short stories / By Heidi Walters and Japhet Weeks

‘Fish and chips’

(Jan. 17, 2008)  After two years of sometimes tense discussion, the 26 disparate stakeholders participating in the Klamath Basin settlement talks released a proposed agreement Tuesday that they say provides for the diverse needs of irrigators, fishermen and Indian tribes.

Craig Tucker of the Karuk Tribe is calling the Proposed Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement a “fish and chips settlement.” That’s because the agreement ensures that sustainable agriculture will continue in the Upper Basin by providing for reliable allocations of water to the region’s farmers. At the same time, it lays out a comprehensive program to restore fish populations in the Klamath River to levels the settlement group says will be sufficient for tribal, recreational and commercial fisheries.

The agreement also includes a program to stabilize energy costs for farmers, ranchers and the two national wildlife refuges in the Upper Basin if and when the river’s four lower dams are removed. But that will depend on the outcome of ongoing negotiations between the settlement group and PacifiCorp, the Portland-based utility that owns and operates the dams. Although that process, known as the Hydropower Agreement, is separate from the Proposed Agreement, the settlement group believes that a basin-wide solution must include both in order to succeed.

“This agreement only works with removal of four dams,” said Troy Fletcher of the Yurok Tribe in a Tuesday afternoon press conference call.

While a majority of the stakeholders seem to be in concert now, one long-time participant — the Hoopa Valley Tribe — was noticeably absent from Tuesday’s conference call. But the tribe did lob a news release explaining its rejection of the draft agreement.

In it, Hoopa Valley Tribe Chairman Clifford Lyle Marshall called the agreement “an old West irrigation deal” with “guarantees for irrigators, empty promises for the Indians.” He said it “makes the right to divert water for irrigation the top priority, trumping salmon water needs and the best available science on the river.”

Specifically, the tribe is concerned that while the agreement specifies goals for water diversions to irrigators, it does not set specific water flows for fish. It says the agreement “altogether ignores” two independent studies on river flows and salmon needs, as well as a Congress-backed report from the Natural Resources Council in November that recommended increased flows. Instead, the agreement allows for adaptive management and the development, over 10 years, of three plans: for restoration of the river system, reintroduction of salmon above Iron Gate Dam and establishment of a monitoring program.

Tom Schlosser, an attorney for the Hoopa Valley Tribe reached by telephone Tuesday afternoon, reiterated the tribe’s concern about there being no set standards for fish restoration. For example, he said, in 1984 the Trinity Restoration Act set the goal that the fishery would be restored to conditions that existed before the Lewsiton and Trinity dams were built. In the Klamath agreement, however, he said, “all the guarantees are for the right to divert water [for irrigation], and the fish get whatever trickles down.”

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