.0527.html