Smith's Fishy Flip-Flops

The conservation group Oregon Wild has put out a couple of eye-opening documents examining Gordon Smith’s stance on endangered fish and irrigation water in the Klamath Basin.

As revealed by the Washington Post back in June, Vice President Dick Cheney leaned on the U.S. Department of Interior to go against scientific recommendations and release irrigation water for Klamath farmers instead of keeping it in the river for endangered sucker fish and salmon. Cheney’s move - apparently driven by a wish to help the Oregon Republican senator’s re-election chances - contributed to the die-off of as many as 77,000 salmon and steelhead in the Klamath River in September 2002. It was the worst fish kill in the history of the West, and it virtually wiped out the 2005 and 2006 commercial salmon fishing seasons for Southern Oregon and Northern California.

Now that another election season is rolling around and his opponents are making the Klamath fish kill an issue, Smith has gone back and forth on the subject. Sometimes he’s bragged about how he helped the farmers get water; other times he’s said he didn’t know what Cheney was up to. Sometimes he’s insisted the irrigation decision didn’t cause the fish kill; other times he’s admitted it played a part.

On Thursday, Oregon Wild (formerly the Oregon Natural Resources Council) published a two-page fact sheet entitled “Fact and Fiction: Smith and the Klamath Fish Kill” that points out discrepancies between what Smith said and reality, and sometimes discrepancies between what Smith said and what Smith said. A sample:

“What Smith says: ‘I don't know that there's a connection between water for sucker fish that went to farmers and salmon 18 months later that died of a gill disease.’(Eugene Register Guard, August 8, 2007)

“Why he’s being slippery: Smith’s 18-month number has no bearing on actual events. Full water diversions to the federal Klamath Irrigation Project’s ‘A’ Canal at the headwaters of the Klamath River began on March 29, 2002 - during a gala ceremony attended by Smith and high-ranking Bush administration officials. The largest adult salmon kill in Western U.S. history began in the Lower Klamath River in mid-September, less than six months from the day Smith publicly celebrated the federal decision to send scarce water to irrigators instead of protecting threatened fish. Smith later admitted he got his dates wrong.”

There’s also a handy timeline titled “No Regrets: Gordon Smith and the Klamath Fish Kill,” which tracks Smith’s shifting positions on Klamath water and fish issues since 2001.