How do we undo the mistakes of the past hundred, thousand, and ten thousand years? You can’t just wave a magic wand; you have to bring people together, get them to put aside their personal interests (at least a little bit) and start working for the common good. That’s what happened this month in the Klamath River Basin, on the California/Oregon border.

(Image of Klamath Basin by ex_magician under creative commons license)

It took everyone in the region working together – from the farmers to the fishermen, the power companies to the tribes, the local governments and the federal agencies. But after almost ten years of work, The Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement is scheduled to be signed later this month, and it’s being hailed as a model of regional cooperation that can be applied across the country.

It wasn’t always this way

It started like many stories do, with a faceoff, a standoff, and a disaster. Like much of the west, years of draught had left the Klamath Basin without enough water to meet all the competing demands. It came to a head in 2001, when the federal government first cut off irrigation water to the farmers, and then – after a storm of protest (and the intervention of Oregon Senator Gordon Smith and Vice President Dick Cheney) – turned the water back on. But nobody was really happy, and by pulling too much water from the Klamath River system, it led to a die-off the next year of between 30,000 and 70,000 adult salmon, devastating the ecosystem – and the livelihoods of the fishermen and the tribes.

This tragedy was almost enough to pull everyone together. It took a few more years of negotiation, but eventually nearly everyone had an agreement they could live with. Over the next few weeks we’ll be giving you a chance to meet some of these people and see up close how some of these restoration projects are working.

Something for (just about) everyone

But for now, in broad outline, here’s how everyone benefited:

- The farmers got water guarantees, while accepting over-all limits to the amount of water that can be pulled from the rivers of the basin. They also got guarantees that they’d be able to continue with their land leases (some of which are in national wildlife refuges), and they get electricity price supports for irrigation.
- The fishermen got restoration and reintroduction projects that will bring back the sustainable fishery in the basin (once one of the richest on the west coast, along with the Columbia and the Sacramento), along with more water for the fish (so we don’t see a repeat of the earlier die-off).
- Environmentalists also got more water for the wildlife refuges at Tule Lake and Lower Klamath.
- PacifiCorp, the regional power company, agreed to remove four of its hydroelectric dams (which were nearing the end of their useful working life anyway) in ten years (the dams were blocking migration of coho, Chinook, steelhead and other species to the upper reaches of the basin). PacifiCorp gets subsidies for the removal and federal science help to get it right.
- The tribes got respect from the other players, recognition of their traditional lifestyle, and restoration of the fish that are a staple of that way of life. The goal is for long-term self-sufficiency (including millions in economic development money)

Moving forward, there are still several elements in play:
- A drought plan will be drawn up by a collaboration of The Klamath Tribes, Karuk Tribe and Yurok Tribe, Upper Klamath Water Users Association, the Klamath Water and Power Agency (KWAPA), the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuges, Oregon Water Resources Department, California Department of Fish and Game and a representative of conservation and fishing groups, to ensure that no matter what, the region isn’t thrown back into the us vs. them situation that went down in 2001.
- There will be a scientific evaluation of the dam removal to evaluate for certain that it’s in the best interests of the fish, the river and the tribes, followed by a determination by the Secretary of the Interior (by 2012).
- Multi-phase projects will be put in place to restore the salmon, the steelhead and other species.
- A buy-back of water rights will roll back water use, leaving more available for conservation and restoration.

Is everybody happy?

Not totally. The Yurok, Karuk and Klamath tribes are on board, but the Hoopa tribe has issues, and is holding out until those are resolved.

Some environmental groups are on board – Klamath Riverkeepers Erica Terrence says, “Our analysis shows the settlement is the most workable and realistic way to get the dams out, and poses an innovative way to deal with the historic over-allocation of water in the basin.”

But Oregon Wild remains skeptical of the process, noting how many potential gaps there are in the agreement – like what will happen in draught years when there is once again not enough water to go around.

“This guarantees that agriculture still gets to take the first drink and salmon get to deal with whatever’s left over,” says Oregon Wild’s Ani Kame’enui. Oregon Wild is also not happy that the leasing was allowed to continue in the refuges. “Currently,” Kame’enui says, “22,000 acres of publicly owned wetlands on Lower Klamath and Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuges are plowed under every year to grow potatoes and onions. Lower Klamath was protected 100 years ago by Teddy Roosevelt as the nation’s first waterfowl refuge. Today, these refuges are the only refuges in the country where commercial agriculture takes such extreme priority over the express wildlife purpose of the land.”

Various parties have argued that it’s good that the dams are coming down, and it’s okay that the farmers were offered so much in exchange; but others say that the federal government held all the cards here, and could simply have acted to remove the dams, so really this isn’t such a great deal after all.

But there is an agreement

While not everyone is happy, it’s also true that previous attempts to resolve these intermeshed issues of rights and needs had failed, and sometimes failed spectacularly. That’s why everyone from activists to zoologists are looking at the KBRA agreement and hoping the model can be applied to complex restoration projects across the country.

Summary of the agreement available here (PDF).
Full Agreement (draft) available here (PDF)
(Via Ed Sheets Consulting)

The TENTHMIL team attended the Klamath Basin Science Conference last week in Medford, OR. Over the next few weeks we’ll be presenting a series of articles based on what we learned there.

(Image of Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge by ex_magician under creative commons license)