Feds find Klamath irrigation still hard on fish

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said Tuesday that operating the federal irrigation project in the upper Klamath Basin is likely to continue causing problems for fish protected by the Endangered Species Act.

The biological assessment of Klamath Reclamation Project operations from 2008 through 2017 concludes there is still a long way to go to protect endangered suckers and threatened coho salmon in the Klamath Basin, where scarce water led to a shutoff of irrigation water in 2001 and the deaths of tens of thousands of adult salmon in 2002.

The assessment will be analyzed by NOAA Fisheries, the agency in charge of restoring salmon, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency in charge of restoring Lost River and shortnosed suckers, to see if irrigation operations will jeopardize the survival of the fish. If it does, the two agencies will impose restrictions to protect the fish.

Bureau of Reclamation said it would meet court-ordered minimum flows down the Klamath River for salmon, but suggested reducing flows in the fall, when tens of thousands of adult salmon swim up the river to spawn, in order to have more water for the spring, when millions of young salmon migrate to the ocean.

The move would also leave more water in Upper Klamath Lake for suckers and irrigation in the late summer, the bureau said.

The Klamath Project irrigates about 1,400 farms covering 180,000 acres straddling the Oregon-California border in the high desert east of the Cascade Range. It has been the focus of intense political and court battles over sharing scarce water between farms and fish.

Farmers fighting to avoid a repeat of the 2001 irrigation shutoff said they hoped that $500 million in federal money spent on improvements to habitat and the irrigation system since the 2001 water shutoff would translate into more flexibility for irrigation operations, instead of the hard numbers of minimum lake levels and river flows imposed by court orders.

Greg Addington of the Klamath Water Users Association said they came within less than an inch of seeing irrigation water shut off for a couple weeks last summer to maintain a minimum level in Upper Klamath Lake for suckers.

The lake is the primary habitat for endangered suckers, as well as the primary reservoir for the irrigation project and the source of the Klamath River.

Jim McCarthy of Oregon Wild, a conservation group, said the idea of reducing fall flows to increase spring flows was too risky for fish.

"What we are looking for is reducing risk for endangered species and increasing the chance of a recovery," said McCarthy. "This plan unfortunately looks like it shifts more risk onto the fish."