District Manager’s View

By Rick Woodley

June 2007

Seven years ago I started to work at the Klamath Soil & Water Conservation District (KSWCD) as District Manager. The position appeared to be one that would be enjoyable and rewarding. What old farm boy could resist the opportunity to work with friends and neighbors, helping them develop conservation programs for their farms and ranches? Seemed like a dream job for a guy who loved farming and the outdoors. It was great for the next ten months. No one could have imagined the nightmare that was about to unveil itself in April of 2001. After nearly 100 years of irrigation in our beloved Klamath Basin, perhaps the largest water theft in United States history took place. The Federal Government withheld water set aside and dedicated for irrigation of the Klamath Project. The memory of that announcement still resounds in the ears of every farmer in our basin.

Farmers face adversity constantly from the weather and the market place. In the aftermath of such widespread desolation and impending destruction of family farms, they sought ways to protect themselves from such catastrophic, and unwarranted decisions. Those who were able to survive began to search for programs to invest in that would give them the certainty for farmland protection.

Fast forward to June of 2007.

Farmers and ranchers have enhanced, restored or created new wildlife and fish habitat. They have enclosed open ditch delivery systems to reduce evaporation and seepage. They have introduced no-till farming practices. They have removed hundreds of acres of juniper encroachments to free up trapped water supplies. They have fenced miles of stream banks to help comply with clean water standards established by Senate Bill 1010. They have idled perfectly good farmland to conserve water in the form of a water bank. Thousands of acres of flooded farm ground is now under sprinkler irrigation. They have introduced the concept of walking wetlands.

Have the irrigators gained any certainty for their irrigation water supply? Millions of dollars have been spent on conservation projects to conserve the amount of water dispersed during the irrigation season. In fact irrigators are so efficient in applying the exact amount of water for individual crop needs that the underground water supplies are not being recharged.

The federal agency that demanded high lake levels to protect fish, still has no idea how many endangered fish there were, there are or even how many there needs to be. Another federal agency responsible for stream flows still insists that warm water, lethal to down stream fish, be released at unseasonably high levels that are toxic to threatened species, but assumes no responsibility when said fish die. Years of negotiations with the utility company that uses our water resource for free to generate power yielded skyrocketing rates when they persuaded the public to believe they were subsidizing irrigation in the Klamath Project. The reality is the project irrigators simply had an exchange of commodities in place that benefited both parties. Sadly, the courts and powers to be allowed the power company to disregard a fair contract.

Now, much of my time is spent dealing with unfavorable policy decisions, uncompromising program and project implementation standards, irrational demands by ignorant environmental activists, claims on our irrigation water supplies by those who had no original vested interest in project development, courts that clearly fail to understand the ramifications of their unwarranted decisions and a host of other adverse political actions. I attend endless meetings where no quantifiable solutions are reached. However, new groups are formed to study the studies, other groups agree with long known scientific facts, but are powerless to act, and finally more state and federal programs are launched to “solve” problems that often don’t exist in reality.

Many of the conservation programs that are available to landowners are so bogged down with bureaucratic nonsense that often landowners avoid cost share programs and forgo lease payments. They would rather use their own funds so they can at least effectively manage the property for best results.

The KSWCD has long sought for one entity to coordinate conservation activities in the Klamath Basin, but to no avail. Every local, state and federal agency or organization, every environmental faction, groups intent on bringing harm to farming and many trying to help, those with and without water claims and too many others to list have their own good and bad ideas. Efforts are being duplicated, projects counteracting acting projects. Still we have no recognizable leadership in an effort to make sense of all the efforts ongoing in the Klamath Basin.

The one constant and resounding solution to the contrived water shortage is additional storage. Over the past couple of decades, multiple sites have been located that would provide additional storage. It could be set aside for irrigators, even though they have already paid for their storage, or for the many other groups, organizations or endless entities who demand another “straw” to suck our water away from the irrigators, the very group who was originally guaranteed the delivery of irrigation water from our government.

So, where are we today? About the same place we were in April of 2001.