The ongoing conflict over the scarce water resources of the Klamath Basin has generated much heated rhetoric over the last few years. Unfortunately, it has also generated many questionable figures and dubious assertions passed off as fact in public forums. Here are some of the most common misrepresentations and myths currently circulating in the Klamath Basin debate.
Fact: The Klamath water crisis has been a century in the making. The root problems began with the shortsighted development of a massive irrigation project in the high desert, and federal and state officials promising too much water to too many interests. The result: nearly 80% of Klamath Basin wetlands destroyed, entire lakes drained, the elimination of natural river and stream flows, and ecosystem collapse.
The ESA is only the latest of a series of laws and responsibilities the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has attempted to ignore over the long history of federal mismanagement of the Klamath’s resources. In addition to the well-publicized ESA violations, the ongoing operation of the Bureau’s Klamath Irrigation Project currently violates federal Tribal Trust responsibilities, the senior water rights of the various tribal nations in the Basin, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s river flow requirements, the Clean Water Act, and basic common sense. Fortunately for the tribes, river communities, and commercial fishermen dependent on the Klamath, the Bureau has not been able to brush the ESA aside as easily as it has ignored other laws.
Endangered species are not the problem; they are only symptoms of the problem. The ESA is a much-needed backstop requiring federal agencies to finally address the tremendous harm caused by past mismanagement. Today, there are three species of threatened or endangered fish at issue in the debate over Klamath water management. If we allow these problems to persist, the list will only grow.
Fact: Maintaining the status quo will only lock in economic uncertainty and continue the precipitous decline in the Klamath’s natural resources. There are simply too many interests competing for too little water, pitting upper and lower river economies against each other. Balancing water demand with water supply through marsh restoration, conservation, and willing-seller buyouts of farmland will help create a more stable future for farming in the Klamath by ensuring a more certain water supply for irrigators. Water demand reduction would also help end the environmental degradation threatening the entire region while boosting the economy. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, improving flows and water quality through restoration would double the value of the lower Klamath River’s current $800 million sportfishing and tourism economy. Restoration of the salmon fishery would also help bring back some of the $75 million in commercial fishing salaries lost each year as a result of Klamath fishery closures. The Basin’s several tribal economies also need–and deserve–healthy fisheries.
Fact: The human heart makes up less than 0.5% of the weight of the human body, but without its flow of life-giving blood, we would perish. Similarly, the Project lies at the heart of the Basin’s largest concentration of lakes, rivers, and wetlands, and controls the flow of the region’s lifeblood -- water. According to the National Marine Fisheries Service and independent hydrologists, the pre-Project Upper Basin provided the main source of flow for the Klamath River in late summer and fall, and was an especially important source of water during drought years. In addition to the region’s formerly vast lake and marshland water storage, the Upper Basin’s extensive volcanic aquifers supplied naturally high year-round flows. Now, the development and operation of the Project has significantly reduced summer flows in the Klamath, and threatens the survival of the river’s fisheries and communities.
Fact: This myth ignores the reality central to the Klamath water debate: too many people compete for scarce Upper Basin water every summer. There is no competition for the Klamath’s normally plentiful winter flows. This statistic, generated considering both summer and winter flows, is as irrelevant as it is inaccurate. In fact, the Project diverts roughly 25% (450,000 acre-feet) of the Upper Klamath Basin’s entire mean annual flow (1.8 million acre-feet). Total irrigation diversions tend to be even greater during dry years, to compensate for drier soils and increased evaporation.(1)
Historically, the Upper Basin’s contribution to the river was most critical during drought summers, often providing more than 40% of the flow at the river’s mouth. Over the past 35 years, irrigation demand has slashed the upper river’s essential flow contribution to the lower river. Now, Upper Basin irrigation flow management often provides only 5 to 10% of total river flows during drought summers—an 80% reduction from pre-Project contribution levels.(2) This Project-induced de-watering of the Klamath has eliminated many important salmon spawning and rearing areas.
Fact: Today, only 70,000 acres of wetlands exist in the Klamath Basin, but a century ago marshes covered an estimated 350,000 acres. If wetlands use more water than irrigation, how did massive runs of salmon in the Klamath River coexist with one of the largest concentrations of wetlands west of the Rockies?
This fiction ignores the essential difference between marshes, nature’s natural water storage system, and most croplands, which have no winter water storage capacity and are entirely dependent upon scarce summer water. For example, the 17,000 acres of commercial agricultural leaselands on Tule Lake National Widlife Refuge divert 43,430 acre-feet (af) of scarce water during the April through October irrigation season.(3) If these leaselands were instead restored to permanent marsh, the potential natural wetland storage capacity of the area would be roughly 100,000 af. Currently, the Project must pump an average of 92,000 af per year out of Tule Lake to prevent the flooding of these leaselands. Restoration of this area would increase winter water storage capacity, increase essential refuge habitat, reduce flood risk, and permanently reduce irrigation season demand by 43,430 af, all for far less than the $4 million the Bureau paid irrigators in 2003 to conserve 50,000 af of water for one year.
Fact: Harvested small grains provide less than 200 lbs. of food per acre, in the form of waste grain. Seasonally flooded wetlands produce from 535 to 2,600 lbs. of food per acre, including moist soil seeds, tubers, rootlets, and invertebrates.(4) Grains fail to provide the essential proteins and shelter available in marshes for many species of waterfowl and other wildlife. For these reasons, some marshes attract 80% more species than adjacent grain fields.(5) Marsh-area bird nests are also not subject to mass destruction by industrial harvest machinery, sparing young birds hatched in marshes from premature death under the blades of a combine.
Fact: Salmon once swam by the thousands through Upper Klamath Lake. During the hottest summer months, water temperatures in Upper Klamath Lake can be high, due in part to irrigation diversions draining the lake to unnaturally low levels. However, an extensive lake temperature-monitoring network has shown these high temperatures occur in predictable spikes only during the warmest months. At the time of the 2002 fish kill, The Klamath Tribes’ biologists concluded “…the portrayals of Upper Klamath Lake water temperatures being too warm to send downstream because of concerns about harming the salmon are clearly incorrect. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation… and anyone else portraying the present situation in this manner should stop immediately, because the facts directly contradict this position.”(6) Lake levels must be maintained to protect endangered fish, but during critical months, Upper Klamath Lake water can help downstream salmon fisheries.
Fact: The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s own 2002 Biological Assessment found that water releases from Iron Gate remained below the temperatures in the main river year-round, except for a one-week window in the fall. A study by Deas and Orlobb (1999) also showed that higher flows can reduce the adverse warming impacts of the Shasta and Scott rivers, two main tributaries with frequently high water temperatures.(7) In addition, modeling in Deas and Orlobb (1999) and by the Institute for Natural Systems Engineering (1999) also show that higher flows protect salmon against deadly daytime water temperature spikes during warm weather.(8) Releasing more water from Iron Gate would help reduce water temperatures, improve salmon habitat, and minimize chances of more fish kills in a variety of ways.
Fact: According to the California Department of Fish and Game, “water temperatures, in and of themselves, were not the factor causing the 2002 fish kill.”(9)
While it is true that higher water temperatures can stress or even kill salmon and their eggs, water flows and water temperatures are also directly related. As the amount of water released into a river decreases, the depth of the river and the velocity with which it moves also decreases. Shallow water heats up in the sun much faster than deep water, and the slower a river’s current moves, the longer the water has to warm. Worse, low flows dry up side channels that are often shaded by vegetation and offer salmon some refuge from the hot sun. Low flows also reduce the depth of the deeper pools in the river, further reducing the salmon’s ability to escape the heat. Thus saying that "high temperatures kill fish" is really the same thing as saying they need higher river flows.
Fact: According to the California Department of Fish and Game, 2002’s estimated chinook salmon run of 132,600 fish was only 9.6% above the average run size between 1976 and 2001.(10) In other words, the 2002 chinook salmon run was only slightly above average in size. Compared with estimated pre-Klamath Project salmon runs of a million fish or more, 2002’s run represented a paltry fraction of historic run sizes. Meanwhile, flows in the river below Iron Gate Dam were at near-record lows at the time of the kill.
Fact: The Trinity River is a vital salmon-spawning tributary of the Klamath, and should be restored. But efforts to portray higher Trinity flows as a silver bullet solution to get Upper Basin irrigation off the hook are nothing more than circular finger-pointing. The Trinity enters the Klamath 43 miles from the ocean. The free-flowing Klamath winds another 147 miles above this confluence to the Iron Gate Dam. A further 50 miles of the Klamath main stem continues above Iron Gate, leading to a vast network of tributaries covering hundreds of square miles. No amount of water in the Trinity will help fish in the nearly 150-mile stretch of critical salmon spawning and rearing habitat between Iron Gate and the Trinity. No amount of water in the Trinity will help alleviate the water quality woes that begin in the Upper Basin.
Fact: Irrigators did not help build the fish screen. Built by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation using taxpayer dollars, the screen was required by law to help prevent the extinction of two species of lake fish. While some individual landowners in the Klamath have undertaken important restoration efforts, large-scale restoration projects have faced fierce opposition from irrigation interest groups. Land acquisitions from willing sellers—the most basic step needed to bring water demand into balance with supply and restore essential habitat—face knee-jerk opposition from water user groups and anti-government agitators, but quiet support from many individual farmers.
(1) Hecht and Kamman, Initial Assessment of Pre- and Post Klamath Project Hydrology on the Klamath River and Impacts of the Project on Instream Flows and Fishery Habitat, Balance Hydrologics 1996, pp. 15, 21.
(2) Ibid, p. 35.
(3) Implementation of an Agricultural Program on Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge, Draft EA, USFWS 2001, p.1.13.
(4) Compatibility/Consistency Determination, USFWS 1999, p. 9-10.
(5) Fredrickson and Taylor, Management of Seasonally Flooded Impoundments for Wildlife, USFWS 1982.
(6) Facts About Water Temperatures in Upper Klamath Lake, Klamath Tribes Natural Resources Dept. 2002.
(7) Deas and Orlobb, Klamath River Modeling Project, Report No. 99-04, University of California, Davis 1999.
(8) Institute for Natural Systems Engineering, Evaluation of Interim Instream Flow Needs in the Klamath River: Phase I, Final Report, Dept. of the Interior 1999.
(9) September 2002 Klamath River Fish Kill: Preliminary Analysis of Contributing Factors, California Dept. of Fish and Game (CDFG) 2003, p 41.
(10) Ibid, p. 11.
(last updated 5/15/03)