Battle over Klamath water shifts to electric rates

By JEFF BARNARD
Associated Press

MERRILL, Ore. -- The continuing battle in the Klamath Basin between farmers who need scarce water for their crops and activists who believe it should be used to preserve threatened and endangered fish has moved to a new front.

Environmentalists, salmon fishermen and the Hoopa and Yurok tribes, who champion more water for fish, have turned their focus on the price of electricity that pumps the water through miles of canals on the Klamath Reclamation Project and into individual irrigation systems.

Unsuccessful in winning a federal buyout of irrigated farmlands, they are taking a page from conservatives and pushing for the free market to reduce irrigation.

They support the utility PacifiCorp's moves to raise electric rates for 1,300 customers on the Klamath Reclamation Project and neighboring lands as much as 1,000 percent to market rates when the current 50-year contract expires next April.

The idea is that higher power prices will make it too expensive to irrigate tens of thousands of acres of marginal farmland, putting more water in the Klamath River for struggling salmon.

"The question is whether it is in the public interest to subsidize irrigation on the most marginal lands," said Jim McCarthy of the Oregon Natural Resources Council, an environmental group. "The balance can be here if we just let it occur and stop the subsidy. You will see more water going down the river for fish and wildlife, which is also an economic engine for the coast and southern Oregon."

The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, which represents California salmon fishermen facing a sharp reduction in their catch due to struggling runs in the Klamath River, has thrown its support behind PacifiCorp on the issue.

"The Klamath Basin is so water-starved that every effort should be made to conserve rather than provide economic incentives to waste," said Glen Spain of the fishermen's association.

Authorized in 1905, the Klamath Reclamation Project built a network of canals to drain Tule Lake in California and Lower Klamath Lake in Oregon and now irrigates 180,000 acres of farmland.