Newspapers around the country yesterday reported on what sounded like a break-through deal to restore the salmon to the Klamath River region in northern California and Southern Oregon. Eric Bailey of the Los Angeles Times wrote:
The $1-billion plan proposes to end one of the West’s fiercest water
wars by reviving the Klamath River’s flagging salmon population while
ensuring irrigation water and cheap power for farmers in the basin,
which straddles the Oregon-California state line.
But reading between the lines suggests there’s less to the deal than meets the eye, despite the involvement of numerous agencies and future plans to ultimately take down several dams.
"The ironic thing is there’s not even dam removal in this dam-removal
deal," said Bob Hunter of WaterWatch of Oregon, one of the two
dissenting environmental groups, both of which were excluded from the
negotiations last year. "It seems they released it now because time is
running out for the Bush administration to deliver to its political
allies in the Klamath farm community."
And the corporation that now runs the dams has also kept its distance from the deal.
Paul Vogel, a PacifiCorp spokesman, said the company initiated the
talks as part of its bid for a new federal operating license for the
dams. But he said PacifiCorp was "shut out of the room" for most of the
last year as the final plan was cobbled together by more than two dozen
state, federal and local government agencies, tribes and other groups.
"You really have to question if there’s enough substance there to be worth the paper it’s printed on," he said.
I don’t have enough information to judge this situation fairly: I’m just going to point out that the newspaper coverage suggests it’s not the solution it pretends to be.
Kit Stolz 