Klamath Basin Water Crisis Upholding Americans

YREKA, Calif. – Scientists reviewing federal efforts to protect Klamath River coho salmon say more attention needs to be given to summer water temperatures. How the recommendation plays out will be determined this winter as agencies revise an Endangered Species Act biological opinion already found wanting by a federal judge.

The National Research Council finding has implications for irrigators in U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Klamath Project astride the California-Oregon border and for the Klamath Basin Fisheries Task Force, a federal advisory group that met here last week. Irrigation water supply in average or below-average years is pinched in a balancing act between downstream coho flows and retention of Upper Klamath Lake water needed by suckerfish also under ESA protection.

Coho is one of dozens of fish species that call the Klamath home. The stream, more than 250 miles from the ocean to headwaters in Oregon and in California’s Trinity County, is best known for chinook salmon and a sometimes-contentious struggle over water, which in 2001 resulted in non-delivery of irrigation water when a drought-shortened supply was held for habitat of ESA-protected fish.

The NRC report issued Oct. 21 says just calling for water flow misses the mark for coho salmon. They spend 14 to 18 months of their three-year lives in fresh water, a stay interrupted by a year or two in the Pacific Ocean.

Iron Gate Reservoir, farthest downstream of the Klamath’s eight-plant hydroelectric system, is well-known for heating water. Increasing summer flow from Iron Gate makes a warmer river, sometimes lethal for young coho.

“From a bioenergetic perspective, increasing minimum (river) temperatures may be especially unfavorable for coho,” says the report.

Before the 2004 irrigation season, NOAA Fisheries and BuRec intend to revise coho biological opinions. Most participants in last week’s task force meeting had not reviewed full contents of the NRC report.

Irma Lagomarsino, Northern California team leader for NOAA Fisheries, told the task force on Oct. 22 that revisions will also address criticisms of the biological opinion made earlier this year by a federal judge who questioned anticipating water supply from non-project irrigators and a BuRec water banking plan.

The controversial biological opinion issued in June 2002 dictates minimum downstream flows delivered at PacifiCorp’s Iron Gate Dam. BuRec said last year that it wanted to renegotiate the opinion. U.S. Department of Interior delayed the process until the NRC report was in hand. It arrived less than 24 hours before the task force began last week’s meetings in Yreka.

Chris Karas, deputy manager of the BuRec Klamath Project, said work continues on the environmental impact statement that covers project operations through 2012. Public comment is extended until December to allow consideration of the NRC report.

This week BuRec was scheduled to release another draft of the proposed basinwide conservation plan process. Officials hope it brings together upriver and downriver interests, involving the entire 10-million-acre basin rather than placing the burden for ESA compliance on the reclamation project’s 200,000 acres of cropland. There’s also a move to broaden management beyond fish currently listed by the ESA. That’s another point made in the NRC report.

“Think unified basin,” Karas said, urging a central clearinghouse for all state and federal water quality data and uniform standards for what information is collected.

NOAA, after what Lagomarsino described as “a long pause,” is back at work on recovery plans for the Klamath coho and other coastal salmon under ESA protection. She told the task force it will be spring 2004 before the agency has goals for how many fish represent a recovered population in specific streams or parts of streams.

It’s a “different approach” from the state of California’s coho protection plan, triggered earlier this year by a separate listing made under state law by the California Fish and Game Commission. Craig Marst, leader of the state fishery team for the Scott and Shasta rivers, said California law requires his agency give permits for 1,600 irrigation water diversions that might be considered impacting coho habitat.

“Part of the thing slowing us down,” Marst said, “is lack of data” on the amount of fish loss that could occur as a result of those diversions.

The Klamath’s fall chinook salmon run is in full swing and has already peaked in the lower river. DFG’s Neil Manji said it appears migration in some streams is perhaps a week or more slower than in 2002. The state hatchery at Iron Gate Dam, five miles east of I-5 in Siskiyou County, counted 22,000 chinook through Oct. 20, up 1,000 from the same week one year ago. But Manji said chinook numbers are behind in major tributaries such as the Shasta and Scott rivers.

“The run is delayed. They are there. They are moving up,” Manji said.

The task force was established by the 1986 Klamath Restoration Act and is charged with implementing fishery restoration by 2006. Another advisory committee launched by the same act, the Klamath Fishery Management Council, faces an uncertain future.

The House version of the 2004 federal budget denies the council funding, a request made by Rep. Wally Herger, R-Calif. The Senate has yet to act on that part of the federal budget.

Phil Detrich, head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Yreka office, said since the new federal fiscal year began Oct. 1, he can’t spend any time supporting council activities. They are mainly concerned with technical details of commercial, tribal and sport fishery quotas for Klamath River anadromous fish.

Tam Moore is based in Medford, Ore. His e-mail address is cappress@charter.net.