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Wednesday, March 27, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

With Fish on the Brink of Extinction, Tribes Say Government Must Act

The government promised water to farmers and ranchers that has to remain in rivers and lake, or risk the imminent extinction of multiple species. Meanwhile, tribes step in to make sure the government enforces water rules.

CHILOQUIN, Ore. (CN) --- At the pristine headwaters of the Wood River, the water is so clear the turquoise rocks along the bottom glow through. On a spring morning, Klamath tribal biologist Alex Gonyaw scooped the clear, cold water into a glass beaker and held it up in the sunlight.

Nearby, a family of square-headed ducks called hooded Mergansers swam. Gonyaw said the tribes have tested the water at that spot and found that it exceeds the quality standards of the water that flows out of his own kitchen tap.

Would he drink it?

“Oh, absolutely,” Gonyaw said. 

Less than a mile downstream, the Wood River flows through a cattle ranch. Here, the willows and red alders lining the banks at the headwaters are gone. That’s because the rancher hasn’t installed fences to keep cows from eating the vegetation along the streams, trampling the banks and wading right into the river.

“As soon as you start getting close to the ranch, the water quality completely changes,” Klamath Tribal Council Member Willa Powless said.

It’s not an isolated example.

“On all the tributaries it’s pretty evident that uncontrolled or unregulated cattle grazing has had a big impact on the streams,” Klamath Tribal Chairman Don Gentry said.

Klamath tribal biologist Dr. Alex Gonyaw, holding water from Upper Klamath Lake laced with toxic algae. (Courthouse News photo / Karina Brown)

But the problem goes way beyond grazing. Dozens of tributaries and hundreds of springs feed Upper Klamath Lake, supplying plenty of good, clean water. A century of mismanagement has caused erosion of high phosphorus soils that accumulate in the bottom of Upper Klamath Lake. Now, annual algae blooms kill entire generations of young endangered fish every year.

For millennia, tribes in high elevation marshes of the Klamath Basin thrived on a diet heavy on c’waam and koptu, two species of sucker fish that live here and nowhere else. The fish have been here since an inland sea covered this land, before Mount Mazama exploded to create Crater Lake. According to Klamath Tribes’ oral history, the fish arrived after the people, in an answer to their prayers.

Then white settlers got here. They cut down the trees lining the lakes, removing the roots that hold sediment out of the water. They straightened streams and rivers so they would act like drains, editing vast shallow lakes out of the valley to clear the way for agriculture. And they plopped cows onto the vast meadows, allowing them to wade right into the rivers and streams that feed Upper Klamath Lake.

The government created a massive irrigation project that ignored its treaty obligations to the tribes who ceded this land. By the time it began to honor the treaties, the government had already handed the water rights necessary to protect tribal resources over to farmers and ranchers. And in the era of climate change, there’s less than ever to go around.

In March, Oregon Governor Kate Brown declared a drought emergency in Klamath County. Then she said the Oregon Water Resources Department would approve emergency permits allowing farmers and ranchers to use wells that can’t be used under normal circumstances, and to pull more than twice the amount of water from them than has been allowed during previous drought emergencies.

In May, the U.S. Department of Reclamation announced it would halt irrigation from the lake in order to preserve enough water to prevent the extinction of c’waam and koptu. Every spring, the fish spawn and release tens of millions of eggs. Those hatch into tiny larvae, only to die in dwindling lake water laced with neurotoxins from algae blooms. The adults survive the toxic conditions that kill their offspring by finding pockets of cold, clean water where they wait until water quality improves with the fall rains.

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Gentry explained that when the creator made c’waam and koptu, he tied the people’s survival to that of the fish.

“If those fish go away, what does that actually mean?” Gentry asked. “Does it mean we die or does it mean there’s going to be something dead within us?”

The view of Upper Klamath Lake from The Sunrise Place, as two bald eagles fly nearby. (Karina Brown/Courthouse News)

All the problems in the Upper Klamath Lake flow downstream, affecting endangered salmon in the Klamath River as it runs to the Pacific Ocean. The Karuk, a Klamath River tribe, are worried that this could be another year marked by a historic fish kill. That’s what happened last time there was a major water crisis here.

In 2001, the Bureau of Reclamation shut off agricultural irrigation from Upper Klamath Lake in order to protect fish during a severe drought.  The next year, the government caved to political pressure to ignore the science and give irrigators a rebound year. In 2002, Reclamation took so much water out of the lake and river for agriculture that water levels were even lower than they had been during the previous drought year.

Dams prevent the normal big flows that flush out disease in winter, while unnaturally low water levels in summer heat up, allowing those diseases to proliferate. In 2002, that added up to the largest mass death on record of adult salmon returning up the river to spawn.

Since then, a new parasite has surfaced that is killing young salmon as they swim down the river on their way to the ocean. Karuk Tribal Biologist Craig Tucker says this year’s water conditions could mean something even worse than what happened in 2002: the mass death of multiple generations of salmon in the Klamath River.

“This is how messed up the system is,” Tucker said. “You’ve got two major diseases --- one killing adults and another killing juveniles. And they’re both related to unnatural water flows.”

Despite extreme drought conditions, a drive through the farms in the Klamath Irrigation District is a tour through miles of green fields.

“There ain’t no drought here, not for these guys,” said Jerry Parrish, a local rancher and Klamath tribal member.

At numerous farms, pumps pull pure, clean groundwater out of emergency wells and into drainage ditches. Once they’re full, farmers plug up the ditches and force the water to flood their fields. Because of conflicting state and federal laws, it’s completely legal.

Throughout the area, beige tents housing water-intensive marijuana grows dot the fields.

Meanwhile, the Klamath Drainage District continues to take water for its farmers from the Klamath River, despite a letter from the U.S. Department of Reclamation ordering it to stop.

Chairman Don Gentry and Tribal Councilmember Willa stand at Klamath Tribal Headquarters, near the confluence of the Sprague and Williamson Rivers. (Courthouse News photo / Karina Brown)

Scott White, district manager for Klamath Drainage District, said the district is taking water based on a state permit that has nothing to do with its contract with the Bureau of Reclamation.

“From our perspective, everything we’re doing is completely legal,” White said.

Not everyone has plenty of water though. Wheels on the gravel road to Parrish’s ranch send up clouds of dust. That’s because Parrish doesn’t have a working well, and he doesn’t pull water from the river running through his property to irrigate.

“You are about to feast your eyes on what drought country really looks like,” Parrish says. He calls the cows in with a whoop and forks a bale of alfalfa out of the back of the pickup truck. “This is what it usually looks like in October,” Parrish says. “I’m not shitting you. This grass should be knee high.”

Parrish, 63, runs cattle on land allotted to his family under the Dawes Act of 1887. A rodeo champion, he also keeps his two prized horses here, where they graze and dart among the cows.

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In better water years, things were different.

“Last year I had 100 head. This year I have 20. And I’m going to have to buy hay to sustain them.”

The property includes nearly a mile of the Sprague River, which Parrish fences on both sides to keep the cows away. Just one small, fenced section allows them to get close enough to drink from the river. Driving though the basin, it’s clear that fencing like this --- required under state water rules --- is an anomaly.

A neighboring farm was lush and green. There, a pump pulled water from a slough off the Sprague River into an irrigation pond, despite rules prohibiting the use of stream and river water during the drought.

“I could go down there to that river and put a pump in that son of a bitch too,” Parrish said. “But then I’d be just like them. And I couldn’t sass my neighbors anymore.”

Studies by the state and by the U.S. Geological Survey show that groundwater in the Klamath Basin directly feeds surface water like lakes and rivers. But Oregon doesn’t specifically restrict the use of groundwater to protect the lakes and rivers it feeds.

A ruling last year by Marion County Circuit Court Judge Claudia M. Burton required the state to declare a critical groundwater area before it can halt groundwater use that would deplete lakes and rivers. Racquel Rancier, policy manager for the Oregon Water Resources Department, said the state hasn’t declared a critical groundwater area in decades. She said budget constraints and a limited staff have prevented it from doing so in the Klamath Basin.

And even though the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a ruling last year finding that the Klamath Tribes have the most senior water rights in the basin – dating back to “time immemorial” -- the tribes agreed to temporary status as junior rights holders as part of the massive deal they negotiated over 13 years. The Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement would have dramatically revamped the basin, removing dams and dikes that prevent normal water flows and  improving habitat and water quality. In the end, it would have made more water available for both fish and farming. But the deal was scuttled at the last minute when former Republican U.S. Rep. Greg Walden insisted on a new provision to transfer 100,000 acres of federal land to two counties and dropped the negotiated removal of four dams on the Klamath River. Facing backlash, Walden declined to attach the deal to Congress’ 2015 omnibus spending bill.

Tribal biologists and government agencies told Courthouse News the deal would have prevented this year’s water crisis. It also would have resolved legal loopholes that allow illogical water use to proliferate.

Each summer, recreation advisories go out, warning people that the lake is too toxic to swim in or even touch. But it’s still used to irrigate food crops. Oregon doesn’t regulate the use of water contaminated with neurotoxins caused by algae blooms, but the Environmental Protection Agency and the World Health Organization both warn that the toxins can accumulate on the surface of food crops as irrigation water dries. The EPA is preparing to study what that means for human health. 

The rules that are in place aren’t proactively enforced. Instead, state water regulators rely on citizens to complain about the violations they see.

So the Klamath dedicate three staff members to investigating the complaints reported to the tribe, and submit that information to the state. They’ve been successful in shutting down farmers who illegally pump water out of rivers and streams for irrigation, those who turn pumps on at night to avoid detection and others who pull water from rivers to water their lawns. This year, the tribes’ work stopped one farmer who was irrigating his 500 acres with water from Five Mile Creek, a tributary of the Sprague River, which feeds Upper Klamath Lake.

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“It’s just extremely frustrating for the Klamath Tribes, not having jurisdiction over our own resources,” said Klamath Tribes Water Rights Specialist Brad Parrish, Jerry’s nephew. “Because you see these violations all the time. You see things that somebody should be doing something about, but we can’t. It’s all up to the state of Oregon to do something about it, so it’s extremely frustrating.”

Dan Nielsen, the owner of a trucking company who also runs a small alfalfa farm, doesn’t recognize federal rulings affirming the tribes’ senior water rights. He points to local and state rules that he says hand water rights to irrigators instead.

“It’s private property and they just took it,” Nielsen said.

Incensed by the Bureau of Reclamation’s May 12 announcement cancelling irrigation from the lake this year, Nielsen and local grass seed farmer Grant Knoll are threatening to force open the headgates to let water from the Upper Klamath Lake fill the main irrigation canal shut this year by the bureau. Nielsen explained that it was a simple matter of cutting through a few cable locks and using a crane to lift the steel gates plugging the canal. The men want the government to pay them for the water they would have gotten from the lake.

“They say their obligation to the Endangered Species Act and the tribes is more important than us,” Nielsen said. “We say, okay yeah, the ESA allows the federal government to take the water from us but they have to pay for it.”

Camped out under a big red and white striped tent on their property next to the headgates, Nielsen and Knoll sat with half a dozen supporters around a gas-fueled firepit.

A tent set up by farmers threatening to open headgates of the main irrigation canal fed by Upper Klamath Lake. (Courthouse News photo / Karina Brown)

“We can’t use the water because we’ll violate the Endangered Species Act, but they can dump it down the river and somehow that’s okay,” Knoll said.

Mid-conversation, a text arrived from Ammon Bundy, the far-right extremist behind the 2015 armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, and an earlier standoff with federal agents at his parents’ Nevada ranch. Bundy invited Nielsen to a June 19th event where Bundy is expected to announce his run for governor of Idaho.

Nielsen texted back: “If we’re not in prison, we’ll come.”

“I know the feeling,” Bundy replied. “If you’re in jail, then I’m coming your way.”

Nielsen lacks the tearful cowboy oration that Bundy has perfected, but the two have other traits in common. Bundy owns a car fleet service but positions himself as a rancher. And both seem to delight in unusual legal theories.

Bundy’s ideas about claiming public property through occupation – and his acquittal on all charges in multiple trials – sounded a Liberty Bell of sorts for people who believe they’re entitled to unrestricted use of public land. Years later, farmers in the Klamath Basin, angry about irrigation rules, see Bundy’s militant actions as a guide.

“His family still grazes cattle,” Knoll said. “They still do the same thing they always did, on the same land. So who was right and who was wrong?”

High on a cliff above Upper Klamath Lake, Klamath tribal members hold weekly sunrise ceremonies, at the spot where they say the creator made c’waam, koptu and a third type of sucker fish they call yen.

According to Klamath Tribes’ oral history, an enormous two-horned snake was plaguing the people during a time of famine. Gmok’umps, the creator, heard the prayers of the people. He wrestled the snake, eventually cutting it up into thousands of pieces and tossing them off the cliff, into the lake. As the creature’s flesh hit the water, it transformed into the fish.

Whether you believe that really happened or that it’s a story that tells us about our creator and how we fit into our cosmology is up to you,” Klamath Tribal Chairman Don Gentry said. “But our creator took something terrible and made it good.”

It’s just the sort of transformation the tribes are working to enact today.

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Categories / Environment, Government, Regional

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