Activist’s Corner

Writers on the Range - by Tyler Williams

The Klamath is a 300-mile-long waterway traveling from Oregon’s Cascade Mountains to the Pacific Ocean in Northern California. Once, it was the third-most productive salmon fishing river in North America.

Today, Klamath River salmon are approaching extinction, thanks mainly to six dams that span the upper river. But things might change dramatically if the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement becomes reality — four of the Klamath dams could be slated for removal. It would be a river-restoration project unprecedented in scale, and environmental groups are ecstatic at the possibility.

To see the unfolding Klamath story first-hand, I decided to kayak the entire length of the river, starting at the aptly named Spring Creek where boiling pots of sand danced on the bottom of the creek. Water gushed into the stream from below, clean and beautiful. But several hours later, the scene had changed when I arrived at a fixture of the southern Oregon landscape — Klamath Lake. A rank odor wafted on the air, and billions of tiny green algae flecks floated on the surface of the water. I had only paddled 10 miles, but I was already a world away from the bubbling purity of Spring Creek.

Paddling was not always possible. I stood in astonished silence, wondering how I would make it downstream on a tiny spout of water that emanated from one of the Klamath River’s dams. The flow was reminiscent of a desert watercourse in my home of Arizona, not a major river in the Pacific Northwest. Yet this — and not Spring Creek – better describes today’s Klamath River.

It is a river serving many masters: Farmers demand water for irrigation, Indians fight for their share of the dwindling salmon, and we all flip light switches from the dam-supported power grid. The Klamath embodies all that is at stake regarding water issues in the West.

Over the next week, I came to see the Klamath as a tamed, utilitarian river. I drifted past the A Canal, where roughly half the river is siphoned into a massive plumbing project that brings water to 240,000 acres of farmland. I rode returned irrigation effluent through whitewater canyons, and saw the river vanish into reservoirs four different times. Once, it even disappeared into a steel grate, leaving me with a rain-gutter trickle.

During a re-supply stop, I asked an old-timer in a coffee shop what he thought of the dams coming down. Not surprisingly, he said, “It’s not a good idea.” But, he added, “If the fish don’t get their water, they’ll die, so they need it. But a man who has to water his hay, he needs it, too.” Many in this region are now fourth-generation farmers. To them, watering the hay is as inextricably linked to the rhythms of life as swimming upstream is for the salmon.

Two days from the river mouth, I saw the other side of the issue. “Hello, there,” a Yurok Indian called out from the captain’s chair of his fishing boat. “Hello,” I replied, as I paddled near. The man asked me where I’d been, and where I was going. Then he quickly jumped to dam politics.

“There’s a meeting tonight. We’re trying to get those dams outta there,” he said. “Us and the farmers, we’re working side by side right now,” he said. “We told them we wouldn’t sue them, so they’re with us. They don’t like the word sue.” Then he reached the heart of the matter. “They say they’ll go bankrupt without water, but this river — it’s all we’ve got.”

He repeated the same chorus I’ve heard from fisherman on rivers throughout the West Coast: “I only caught 50 fish this spring.” I waited. “Fifty fish!” he repeated. “That’s not many — I have to feed a lot of people.”

As I shoved back into the current, I wished him good luck with the fall salmon run. “Oh, they’ll come back,” he reassured me. I was less optimistic, dams or no dams.

Fish die and go extinct for many reasons, but on the lower Klamath, warm water temperatures are often tagged as the main problem. Warmer water allows for more bacterial pathogens to develop, thus increasing the chances that disease will break out in the fish. Then there are the dams that block fish from reaching their historic spawning beds upriver. This time, there may be a real chance that the Klamath dams will come down. The question for the salmon is whether it will be too late.

Tyler Williams is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He lives and writes in Flagstaff, Arizona.

by George Snyder
Sonoma West Staff Writer

Graton - A Marin County contractor who allegedly did excavation work in an Atascadero Creek wetland without permits could face fines and potential criminal court action, according to state officials.

The work, which a wetlands activist said was done on a small year round tributary to the creek, was halted June 27 after neighbors of landowner Rob O’Brien lodged several calls to county, state and federal officials about the excavation.

“We got a number of complaints from neighbors about alleged illegal dredging on a tributary of Atascadero creek,” said John Short, a senior engineer with the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Short said a water control board staffer visited the site on a 60-acre parcel purchased by O’Brien in January, as a result of the complaints, which also resulted in the dredge work being halted on June 27.

Short said the landowner would be responsible for paying for the restoration and possible enforcement action including potential fines.

Short said “The first step is for the agencies to come together to see if there is an immediate need for restoration work Š some of the neighbors are afraid that their water tables will be lowered,” Short said, adding “If there is no need for immediate work then we have more time to assess the situation for the best restoration plan and enforcement action.” O’Brien, who was not immediately available for comment, has, in published reports, said he only wanted to clear out a swale to prevent winter flooding and denied harming valuable riparian wildlife habitat along the creek.

A similar case about a mile south on Mill Station Road in 2003 cost an excavator some $1,000 in fines and a six day jail sentence after illegal tree clearing and brush cutting occurred on the creek where it crosses the road.

Officials said at least 200 feet of wetland area, which is near the West County Trail north of Occidental Road, and under the jurisdiction of federal and state laws protecting wetland wildlife habitat, had been disturbed.

“I don’t know if the creek is named, but we went out and documented illegal dredging of surface water, a violation of our own regulations and we did think it was serious. Since then we have been working with other agencies, including Fish and Game, NOAH and the county that have our concerns.”

Neighbors, who have long worked to get the wetland area along the creek preserved, said the dredging was something they had feared for some time.

“I was part of the effort of trying to get this put into open space five years ago,” said Julia Pollock, who lives nearby. “When we heard the property was going up for sale we hoped it would get the ball rolling to protect it, but although the open space district was interested the asking price from the seller was higher than they wanted to pay and so nothing happened.”

She said the property had been bought about a year and a half earlier by from the previous, long-time owner, Harrison Rued, who ran cattle on the land.

“This area and its flora and fauna are unique to this area,” said Pollock, “and if you tried to mitigate it, you couldn’t do it elsewhere. The whole riparian corridor is part of a chain, we were hoping to save it as the next jewel in the crown but it didn’t happen.”