The War on the River

Oregon Wild's Jim McCarthy explores the Klamath River's complexity along its nearly three hundred miles, from mouth to headwaters, through its diverse ecosystems and communities.

The crowd, dressed mostly in cowboy boots and sturdy work clothes, filters into the conference room. There are a few women and a scattering of children, but mostly gray-haired, leathery-faced males. The vast majority are ranchers. All are white. Their focus of attention is two men, both Native American, flanked by slightly nervous bureaucrats from various federal and state agencies. The tension in the room is palpable, expressed for now in crossed arms and stern faces.

The bureaucrats begin the presentation. Mark Wheetley, a representative of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, stands and apologetically informs the gathered ranchers that the coho salmon living in their rivers will most likely be listed under the Endangered Species Act by early next year. His announcement evokes obvious displeasure. Everyone in the room knows what an ESA listing means for landowners here. The Feds will check your ranch. Anything that could cause the death of a coho will be out. For example, a rancher's unscreened diversion of river water onto pastureland, which may fatally strand fish, will have to be rebuilt or shut down. Damaged riparian habitat will have to be restored. Water use may be curtailed. Many landowners will be forced to change their ways.

Dwight Russell, California's Department of Water Resources chief, presents next. He explains the state government's willingness to assist the ranchers, and offers the expertise of his office for any viable restoration projects they may propose. He is more philosophical than apologetic: "When the fish die, they're gone forever. If a grower is cut off [from water] for a year, he can recover."

Troy Fletcher, chairman of the downriver Yurok Tribe, and Ron Reed, cultural biologist for the Karuk Tribe, stand last. Their people have depended on the salmon in these rivers for thousands of years. Loss of the fish would be a significant blow not only to already weak tribal economies, but to their culture and identity as well. They offer to help petition for federal funding to do restoration projects now, before an ESA listing, before court orders, and before the Feds make a big mess. "Take your destiny into your own hands," says Fletcher.

A question and answer period commences. The complicated ins-and-outs of salmon biology have confused many in the crowd. At first, they attack the scientific basis of the likely ESA listing:

"I don't think there were many coho salmon here before."

"El Ni&o is the limiting factor, not us."

"Why don't you just kill the birds and sea lions that eat the fish?"

Then, the crowd weighs in against the tribes. In answer to a question, the Yurok chairman informs the crowd his tribe was allowed a sustainable harvest quota of 60,000 chinook (a non-endangered species of salmon) last year. A rancher cries out, "How many people are in your tribe that you need to eat 60,000 fish?" The heckler doesn't seem to think the same question might apply to himself and his numerous cattle.

The questions become more antagonistic, and tension increases. Finally, Ron Reed interrupts to make an emotional plea. "I have sympathy for you people. And what I ask for is your sympathy for my people in return."

This is just a local meeting of the Shasta River and Scott River watershed councils. Such meetings are usually pretty sleepy. There shouldn't be such a large crowd, and there certainly shouldn't be such high tension. But it is late August 2001. The current resource management crisis in the Klamath Irrigation Project, several miles north, has spilled over into the Scott and Shasta river valleys, both major tributaries of the Klamath River. Change has come to the entire basin.

Until last year, the question of "Who gets the water?" was decided entirely by the interests of ranchers and farmers up here. Downriver, people complained that irrigators took too much water and polluted the river. But for the nearly one hundred years of the Project's operations, it was as if thousands of people and over two hundred miles of downstream habitat didn't exist. Tribal populations, the tourist industry, and commercial ocean fisheries, all dependent upon the living river, had little say. Recent court rulings, based on Endangered Species Act (ESA) listings of the Klamath's coho salmon and of the Lost River sucker and short-nosed sucker (both also locally called "mullet") have changed all that.

Soon, these ranchers are going to have to make a choice: stonewall, and try to maintain the current water status quo, or voluntarily take up federally-funded riparian habitat restoration and water-demand reduction on their lands.

To an outside observer, the choice might seem easy. One need only look a little northward. The Klamath Irrigation Project farmers faced the same decision year after year, and chose to stonewall reforms for nearly two decades while Klamath Basin habitat and its fish populations steadily declined. The result: a court-ordered shutdown of irrigation water during a drought, and a virtual trainwreck of agrarian and environmental policy shown all over the national media.

But the showdown tonight isn't just about water and endangered fish. It's about power, and perhaps most poignantly, about race. The Yurok, Hupa, Karuk, and Klamath tribes have been the hardest hit during the long decline in the Klamath Basin's habitat. Since the coming of Euro-American settlers, the local tribes have had little power to stop the devastation of their ancient homelands, traditional resources, and cultural icons. Through the Endangered Species Act, they now have some leverage, and an opportunity to determine their own destiny. As Felice Pace, conservation director with the Klamath Forest Alliance, asserts: "The ESA has been a tool for social justice here."

The mainstream media have portrayed Klamath's "irrigation war" as a two-dimensional "farmers versus fish" fight. But the real story is far more complex. And the Klamath's complexity is nowhere more evident than on the river itself, along its nearly three hundred miles, from mouth to headwaters, through the diverse ecosystems and communities of a river.

Requa

Our journey begins at Requa, at the Yurok tribal fishery. At the Pacific outlet of the Klamath, Requa is roughly sixty miles north of Eureka, near Redwood National Park. The morning is foggy and cool. Seabirds swirl in a gray sky over dark estuary water. Thick redwood forest follows the banks down to jagged, rocky headlands framing the mouth, where waves crash into a natural sandbar levee separating ocean from river.

The scene seems primordial, except for the motor skiffs used by the Yurok fishermen. They move about, straightening gill net lines arranged along the sides of the lake-like estuary behind the sandbar. Family campsites dot the banks nearby.

Only tribal members have the right to fish in the estuary with gill nets, a method the Yurok have used on the Klamath for perhaps ten thousand years. The nets, traditionally of long-lasting wild iris twine, are now made of synthetics.

Each member is allowed a 100-foot length of netting. The nets stretch between floats above and weights below. Smaller salmon pass through, while larger salmon are caught by their gills. Gillnetters must watch their nets vigilantly, or river-running sea lions may steal their catch. On a good day, one net may catch 160 fish. Says Yurok fisherman Hoss Lingren: "You're like a big spider."

Lingren and others are here to catch chinook salmon, a non-endangered species native to the Klamath. Since different salmon spawn at different times of the year, the Yurok can fish for chinook in August and September, then pull out their nets when the endangered coho start to arrive later in autumn. It's time for the chinook run, but there are no fish in the river this morning.

Yurok gillnetter Paul Angell has caught only two fish today. "The fish are coming in [to the river], looking around," he says, "then they go back [to the ocean] because the water is too warm. It's like bathtub water."

High water temperatures have been a major complaint of the downriver communities against the Klamath Irrigation Project. Warm water makes salmon more prone to disease. High temperatures also kill salmon eggs. In the main stem of the Klamath River, unnaturally high water temperatures now occur regularly, most significantly during the fall spawning runs.

The shallower it is, the more water warms up. While logging-related silt may fill in some deep streams, the Project is the worst culprit: Irrigation water heats up while sitting in canals, spread over fields, and stored in shallow reservoirs. High irrigation demand in summer and fall also keeps the river itself shallow.

Angell points out another aspect of the river's low flow. This morning, there isn't enough water to keep the mouth of the river open against the migrating beach sand, making life even more difficult for fish.

The two dozen salmon caught the night before are hauled up for inspection and counting by the Native fishery managers. The Yuroks' quota for chinook changes every year, depending on predicted fluctuations in fish populations. Their harvest is a portion of the total allowable salmon catch divided between commercial ocean fishermen and the river tribes, including the Yurok — a way to maintain a sustainable chinook population.

The Yurok are far from getting rich off the salmon. Unemployment and poverty are widespread among the 4,000-plus—member tribe. According to Fletcher, 80% of the tribe live without electricity. When asked for his opinion on the water crisis, Arnie Nova, a fisheries technician, turns his attention upstream: "They can grow potatoes somewhere else, but the fish in this river can't [go somewhere else]."

Once, the Klamath River supported the third-largest salmon population in the nation. From 1947 to 1970, according to a US Department of Interior report, fishermen caught from 500,000 to 1,000,000 chinook salmon annually off the California coast. Fish populations have dwindled rapidly in recent decades, and in 1985, troll fishing ceased between Fort Bragg, CA, and Port Orford, OR. Fishing resumed in 1986, but economic fallout in the fishing-dependent communities of the coast has continued. In a 2001 statement before Congress, Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, declared that roughly 3,780 fishing-related jobs have been lost as a result of the decline. Grader places blame squarely upon upriver irrigation: "To be blunt, the Klamath Project has simply over-allocated the available water."

With the endangered listing of the coho salmon, there doesn't seem to be much relief in sight for the fishing communities. Coastal fisheries use a "weak stock management" principle, meaning trollers must use extra caution to avoid hooking endangered fish. Because the coastal range of salmon is within a few hundred miles of their natal rivers, fishing is extremely restricted between Coos Bay, OR, and Fort Bragg, CA, an area known as the Klamath Management Zone.

Eureka fisherman Dave Bitts is unequivocal about the effect on coastal fishermen: "It's garbage time for salmon fishing. I have to go to San Francisco to fish. For twenty years, we've heard that these closures will be just temporary, and that soon we'll be able to fish up and down the coast again."

From the mouth, the Klamath River ascends a narrow gorge through mountainous redwood forest. For roughly 40 miles, the land one mile to either side of the water is Yurok reservation. The gorge shelters the ancient village site of Kepel, a focal point of the traditional resource management culture of the Klamath's native populations. Over the course of millennia, hundreds of Yurok, Hupa, and Karuk tribespeople would gather here every year to ritually construct and harvest from a wooden salmon weir during the particularly sacred spring chinook spawning run. The spiritual leader conducting the ceremonies would wait several days after the head of the salmon run had passed upriver before allowing any fish to be taken. The waiting period assured that plentiful fish reached upriver communities and provided for the robust completion of the spawning cycle.

Weitchpec

At Weitchpec, the river emerges briefly into the flat- bottomed Hoopa Valley, home of the Hupa tribe. The tribespeople here also fish for fall chinook with gill nets.

The Klamath meets its largest tributary here, at the edge of the reservation. The confluence is a striking sight. The Trinity River, running blue and clear out of the southern mountains, merges with the murky brown-green waters of the Klamath. The Trinity's gravelly bed is visible from above, while the Klamath's bed is obscured, the banks covered with slimy skirts of green algae extending as far as the eye can see.

Daniel Newberry, hydrologist for the Hupa tribe, explains the visible and invisible differences between the two rivers. For starters, there isn't any agricultural runoff in the Trinity. The Klamath suffers for being the waste drain for over 470,000 acres of well-fertilized farmland. The nitrate-laden runoff creates massive algae blooms which rob dissolved oxygen from the river water, suffocating fish. Scientists believe the lack of dissolved oxygen may be a main cause of the frequent fish kills which plague the Klamath. One such kill, of approximately 100,000 to 300,000 fish, took place near the mouth in 2000. Agricultural pesticides may also contribute to the kills.

Another difference is water temperature. The Trinity's water comes from the cooler bottom strata of a deep reservoir shaded by mountains. The reservoirs of the Klamath Project have little capacity, and no natural protection from the sun. The salmon naturally seek shelter in the mouths of cool tributaries descending from the mountains. Unfortunately, there is only so much space in these smaller creeks, where the crowded fish are far more vulnerable to predators. Disease and parasites spread rapidly through the already heat-weakened fish like pestilence through an overcrowded city.

The factors of algae and heat combine further to diminish the survival rate of salmon. According to Newberry, daytime temperatures in the Klamath are so high that no fish can be seen in the river's main stem between 7am and 7pm. The fish travel upriver at night to take advantage of cooler water and decreased predation. But algae's oxygen-consuming phase takes place at night, reducing the river's dissolved oxygen to deadly levels just when the salmon need it most.

Orleans

About thirty miles up the river from Weitchpec, the hamlet of Orleans is set in a narrow, forested valley. The damp coastal weather and redwoods give way to vineyards and orchards which thrive in the long growing season and ample sunshine.

The rustic riverside cabins of Orleans' Sandy Bar Ranch have lodged tourists, most of them sport fishers, since 1950. Owner since 1991, Blythe Reis has the sunny attitude of an eternal optimist, but her mood darkens a bit as she talks about the decline in the river's tourist trade. "Generations of families used to come back every fall to fish for steelhead [trout]. Fathers, sons, grandfathers. Now they don't. Everyone in town knew these people. There's a loss in the sense of community. Now a lot of those folks are heading for Alaska, so they can actually catch fish."

Reis' business has diminished by half since 1991. "We've started a summer business, but it's hard. No one wants to swim in algae blooms and fish kills." The steady drop in tourist fishing has affected the economy in the whole area. "In 1992, there were seven fishing lodges like ours in the Orleans-Somes Bar area," says Reis. "Now there are four." Orleans' one hotel is now gone, and the town's last bar closed in the 1980s.

Over the last two decades, the number of fishing guides working drift boats between Orleans and Happy Camp has fallen from 25 individuals to six. Wally Watson, a fishing guide in Somes Bar, has worked on the river for 23 years. "In the mid-80s the fishing really started to suck," he says. "The drought years were bad. [But] astronomical headway has been made in the consciousness level in the last ten years. For years, the lowly sport fishermen were so far down on the list, we didn't even bother [complaining]. The [irrigation] water gets sent seven ways to Sunday. What they send back in, it's dogshit. There's no PhD required to look at the water and see it's full of freshwater plankton. It's all green and mossy. It's probably the only river in the country where the water quality actually increases on the way down."

Ishi Pishi Falls

A few miles upriver at Somes Bar is the junction of the Salmon and the Klamath. Nearby is Ishi Pishi falls, a sacred site to the Karuk tribe, below a striking riverside sugarloaf known to the tribe as "The Center of the World." This is also the site of the only traditional dip net fishery on the Klamath. Ron Reed, cultural biologist with the tribe, points out the gear. The net frame is made up of two long, slender fir poles joined together at one end, with an oak branch flexed in an arc connecting the opposite ends. The form is something like an elongated teardrop. It is an elegant device, and after attaching specially made webbing to the arched end, Reed slings the frame over his shoulder and clambers over boulders to the water's edge.

Since time immemorial, the Karuk fished every eddy along the course of Ishi Pishi falls with dip nets. Now Reed and his cousin Kenneth Brink are among the dwindling number of their tribe who still possess this ancient skill.

The Karuk took roughly 2,000 fall chinook with dip nets last year, approximately 2% of the total harvest on the river. Many of the fish are used for religious ceremonies, but there aren't enough for the 3,000 members of the Karuk. "For our ceremonies, we sometimes have to buy fish from others, or freeze some for next year." Reed says. "This river, this drought, affects who we are, our culture, our religion."

He has been involved in the debates over the Klamath Project. "I'm pretty well disturbed by the process," he says. "[The farmers] challenged the ESA and lost. But now we're catering to them again. Would they be in mediation now if they won?" He continues, "The agricultural community is in all or nothing mode: they'll take all the water, and there's nothing else to talk about. For us, water and fish are not negotiable. It's the lifeblood of our system."

A lone chinook barrels up the center of the falls. Mike Palmateer, a Karuk fisheries technician, measures the river temperature with the tribe's survey equipment. At 9:20am, with an air temperature of 66¼ F, the water is 70¼. If the spawning chinook lays eggs today, all will be dead by morning.

Following the river farther upstream, the path winds northeast through more mountains, past the old logging towns of Happy Camp, Seiad Valley, and Horse Creek. The surrounding coniferous forest is one of the most biologically diverse in the world. [See Terrains Summer 1998, Summer 2000.] Then the forest gets drier and fewer tributaries dilute the main stem. As a result, the river becomes more concentrated with pollutants. Dirty foam gathers in large clumps in river eddies; we are getting closer to the Project. This stretch of habitat is the most dependent on the water releases from the Iron Gate Dam, gateway to the Upper Basin.

Unfortunately, this is also the key habitat for the coho. When the flows from the Project diminish in the critical late summer and early fall period, the coho suffer the most.

Project lands

From the air, Iron Gate and Copco Reservoirs look like polished green marble. The water is full of algae blooms. After the first three reservoirs, the river heads north into Oregon. The Project lands spread out to the north and east, straddling the state line. But the coho are left behind, cut off by the dams from miles of spawning habitat.

The Project is a broad patchwork of fields and canals. Silvery-gray wildlife refuges — the wetlands of Bear Valley, Lower Klamath Lake, Tule Lake, and Clear Lake Reservoir — extend to the east, breaking the pattern of green and gold rectangles. Expansive Upper Klamath Lake stretches away to the north, bordered by another refuge. Water glitters in canals. The Project was delivering 350,000 acre-feet of water annually before drought brought on the controversial court-ordered cutoff. After some maneuvering in Washington DC, however, Project farmers received 182,000 acre-feet of water this year, according to Oregon Natural Resources Council's Wendell Wood. The scene seems green, watered, and healthy, except for Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge (NWR). Its southern lakebed is dry and empty.

Eighty percent of all migrating birds in the Pacific flyway, approximately two million birds, pass through the wildlife refuge wetlands of Klamath's upper basin every autumn. Roughly 1,000 bald eagles follow the migrating birds to this point, then overwinter in rookeries around the basin, where they feed on waterfowl. This is the largest winter concentration of bald eagles in the lower 48 states.

Before the Project was built, the river had spread over roughly 300,000 acres of wetlands during high winter and spring flows. Over the last century, the Project turned most wetlands into farms, and water reached the remaining refuges only as runoff from cropland. Whatever was left over from irrigation went to the birds. After the shutoff in April 2001, the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) disingenuously declared that the refuges would receive nothing, since refuge water must come from irrigation. Dry refuges this fall would mean the migrating birds will probably head farther south, leaving the eagles to starve. Fears of a massive bald-eagle die-off prompted environmentalists to bring suit against the BOR's inaction.

Tule Lake

Rob Crawford farms with his brother John in Tulelake, CA, next to the refuge of the same name. Their farm usually employs three others outside the family, with another ten to 15 workers brought on during the harvest. The Crawfords' crops include wheat, barley, potatoes, onions, and peppermint.

Rob Crawford is a member of the Klamath Water Foundation (KWF), an irrigators' group that seeks to "enhance productive water co-existence in the Klamath Basin." Crawford is quick to point out that KWF's definition of the Klamath Basin includes only the river's heavily-farmed upper reaches, not downriver interests.

The group believes the project should continue with normal water deliveries. "There is not an over-allocation of water," Crawford says. He adamantly dismisses the National Marine Fisheries Service and US Fish and Wildlife studies on the coho and mullet populations. "I don't believe that the [fish] are going extinct."

When asked why government agencies, commercial fishermen, tribal groups, and environmentalists would bother making such a fuss over fish in no danger of extinction, Crawford replies, "I believe they have alternative motives."

Despite their persistent denials of the legitimacy of the current water debate, the KWF have a problem-solving agenda. "We have some innovative ideas," Crawford says. His solutions include increased well-drilling, sprinkler irrigation at night, and sump rotation, a process involving alternately flooding, then draining and farming plots of land.

None of these ideas is new. Night sprinklers are already in use on Project lands. Sump rotation applies only to the Tule Lake NWR's cultivated lease lands, about 10% of the Project lands. Environmentalists say experiments proved the technique excessively polluting, unproductive for wildlife, and in violation of federal refuge management laws. Crawford doubts their motives: "There was one problem with [sump rotation]: it worked."

Unfortunately, the failure list goes on. Well-drilling projects put forward in the spring by the Oregon and California governments have already run into trouble. Wells drilled to alleviate the water shortage have drawn down the town water supply of Malin, OR, a city spokesperson said. According to an August 2001 article in The Oregonian, farmers' wells also helped lower the water table around the town of Bonanza, OR. That allowed contaminated agricultural runoff from the Lost River into springs used for public water; residents have since reported diarrhea, intestinal parasites, stomach pains, and other related symptoms, says Councilman Steve Casebeer.

Keith and Shelley Buckingham, also of Tulelake, own a family farm of 640 acres. Keith's father was a homesteader. Their family has been hard hit by the crisis: The couple owes debt against all of their land. They are also local leaders in finding solutions to the water problem.

"We're property rights advocates," Shelley says. The Buckinghams are part of a farmers' group supporting a government buyout of agricultural water rights to reduce the strain on the river. For example, an individual farmer could sell off half of his or her current water rights, then "prepare better" to grow crops using less water. "You could rotate cash crops with dryland crops," Shelley explains. "You can usually get a good crop of grain off a residual potato crop. There's still a lot of moisture there. We've planted grain in dust, and got two-thirds of a normal crop."

The Buckinghams and others in the Project hope to maintain intact farming communities while freeing up more water for fish and wildlife refuges. John and Jeannie Anderson, also second-generation Tulelake farmers, are working with the Buckinghams on the issue. Jeannie has a broad view of the current water crisis. "I wasn't the least bit surprised when they cut the water off. I think we have to sit down and compromise. We can't have it all our own way. I think those people [outside the Project] deserve to make a living as well."

The Buckinghams and Andersons represent a large minority in the community. The "mainstream" farmers are more fearful of compromise. "They're absolutely sure that [the water shutoff] is a plot to wipe [farmers] off the face of the earth," Shelley says. In mid-summer, Montana militia members arrived to stir anti-government sentiment. Cries of "rural cleansing" have reached the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. Unfortunately, those farmers willing to compromise have become targets of intimidation in their own communities. "We got death threats," says Jeannie. The Buckinghams have had similar experiences. As Shelley attests, "The stress of it has taken years off our lives."

Other groups have different demand-reduction plans for the Project. Most involve public-private buyouts of land instead of water. The Oregon Natural Resources Council has spearheaded a plan to purchase farmland for wetlands rehabilitation and improved natural water storage in the Upper Basin. The American Land Conservancy and The Nature Conservancy have put forth similar plans.

The buyouts could be good for taxpayers as well as the environment. According to the Environmental Working Group, farmers in the three counties containing Project lands have received roughly $30 million in federal farm subsidies in the last five years alone — with an additional $20 million promised in July to compensate for the cutoffs.

In any case, all the land- and water-rights advocates agree upon one point: The government should eliminate cropland leasing on the Tule Lake Refuge. The refuge is unique in the nation for allowing intensive row-crop farming within its boundaries. Many believe the situation hurts both birds and farmland owners. The concentrated agricultural runoff taints protected bird habitat, while the choice refuge lands rent for far less than the local market rate, driving down rental rates in the entire region.

Upper Klamath Lake

The last stretch of the river reaches to the foot of Crater Lake National Park. Upper Klamath Lake lies below the park. The Klamath tribes — the Modoc, Klamath, and Yahooskin — have their homeland in the area, and so do the two endangered, and sacred, mullet. Just like the tribes downriver, the people here have fished for thousands of years.

Unfortunately, all of Upper Klamath Lake is listed as water quality—impaired under the Clean Water Act. Unscreened irrigation diversions fatally strand the lake fish. Irrigation also lowers the lake level, blocking the mullet from spawning grounds. The combination has devastated mullet populations.

The Klamath tribe shut down its own commercial fishery on the lake in 1986, hoping the mullet would rebound. Instead, the fish was listed under the ESA in 1988. The tribespeople want to maintain their ancient fishery, but the ESA alone will not restore the fish to harvestable levels. As Elwood Miller, the tribes' natural resources director, explains: "The ESA is a jeopardy standard, not a livelihood standard. There's a livelihood standard that's not being met. Time's running out. Our hearts want to trust [the farmers], but our minds say otherwise."

Meanwhile, the court-ordered mediation involving the Klamath River's far-flung communities continues. There has been some progress. The BOR recently agreed to supply water to the refuges, saving the bald eagles and avoiding yet another lawsuit. "That is a positive outcome of the mediation. Hopefully it will build some confidence as the mediation continues," says Felice Pace. Heading off another expensive lawsuit helps everyone in the community, as Jeannie Anderson attests: "We're paying double what we paid [in water management fees] to the district ten years ago," she says, "and that's because of legal fees."

According to an old fable, heaven and hell are nearly the same. Both have spirits gathered before a never-ending banquet, the most delicious food imaginable. Both feast tables are set with utensils just slightly too long for banqueters to feed themselves. The difference: The souls in heaven discover that their utensils are just long enough to feed their neighbors, and the spirits feast in eternal, merry community. Meanwhile, the souls in hell struggle in vain to feed only themselves, never realizing that heaven is just across the table.

Jim McCarthy, an editor, travel writer, and environmental journalist, has just relocated to Etna, CA, to work with the Klamath Forest Alliance.