Klamath Agreement: Part II
Emily Wood & Mike Nelson
KDRV 12 Medford/Klamath Falls, ABC
04/29/2009
This is the second of a three part series looking at the issues surrounding the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement.
Watch full video piece at KDRV 12.
KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. - The Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement has brought many groups to the table; tribes, farmers and fishermen, who have battled for years over water.
However, not everyone that has a stake in the outcome of the KBRA is involved in its development. Some feel that removing the dams will actually do more harm than good.
Copco Dams 1 and 2 were the first of four hydropower dams built along the Klamath River. Copco 1 forms Copco Lake in Northern California. Many homeowners living on the lake do not want the dams out. German Diaz and his wife Jeannie built their dream home on Copco Lake. Now the Diaz's are worried about their property value.
"We're concerned that there's going to be a decrease in value. Honestly, with the cost of government, I don't see us getting any benefit of tax reduction," says German Diaz.
Copco Lake Resident Herman Spannaus' great grandfather settled here in 1856. His family owned land now under Copco Lake.
"When people see where we live, they think we've got the best kept secret in the world," says Spannaus.
"There's no economy here. It's just going to destroy what little is left of people's ability to make a living," says Siskiyou County Supervisor Marcia Armstrong.
Two years ago, the Copco Store, the only business on the lake, was forced to close due to the economy.
"We need to be at the table, and they need to look at these impacts when they're talking about removing dams," says Armstrong.
Siskiyou County Supervisors and Copco Lake residents aren't the only ones concerned about the possible removal of the dams. Local rafting companies, like Noah's River Adventures, are worried about losing business.
"If the dams were removed, and this particular resource was taken away, we would lose 50 percent of our business," says Noah's River Adventures Co-owner Bart Baldwin.
The Upper Klamath attracts thousands of visitors every year. Baldwin says it has the best rapids in the state of Oregon.
J.C. Boyle Dam controls the river's flow, which helps rafting companies schedule the season and book business.
"What you're going to lose is the yahoo factor. You're going to lose those Class 4 and 4+, which is what brings people to this section of river," says Baldwin.
Like Siskiyou County supervisors and Copco Lake residents, rafting companies say they were not at the table for KBRA negotiations.
"We weren't really part of the negotiation settlement. We tried to be, we weren't allowed to be. So we're kind of waiting to be dictated what's happening to us," says Baldwin..."We don't have a reason to be pro dam or anti-dam right now. This system seems to work, and that's what our aim is, basically to try to maintain the water in the river," says Baldwin.
Protecting water in the Klamath River is the goal of environmental groups like WaterWatch, Oregon Wild and Klamath Riverkeeper. Klamath Riverkeeper is a grassroots organization that says that while removing the dams will cost millions of dollars, not removing them will carry an even higher price tag.
"It would cost millions of dollars more to build federally required fish ladders to get fish past those dams, and also, to do other environmental improvements and upgrades than it would be just to take the dams out," says Erica Terence with Klamath Riverkeeper.
Taking the dams out would also mean losing a source of power and what many consider 'green energy'.
"The only thing green about these dams is the toxic algae that blooms behind them in the reservoirs," says Karuk Tribe Spokesman Craig Tucker.
The green algae, a thick bright green, scummy substance that is harmful to fish and humans, often shows up in Copco Lake in warmer months.
Some environmentalists are fighting for dam removal but say the KBRA is not the way to do it.
"What the KBRA is trying to do is make a political decision, where they are going to allocate a large part of that water resource and keep it in their culture. It'll be pretty much business as usual while the river and the lake and the refuges will... continue to not get the water they need. That's not going to solve the problem, it'll just be shifting the crisis from one group to another," says WaterWatch Staff Attorney Bob Hunter.
While Hunter wants to see the Klamath dams come down, he doesn't think the KBRA is the way to do it. One of the reasons: It allows commercial farming on 22,000-thousand acres of National Wildlife Refuge.
"We've over-allocated the system. We don't have enough water for the wetlands and the National Wildlife Refuges. We don't have enough water to sustain fish populations in the Upper Klamath Lake, so we have to address that issue, we can't hide it," says Hunter.
The conservation group Oregon Wild agrees.
"Dam removal is critical to the restoration of the Klamath Basin. But we shouldn't trade other conservation values for dam removal," says Ani Kame'enui with Oregon Wild.
While the agreement states that farmers are working with tribal members and fishermen, there are a number of farmers in the basin who are against dam removal, and many who feel they were left out of the negotiations.
"We've been classified as people that just don't want to negotiate, we want to throw rocks at the agreement. There's lots of problems with the agreement, but we would like to see it work out for all parties," says Tom Mallams with Klamath Off-Project Water Users Association...
