While this water year has been the driest on record in Humboldt County, the rest of the North Coast stretching into Oregon is struggling with drought too, manifesting in a conflict over water between tribes and farmers.
In Humboldt County, salmon from the Klamath River are highly important to the Yurok Tribe for both spiritual and physical sustenance. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the irrigation on the Klamath River, recently announced $15 million in relief for farmers affected by drought and the limits of drawing from the basins and $5 million for Native American tribes.
“The Bureau of Reclamation’s 2022 Plan provides a reduced flushing flow to the upper Klamath River and protects minimum flows at Iron Gate Dam. Although we are gratified that the river is afforded minimal protections under this plan, it is no time for celebration,” Frankie Myers, Vice Chairman for the Yurok Tribe, said in a statement. “Salmon runs will continue to suffer under these conditions, and as climate change intensifies, such protections will become increasingly important.”
He also reflected on the historic flows that connected the two basins the Klamath River flows through.
“The Upper and Lower Klamath Basin once functioned as an integrated system that provided abundant salmon, suckers and waterfowl with minimal intervention,” he said. “The fact that these systems now appear to be in conflict with each other is a direct result of the ecological collapse brought on by water withdrawals, the loss of Lower Klamath and Tule Lakes, dams, and mining. It is our duty to bring this system back into balance and we will never stop working toward that goal.”
Based on the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s plan announced April 11, salmon populations downstream from the Upper Klamath Lake will receive roughly half of the water they’d see with a full reservoir, while over 1,000 farmers who depend on the reservoir for irrigation will have access to approximately one-seventh the amount they would normally be able to access without the extreme drought.
Both farmers and tribes were unhappy with the plan, and the Klamath Tribes of Oregon issued a statement calling the 2022 operations plan the “saddest chapter yet in a long history of treaty violations visited upon us by the United States.”
The tribes noted in the release that up to “62,000 acre-feet of water,” which contains two species of fish important to the tribe, the lost river sucker and shortnose sucker, is slated for irrigation at the height of the suckers’ spawning season.
“This disaster is the entirely predictable and inevitable consequence of multi-generational mismanagement and poor judgment. Neither the Klamath Tribes nor our downriver tribal brothers and sisters made any of the decisions that brought us here. And we have nothing left with which to ‘compromise.’ Global warming is certainly a global problem, but thus far its local consequences appear to be exacerbating existing and systematic inequalities between ourselves and the larger society,” the release said.
Ranchers who irrigate the basin’s water were also frustrated with the plan, and Ben DuVal, president of the Klamath Water Users Association, who operates a farm in Tulelake, in Siskiyou County, noted the allocated water for irrigation is 15% of what they need.
“We have 170,000 acres that could be irrigated this year, and we’re ready to get to work,” he said. “On a single acre, we can produce over 50,000 pounds of potatoes or 6,000 pounds of wheat. This year, most of that land will not produce any food because the government is denying water for irrigation.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report. Jackson Guilfoil can be reached at 707-441-0506.
