July 1, 2002

By William C. Ransom, Guest Columnist Herald and News Klamath Falls, Oregon www.heraldandnews.com  William C. Ransom is a small landowner in the Klamath Project, a local businessman, and a real estate developer. To submit a Letter to the Editor: heraldandnews@heraldandnews.com

The common practice of Wendell Wood and his associates has been to distort the truth and facts to propagate their goals and agenda in the Klamath Basin. In his commentary June 23, “Restore Basin biology by renewing wetlands” in the Herald and News, Wood has once again resorted to his usual tactics.

The following facts are presented to help people learn the truth about the Klamath Basin.

The Pacific Salmon industry has been failing since 1919, according to Anthony Netboy, “The Salmon — Their Fight for Survival.”

In 1882, California cannery production reached its peak of about 12 million pounds of salmon caught. But by 1919, the salmon canning industry was abolished by act of California Legislature. The last salmon cannery closed its doors, but not before 13 million pounds of salmon landed in California. In 1920, the annual salmon catch in the Sacramento dropped to less than a million pounds with a value to fishermen of some $60,000.

According to the1971 report, “An Environmental Tragedy,” the lowest point in salmon catches was reached in 1939 at 2.7 million pounds. Prior studies listed overfishing as a major factor of the salmon decline.

Klamath Basin farmers are not taking 90 percent of the water for irrigation use before it can pass through Iron Gate Dam.

According to the flow data available on the Bureau of Reclamation’s Web site, the Link River Dam has released 421,229 acre-feet of water from Upper Klamath Lake since Jan. 1 of this year, and Iron Gate Dam has released 604,000 acre-feet of water during the same period.

Using the same data source, the Klamath Project has received 210,009 acre-feet of water, plus 24,000 acre-feet that has gone to the refuges. The project has returned 47,908 acre-feet of water to the Klamath River through the Straits Drain. The Lost River Diversion Canal has delivered 24,815 acre-feet of water from the Lost River to the Klamath River during the same time span. Doing the math, the Project has used only 35 percent of the water going over Iron Gate Dam, and the important fact is that it is all stored water.

The inflow into Klamath Lake is only running at about 300 cubic foot per second, and the discharge at the Link River Dam is running about 1,200 cubic feet per second and at Iron Gate, at 968 cfs. Had the project and dam not been built, there would not have been the stored water to maintain any of the current flows.

Wood makes a statement that the 14,000-acre refuge will go dry, which will not happen at the levels at which the Bureau of Reclamation is holding the lake, as required by the 2002-2012 sucker biological opinion. Again, he completely ignores the National Academy of Sciences interim report that disagreed with several points in both of the biological opinions.

98 percent efficiency

In building the project, water is stored in Upper Klamath Lake with farms and lower refuges using only 422,700 acre-feet of water from the entire watershed. The total project is rated at 98 percent efficiency.

Since the building of the Link River Dam, summer flows in the Klamath River have been stabilized for continuous flows for fish and hydroelectric production in the lower river basin year around, whereas the Link River had at times become a dry streambed during drought years.

Irrigation and refuge releases from Klamath Lake amount to about 3 to 5 percent of the outflow at the Klamath River mouth, leaving approximately 95 percent of the water outside of agriculture use by the Klamath Project.

The water is not so much overallocated, as it is over-claimed.

The National Academy of Sciences review was critical of the lack of science dealing with the need for high lake levels and high downstream flows. The review claimed that the levels of the biological opinions of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service could not be met in most years even if all water was withheld from agriculture. While it is easy to blame agriculture by claiming irrigation diversions overallocate water supply, it is also fundamentally incorrect. The real problem may well lie with the unwillingness of the Fish and Wildlife Service and Marine Fisheries Service to get their respective houses in order so the needs of the respective biological opinions will balance, even without irrigation.

The Klamath Basin is not an arid desert region. The Klamath Basin does contain some semi-arid areas, but also has abundant water resources from the upper watershed.

The Oregon State Water Resource Department wrote a water study of the Klamath Basin in 1971: “The Klamath Basin receives over 6.5 million acre-feet per year from precipitation. Precipitation rates within the basin range from fewer than 15 inches per year on the valley floors to more than 60 inches per year in the Cascade Range near Crater Lake.”

In addition, this does not take into account the water from the springs at the head of the Williamson and Wood Rivers plus all the natural occurring springs in Upper Klamath Lake.

Wood stated that irrigation runoff is hot and laced with fertilizers, pesticides and other agricultural chemicals.

According to the Oregon State Water Resource Department report, Water Quality, Page 67: “Excerpts from the 1854 diary of Lt. Henry L. Abbott, leader of a railroad survey party, attest to the condition of the lake water being due to natural causes: “The water from the lake had a dark color, and a disagreeable taste occasioned apparently by decayed Tule.” And, “The taste of the water was so disagreeable that several vain attempts were made to discover a spring in the vicinity.” This is near what is now named Cove Point near the south end of the lake.

Concerning “hot” water temperatures, from pollution: Page 108: “There is also a substantial thermal pollution problem in this area, partly contributed by the irrigation return flows and by the many warm-water springs that make up the Lost River flow along its lower drainage. Due to the increasing use of the geothermal resource in Klamath Falls and the Lower Lost River drainage area, thermal pollution may become a more substantial water quality problem in the future.

“In the drainage to Upper Klamath Lake, the contribution of dissolved salts and nutrients, due to irrigation return flows, is minor compared to the natural contribution. Constituents from both sources add to the eutrophication process in Upper Klamath Lake.”

Also according to published scientific Oregon State University reports, the level of phosphorus flowing into the Klamath River from the Straits Drain is 40 percent lower then the normal phosphorus level in the river.

Wetlands assertion wrong

Wood is wrong when he says that 75 percent of the upper Basin’s natural wetlands are gone.

In 1905, the Klamath Basin was dominated by approximately 180,000 acres of shallow lakes and freshwater marshes. When the Bureau of Reclamation came to the Basin, it built dikes to separate some of the Tule marshes from the shallow lakes, drained them, and opened up the land to veteran homesteaders.

When President Teddy Roosevelt started the national wildlife refuge program in 1908, the government created the Lower Klamath Lake National Wildlife Refuge that now contains 60,300 acres.

Clear Lake National Wildlife Refuge established in 1911, contains 46,460 acres. In 1928, the government created the Tule Lake and Upper Klamath Lake national wildlife refuges. Together, they contain 54,116 acres. The Klamath Marsh National Wildlife Refuge was created in 1958 and encompasses 40,646 acres.

Oregon State-owned Miller Island Wildlife Area encompasses 3,400 acres of marsh and wetlands.

In 1980, The Nature Conservancy purchased the historic Sycan River Marsh from the ZX Ranch in northern Klamath County. What was prime cattle grazing land for the past 60 years, is now being turned back into a marsh of 30,539 acres.

Add all the wildlife refuges acres and the Sycan Marsh together and the Klamath Basin now has 235,461 acres preserved for wildlife. This does not include the many small ponds and wetlands that are still abundant throughout the Basin, nor the miles of ditches and canals that also provide wildlife habitat.

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