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Tuesday, March 19, 2024
March 19, 2024

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Judge upholds water for Klamath salmon

But federal agency warned to bolster case in future

The Columbian
Published:

GRANTS PASS, Ore. — A federal judge ruled Wednesday that a federal water agency did not violate the law when it made special reservoir releases last year to help salmon in Northern California’s Klamath River survive the drought, rather than save it for farms.

But U.S. District Judge Lawrence J. O’Neill in Fresno, Calif., wrote in his ruling Wednesday that the next time the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation wants to release Trinity Reservoir water for Klamath River salmon, it needs to cite a better legal authority.

The Westlands Water District and the San Louis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority in the San Joaquin Valley had sued the bureau to stop the releases, arguing the water should have been saved for farms facing the drought. Irrigation has been shut off to farms in the region this year.

As the drought continued this year, the bureau again made special releases for Klamath salmon, which the judge also refused to stop, finding that the potential harm from drought to salmon right now was greater than the potential harm to farms next year.

The Trinity River is the biggest tributary of the Klamath River, where tens of thousands of adult salmon died from disease in low water conditions in 2002. Since the 1960s, a major portion of the water from Trinity Reservoir has been diverted to the Central Valley Project, where it helps to irrigate farms. The 1955 law authorizing the diversion contains a provision that the government maintain a minimum flow in the Trinity River to sustain fish and wildlife.

In the 1984, another law was enacted to restore fish and wildlife in the Trinity to a level roughly equivalent to those before so much water was diverted to Central Valley farms.

Decision praised

Judge O’Neill wrote that the bureau had not violated any laws in making the special releases for salmon, but the authority of the 1955 law — the only authority cited by the bureau — only applied to the Trinity River, and not the Klamath River downstream.

The ruling as praised by Indian tribes and salmon fishermen who have been pressing the bureau to devote more of the Klamath Basin’s scarce water to fish.

“Straight up, if the Bureau of Reclamation did not make the decision to augment flows on the Klamath, we would be right now cleaning up thousands of salmon carcasses on the river,” Yurok Tribal Chairman Thomas P. O’Rourke said in a statement.

Earthjustice attorney Jan Hasselman, who represented salmon fishermen and the Yurok Tribe as interveners in the case, said the lack of a specific authority for the releases was a technicality which the bureau should have no trouble overcoming in the future.

A lawyer for Westlands, the nation’s largest water provider, did not respond to a telephone call and email seeking comment.

Bureau spokeswoman Erin Curtis said the agency had not reviewed the ruling, and had no immediate comment.

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