Pyramid Lake was a vital fishery for thousands of years, but
the tribe had no legal rights to Truckee River water until 1908
when the U.S. Supreme Court determined that when the federal
government established Indian reservations it implicitly
reserved sufficient land and water to serve its purpose and
that non-Indians could not interfere with a tribe’s reserved
water. The precedent-setting decision also recognized prior
appropriation rights for Western tribes.The court’s opinion
gave the Paiute the most senior claims on Truckee River dating
back to 1859 when land for the Pyramid Lake Indian
Reservation was first set aside.
Many rely on the Klamath River Basin on the California border,
especially with the historic drought in the West. Things got
heated this summer between the area’s tribes and ranchers.
… Over the past week, our colleagues over at The
Indicator have been reporting on the historic drought in the
West. They spent some time with ranchers on the front lines,
including the Klamath River Basin. Sally Herships and Ashley
Ahearn report.
The Bureau of Reclamation began releasing water from the
Klamath River to Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge on
Friday afternoon. Advocates hope it will improve wetland
habitat on the refuge for migrating birds this fall. Last
week, California Waterfowl Association officially purchased
approximately 3,750 acre-feet of water from Agency Ranch in the
Wood River Valley, above Upper Klamath Lake, having announced
the purchase and fundraising effort this spring.
The Caldor fire has triggered mass evacuations in two
states, torched hundreds of homes, made the air hazardous to
breathe and spurred President Biden to issue an emergency
declaration. But the erratic wildfire is also causing
another problem for Lake Tahoe: Smoke and ash particles are
entering the lake and clouding its world-famous crystal blue
waters.
Nicole Horseherder lives in Hard Rock, Ariz., population 53.
Hard Rock sits on the Black Mesa, which takes its name from the
numerous coal seams running through the plateau in western
Arizona. Horseherder’s home has no running water, as it
is prohibitively expensive to drill down to the nearest aquifer
that has potable water. Twice a week, she drives her
20-year-old, three-quarter-ton GMC pickup—towing a 500-gal.
tank mounted on a flatbed trailer—to a community well 25 miles
away. Coal and water have dominated
Horseherder’s life and work for the past decade.
As Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge’s last remaining
wetland reduces to a mud puddle, California Waterfowl
Association’s efforts to secure a meager supply of water for
the refuge have cleared a regulatory hurdle. On Thursday, the
Oregon Water Resources Department accepted CWA’s application to
transfer several thousand acre-feet of water from a willing
Wood River Valley rancher to the refuge’s Unit 2.
It’s been a tough year for the Klamath River. The Klamath,
which flows through Oregon and Northern California and into the
Pacific Ocean, is suffering from drought and infrastructure
problems. That’s caused trouble, not just for the fish in the
river, but also for the tribes and farmers who rely on it for
day-to-day living. Drought conditions are so bad this year that
the U.S. Department of Agriculture allocated $15 million to
support farmers who don’t have enough water for their crops.
Klamath Basin tribes are also struggling to feed their people,
but so far they haven’t received such support.
The growing threat of catastrophic wildfires blazing across the
West and the resulting detrimental effects, such as hazardous
air quality, were top of mind for Nevada and California leaders
gathered on a slightly hazy shore Thursday morning for the 25th
annual Lake Tahoe Summit. Before speakers launched into
remarks on climate change, wildfires, infrastructure and
legislation aimed at preserving the popular year-round tourist
destination, Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California Chairman
Serrell Smokey began with a prayer.
The heightened need for handwashing during the pandemic posed a
challenge for the many homes without water. For many years, the
rugged topography and remoteness of the Navajo Nation made
piping water to homes challenging. Since 2003, IHS and a
network of partners have reduced the number of Navajo homes
without water access from 30 percent to 20 percent. New funding
from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES)
Act provided the Navajo Area IHS with $5.2 million, targeted
specifically to increasing water access on the Navajo Nation.
For those who live on the Klamath River, its health
reflects the people, positioning us on the precipice of life or
death. The Klamath is magical and meandering, a river
surrounded by towering redwoods and mountains. But the
controversy over its water has lasted for decades, and the big
questions — whether to remove four dams, who gets the water
during drought years — often put farmers and Natives at odds.
Prickly pear cactuses used by Indigenous peoples to make the
popular Mexican and Southwestern nopales are shriveling in an
increasingly hot and dry southern Sonoran Desert.
Ancestral lands along the California coast may soon be
underwater, rendering them worthless to many Native peoples,
including the Salinan, Chumash, Tongva and Ajechemem, even
as other lands burn in ever-larger wildfires. Some salmon
species teeter on the brink of extinction due to drought and
diverted water, while elsewhere, people and homes are
swept away on a brown tsunami-like wave of floodwaters.
Another dry year is the last thing the suckers need. Two
species of the bottom-feeding sucker fish that inhabit the
Upper Klamath Lake and nearby rivers are struggling to survive
after a century of water management in the Klamath Basin has
all but drained the wetlands ecosystem where these fish once
thrived. … Now, the suckers are on the brink of
extinction. During the past century, wetlands surrounding
Upper Klamath Lake were converted to farmland, while waters
from the basin were allocated to irrigators.
Green algae blobs choke handmade gill nets that should be
filled with salmon. The Klamath River is warming, heated by
drought and dams, and that allows the algae to thrive, making
it harder and harder to catch fish. Some days, Yurok tribal
members capture nothing but green goop. … Warming conditions
have also encouraged the spread of Ceratonova shasta, which
infected 97% of juvenile salmon in the Klamath last spring,
killing 70%.
When Father Eusebio Kino, a Jesuit priest and explorer for the
Spanish crown, came into what is now southern Arizona from
Mexico in 1692, he was greeted by irrigated farms sprawling
incongruously across the Sonoran Desert. The Tohono O’odham,
among the first tribes Kino encountered near what is now
Tucson, and others had been growing crops along Arizona’s
waterways for thousands of years.
Anti-government activists seemed primed for a violent clash
with federal authorities this summer in the Klamath Basin along
the California-Oregon border. The federal Bureau of Reclamation
had shut off water for most of the region’s 1,400 farms,
denying access to the same irrigation canal in Klamath Falls,
Ore., where during a drought two decades earlier, activists
tried to pry open its headgates and clashed with U.S.
marshals.
There will undoubtedly always be some folks who believe the
myth that building new dams and reservoirs will be a silver
bullet that solves California’s water supply challenges.
The reality, of course, is that California already has
constructed nearly 1,400 dams and reservoirs, and compared to
the excessive and unsustainable demand for water in our state,
new dams and reservoirs provide little water – at high
cost. And of course, most dams and reservoirs have had
devastating impacts on our native fish and wildlife, and the
Tribes, fishing jobs, and communities that depend on their
health.
Seventeen-year-old Danielle Rey Frank was first drawn to
activism in the sixth grade. As a member of the Hoopa Valley
Tribe in what is now Humboldt County, California, she grew up
on the Trinity River, which isn’t just a part of her Tribe’s
food systems and livelihood, it’s also a sacred place that’s
central to their ceremonies and traditions. The Trinity and
other area rivers have been consistently under threat from
pipeline projects, along with rising water temperatures,
pollution, and fish kills due to damming and water diversions
from reservoirs and tunnels.
When Bureau of Reclamation water managers decided not to
perform a surface flush of the Klamath River this year, they
knew there might be an explosion of a parasite that could all
but wipe out salmon populations. That’s exactly what
happened in northern California, where the Yurok Tribe depends
on fishing for income and food. Salmon are also an important
part of their culture. On the first Friday in
June … Barry McCovey, director of the Yurok Tribe’s
fisheries department, and his colleagues, fished 361 dead
juvenile Chinook salmon out of a monitoring trap on the Klamath
River.
They are land rich and resource poor. Most have hundreds of
acres of fertile soil, some thousands, but little money in the
bank and – most importantly – no water. Now the young farmers
of the Klamath Basin, an agricultural community on the border
of Oregon and California, fear they might be the last
generation of their kind. … The area has struggled with
water scarcity for years – but this year has been unlike any
other. Amid a historic drought, in May the federal government
cut off all irrigation to farmers for the first time in more
than a century…
A deeply troubled group of high-ranking state officials, tribal
leaders, environmentalists and fishermen met July 27 to discuss
the triple whammy that is threatening some species of Pacific
salmon with extinction — a combination of record-breaking heat,
drought and disastrous federal water policies — particularly
those of the Trump administration, which drained mountain
reservoirs of cold water, sending it to the Central Valley.
A developer has withdrawn two of the three proposals to
build a series of hydroelectric dams in the Little Colorado
River watershed, projects that had drawn opposition from
several tribes and environmentalists. Phoenix-based Pumped
Hydro Storage LLC relinquished preliminary permits
for the Salt Trail Canyon and Little
Colorado River proposals on July 26. … The
company left in place an application for a third
proposal in nearby Big Canyon.
If you’ve gone north out of Klamath Falls on Highway 97 in the
last month, you might have seen the construction project on the
southeast side of Upper Klamath Lake. The Oregon Department of
Transportation is partnering with the Klamath tribes to restore
40 acres of former wetland into fresh habitat suitable for
native flora and fauna including C’waam and Kaptu, two species
of endangered suckerfish endemic to Klamath Lake. ODOT is
involved with the project as part of their wetland restoration
offset program.
Once upon a time, a rich wetland flourished, nurtured by the
tidal waters of San Francisco Bay. Sunrise crowned the
glistening shoreline of a pristine channel of water that came
to be known as Yosemite Slough. The word Yosemite originates
from the native Miwok word for grizzly bear. Yosemite
Slough was a marshland, a nesting area for migrating birds
along the Pacific Flyway and a sanctuary for endangered
mammals. … Yosemite Slough originated in the lakes of
McLaren Park streaming east through the Portola and Bayview
Districts to enter San Francisco Bay. This is called a
watershed.
In late June, Simon Martinez drove along one of the dirt roads
crisscrossing the parched rocky shrubland on the Ute Mountain
Ute Tribe Farm & Ranch Enterprise, a 7,700-acre agricultural
operation owned by the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe in the far
southwestern corner of Colorado. In normal times, he would be
driving past giant circular fields of corn and alfalfa
irrigated by 110 rotating sprinklers called pivots. But most of
the fields are barren this year, casualties of an unprecedented
drought — “the worst in 30 years,” said Martinez …
The plan to remove four Klamath River dams checked another box
on Tuesday as Oregon utility regulators signed off on
transferring ownership of the dams from Portland-based
PacifiCorp to the nonprofit that will carry out the project.
Oregon Public Utility Commission staff found that a
cost/benefit analysis from 2010 “remains valid, and still
reflects a public interest in the removal of the dams as
compared to the costs and risks of relicensing.” The project,
billed as the largest dam removal in U.S. history, is expected
to cost $450 million…
A bill recently introduced in the U.S. Senate aims to provide
billions of dollars to improve access to clean water in tribal
lands. One of the senators who introduced the bill, Sen.
Michael Bennet, D-Colo., wrote in the foreword of a report
about tribal water access within the Colorado River Basin that
one estimate states 48% of households within tribal lands lack
clean water or sufficient sanitation.
Ben DuVal knelt in a barren field near the California-Oregon
state line and scooped up a handful of parched soil as dust
devils whirled around him and birds flitted between empty
irrigation pipes. DuVal’s family has farmed the land for three
generations, and this summer, for the first time ever, he and
hundreds of others who rely on irrigation from a depleted,
federally managed lake aren’t getting any water from it at all.
… [T]his summer there is simply not enough, and the
farmers, tribes and wildlife refuges that have long competed
for every drop now face a bleak and uncertain future together.
Baby salmon are dying by the thousands in one California river,
and an entire run of endangered salmon could be wiped out in
another. Fishermen who make their living off adult salmon, once
they enter the Pacific Ocean, are sounding the alarm as
blistering heat waves and extended drought in the U.S. West
raise water temperatures and imperil fish from Idaho to
California. Hundreds of thousands of young salmon
are dying in Northern California’s Klamath River as
low water levels brought about by drought allow a parasite to
thrive, devastating a Native American tribe whose diet and
traditions are tied to the fish.
The Klamath water rights issue dates back decades and is as
complex and nuanced as it is lengthy but when boiled down it
seems to come back to one primal animal instinct that all
living beings share: to ensure the survival of our spawn. For
the Lost River and Shortnose Suckerfish in the Klamath basin,
that continuum was disturbed somewhere along the line. The
adult fish are healthy but aging while their spawn has been
failing to thrive. Pending on their survival are the identity,
traditions, culture, and livelihood of the Klamath tribes.
Much of the infrastructure talk in Washington these days
focuses on large, complicated projects involving tunnels,
bridges and highways. But there is a much more basic matter
involving infrastructure that also merits attention: the need
to provide clean water to the more than half a million Native
Americans who lack the sort of water and sanitation services
that other Americans take for granted.
– Written by Bidtah Becker, an associate
attorney for the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority, and Anne
Castle, senior fellow at the Getches-Wilkinson Center for
Natural Resources, Energy and the Environment at the University
of Colorado and former assistant secretary for water and
science at the U.S. Interior Department.
It’s a strange place to find fish, deep in the high desert,
where drought-baked earth butts against scrubby mountains. But
water spews from the hot springs on Ron Barnes’ land near the
California-Oregon border, pure and perfect for rearing c’waam
and koptu, two kinds of endangered suckerfish sacred to Native
American tribes. Barnes, who holds an advanced degree in
aquaculture from UC Davis, has dug dozens of ponds on his
property and filled them with thousands of young suckerfish.
A 500 MW pumped energy storage project proposed jointly by the
City of San Diego and the San Diego County Water Authority
received $18 million in the California state budget. The
support will help fund the San Vicente Energy Storage
Facility through initial design, environmental reviews,
and the federal licensing process. The project … could
generate revenue to help offset the cost of water purchases,
storage, and treatment.
Through her new documentary, “Where There Once Was Water,”
Brittany App introduces innovative ways to conserve water,
restore ecosystems, and reconsider our relationship with the
natural world. The film follows her venturing through
California and the Southwest in search of people practicing
wise water management.
Joey Gentry hesitates before she drives through the fields of
alfalfa and wheat that line the roads in the Klamath
Basin. ”It’s not safe for Natives to be out in farmland
during a drought year,” [Gentry said.] Like much of the
American West, this dry, hilly, high-elevation landscape
straddling the California-Oregon border is experiencing a
summer of extreme drought. But when the federal government
announced in May that, for the first time ever, it would cut
irrigation water to about 180,000 acres of agriculture in the
basin, tensions ignited between farmers and the Klamath tribes.
With the west in extreme drought, Lake Mead, fed by the
Colorado River and formed by the Hoover Dam, reached historic
lows in June. The water level continues to fall, continuing a
trend that began more than 20 years ago. The Federal government
is expected to declare a water shortage in the lower basin of
the Colorado River by 2022 at the latest, which will trigger
mandatory water cuts in Arizona and Nevada. These cuts will
particularly impact farmers. But they are likely to hit
indigenous communities particularly hard …
Late at night beneath a star-studded sky, surrounded by the
Sierra Nevada and the White Mountains, circles of mourners sang
and stamped their feet in the dust. The cry dance honored Harry
Williams, Nüümü (Bishop Paiute) elder and internationally
recognized expert in the ancestral water systems of Payahuunadü
— Owens Valley. In his lifetime, Williams was responsible for
recovering knowledge of his tribe’s traditional irrigation
networks and water practices, strengthening the Paiute’s claims
for water rights in Owens Valley.
The lower Klamath River and the redwoods, which grow nowhere
else on Earth, are at the heart of Yurok culture. The tribe’s
reservation follows the river for its last 44 miles and extends
one mile from each bank, just broad enough to accommodate
dozens of tiny, remote villages and the modest town of Klamath
along the 101. The west end of the reservation is surrounded
by Redwood National and State Parks. I wanted quality
time on the water and under tall trees, but I also wanted to
learn more about a people who were navigating this river
thousands of years before the first Gold Rush prospectors
reached California.
Today the Karuk Tribe filed a formal petition with the
California State Water Resources Control Board demanding that
it use its emergency powers to curtail water use in the Scott
River to prevent the extinction of the Southern Oregon-
Northern California Coho Salmon (Coho). … The Scott
River is home to most of the native Coho salmon left
in the Klamath Basin. Coho were added to the endangered species
list in 1997. While federal agencies have forced water users on
the federal Klamath Irrigation Project along the
California/Oregon border to allow downstream flows to protect
the fish, other water users’ impacts have been ignored.
Except for a brief stint in the military, Paul Crawford has
spent his entire life farming in southern Oregon. First,
as a boy, chasing his dad through hayfields and now, growing
alfalfa on his own farm with his wife and two kids, who want to
grow up to be farmers. … The American west is drying out
as the region faces an unprecedented drought. Few places
are as devastated as the Klamath Basin, where Crawford’s farm
sits. Straddling the border between California and Oregon, the
watershed spans 12,000sq miles – from agricultural lands fed by
Upper Klamath Lake to tribal communities surrounding the
Klamath River.
For thousands of years, an Arizona tribe relied on the Colorado
River’s natural flooding patterns to farm….Now, gravity sends
the river water from the north end of the Colorado River Indian
Tribes reservation through 19th century canals to sustain
alfalfa, cotton, wheat, onions and potatoes, mainly by flooding
the fields. Some of those fields haven’t been producing lately
as the tribe contributes water to prop up Lake Mead to help
weather a historic drought in the American West…. As
Arizona faces mandatory cuts next year in its Colorado River
supply, the tribes see themselves as major players in the
future of water.
Vineyards, towns and roads have transformed the landscape, but
one thing hasn’t changed since the days when indigenous people
camped alongside the Napa River. Water is still, after
all these years, life. Descendants of the Pomo, Mishewal
Wappo and other native peoples gathered at Wappo Park on Sunday
to pay tribute to the Napa River through speech, song and
prayer.
A project to generate electricity in the Little Colorado River
Basin may have stalled. Conservation groups were concerned
when a Phoenix-based company proposed building dams on the
Navajo Nation to generate electricity. Their concerns grew last
year, when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a
preliminary permit for feasibility studies. But the
company has missed deadlines that would move the project
forward. … The company has also failed to receive
approval for the project from the Navajo Nation, which would be
a critical step in the process.
In the drought-stricken Klamath Basin along the
California-Oregon border, water is precious. This year, Native
American tribes and farmers are competing for this shrinking
resource. It’s an indicator of future water wars in the West.
Jefferson Public Radio’s Erik Neumann explains.
At almost 30 miles long, Upper Klamath Lake is the home to
several types of fish that live only here. Two of them are
called C’waam and Koptu in the Klamath Tribes’ traditional
language or, in English, the Lost River and shortnose sucker.
They have a stubby face and wide lips, and can live to be
50-years-old. … In recent years, the juvenile fish have been
dying, causing the overall population to crash. Five years ago,
when Gonyaw started working for the tribes, there were about
20,000 shortnose suckers in the lake. Estimates today put them
at just 3,400. The Lost River sucker is disappearing at a
similar rate.
For the first time ever, an official Colorado River Tier 1
Shortage is expected to be declared starting January 1, 2022.
The announcement comes from the Bureau of Reclamation in August
based on projections for Lake Mead water levels for the
following January. The shortage declaration means reduced water
for some stakeholders who receive water from the Central
Arizona Project (CAP); those stakeholders who receive a portion
of their water from CAP include municipalities, agriculture,
tribes, and others.
Environmental Defense Fund, Business for Water Stewardship
and the National Audubon Society today announced that
corporations and foundations have committed the funding to
close an $8 million funding gap required to complete a landmark
water conservation project with the Colorado River Indian
Tribes (CRIT) and the state of Arizona.
An ongoing fish kill has been plaguing the Klamath River since
early May. The Klamath flows through Oregon and northern
California, and like many water sources in the West, has seen
water levels drop considerably due to extreme drought. A lower
river means a slower and warmer river, which is what some
parasites need to thrive. The parasite C.Shasta is expected to
kill off nearly all of this year’s juvenile Chinook salmon in
the Klamath.
California is home to 109 federally recognized tribes—more than
any other state—and several more are petitioning for federal
recognition. The US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) is
responsible for regulating water quality on tribal lands, while
the State Water Board regulates water quality for other water
systems. According to USEPA’s ECHO database, 88 tribal water
systems in California serve more than 160,000 people.
Unfortunately, some Native American communities lack access to
safe drinking water.
As the federal government prepares to declare a first-ever
water shortage at Lake Mead, Arizona state leaders, Native
American tribes, and philanthropic and corporate foundations
are stepping up to help conserve water. This week, these
entities committed to funding an $8 million gap to complete a
landmark water conservation project with the Colorado River
Indian Tribes and the state of Arizona.
For decades, an agonizing war over [water] has divided
indigenous people and the descendants of settlers of [the
Klamath basin], which like much of the American West, is now
plagued by drought. Family farmers often describe the conflict
as one that pits them against federal bureaucrats who protect
the suckerfish, imperiled as the lake grows more inhospitable.
That portrayal, say members of the tribes, dismisses a tougher
truth … about race, equity and generational trauma to a
people whose history includes slaughter, forced removal of
children, federal termination of their tribal status and loss
of land …
In April of 2017, PGE began moving forward with its plans to
relicense the Potter Valley Project (PVP)—with, as of yet, no
designs to remove any of the infrastructure—and in August of
2019, Congressman Jared Huffman created the PVP Ad Hoc
Committee, a Two Basin Solution for the Eel and Russian River
basins, whose more than 20 members were tasked with the
relicensing process of the PVP to improve fisheries and fish
migration, minimize adverse impacts to water supply
reliability, respect tribal rights and minimize and mitigate
adverse impacts to Lake County including Lake Pillsbury.
Lake Powell’s water level is the lowest it’s been in decades,
and the latest 24-month projections from the Arizona and Utah
reservoir show that it’s likely to drop even further — below a
critical threshold of 3,525 feet by next
year. A 20-year megadrought and a hotter climate
has contributed to shrinking water supplies in the
Colorado River. If Lake Powell’s levels continue to dwindle, it
could set off litigation between the seven states and the 40
million people that all rely on the Colorado River.
[T]he problem goes way beyond grazing. Dozens of tributaries
and hundreds of springs feed Upper Klamath Lake, supplying
plenty of good, clean water. A century of mismanagement has
caused erosion of high phosphorus soils that accumulate in the
bottom of Upper Klamath Lake. Now, annual algae blooms kill
entire generations of young endangered fish every year.
… All the problems in the Upper Klamath Lake flow
downstream, affecting endangered salmon in the Klamath River as
it runs to the Pacific Ocean. The Karuk, a Klamath River tribe,
are worried that this could be another year marked by a
historic fish kill.
A proposal to bring down four hydroelectric dams near the
California-Oregon border cleared a major regulatory hurdle
Thursday, setting the stage for the largest dam demolition
project in U.S. history to save imperiled migratory salmon.
The Bureau of Reclamation announced that Carly Jerla will lead
the Department of the Interior’s efforts, as a senior water
resources program manager, to develop updated operating
rules for Colorado River reservoirs. The Colorado River
sustains ecosystems and economies across the southwestern
United States and northwestern Mexico. A number of operating
rules and agreements within the United States and with the
Republic of Mexico expire at the end of 2025.
Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced
selections under two Clean Water Act (CWA) grant programs to
support leadership of Tribes in protecting and restoring water
resources. The agency anticipates awarding approximately $3
million to 18 Tribal nations and one Intertribal organization
under the Tribal Wetland Program Development Grant competition
and an additional $3 million in CWA Section 319 Tribal
Competitive Grants to 32 Tribal nations to support projects to
manage nonpoint source pollution.
Lucía Laguna carries her fate tattooed on her face — from the
corner of her mouth to her chin, black lines surf across her
coppery skin — the tribal art honoring her people will also
serve an important function later on. … But under the
merciless sun, Laguna, 51, worries about the fate of the river
and its impact on the Cucapá, her Indigenous people. A searing
drought is exacerbating the deadly heat in a region that long
ago saw its river flow diminished, after almost a century of
U.S. engineering projects, as well as a focus on water for
agriculture.
The water [that Utah] plans to tap for the Lake Powell pipeline
was previously promised to the Ute Indian Tribe, which is now
suing to get back its water and asserting that the
misappropriation is one of a decades-long string of racially
motivated schemes to deprive it of its rights and property.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland released a letter Friday to
the Federal Energy Regulatory Committee in support of Klamath
dam removal. … The four hydroelectric dams clogging the
Klamath River are slated to be removed in 2023 under an
agreement forged between the states of California and Oregon,
the dams’ owner PacifiCorp and the Karuk and Yurok tribes. And
Haaland’s letter comes as conditions in the Klamath River Basin
are the worst they’ve been in years due to drought conditions.
Tricia Hill tears up when she talks about the emotional toll
the water shut-off in southern Oregon has had on her family.
Amid historic, climate change-driven drought, the federal
government in May shut down the water supply from the Upper
Klamath Basin on the California-Oregon border to protect native
fish species on the verge of extinction. As a result, Hill and
other farmers like her in the region have been cut off from
water they have used for decades.
California’s drought highlights the importance of an
appointment sitting on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk – filling the
final seat on the State Water Resources Control
Board. This is a critical agency appointment at a
critical time. The drought highlights many inequities in
California water policy. Disadvantaged communities in Stockton
face the prospect of a drought summer plagued by harmful algae
blooms in Delta rivers. Those algae outbreaks, which can
harm children and kill pets, are caused by excessive nutrients
and inadequate freshwater flow. -Written by Belinda Faustina, a strategic advisor
with Los Angeles Waterkeeper, and Barbara
Barrigan-Parilla, the executive director of Restore the
Delta.
The Klamath Basin is suffering the worst drought in the state.
Competing need for the water by local tribes seeking to sustain
endangered fish populations, farmers and ranchers, and
commercial and tribal fisheries has been a persistent issue,
and has led to conflicts in the past. The Klamath Basin
Restoration Agreement, which took 10 years to plan, was a
turning point and a compromise for the parties needing access
to the water.
Fears of a confrontation between law enforcement and rightwing
militia supporters over the control of water in the
drought-stricken American west have been sparked by protests at
Klamath Falls in Oregon. Protesters affiliated with rightwing
anti-government activist Ammon Bundy’s People’s Rights Network
are threatening to break a deadlock over water management in
the area by unilaterally opening the headgates of a reservoir.
Tribes and environmental advocates fear flows along the Klamath
River could be reduced to a trickle if the State Water
Resources Control Board doesn’t take action on water use
upstream on the Scott and Shasta rivers. Andy Marx, board
president of Friends of the Shasta River, said the river
“virtually dried up” over Memorial Day weekend as a result of
excessive irrigation diversions.
According to U.S. Congressman Jay Obernolte’s (R-Hesperia)
office, last Tuesday, June 1, he introduced a bill, HR 3649,
titled the Mono Lake Kutadika’a Paiute Tribal Recognition Act
that would grant federal recognition to the Mono Lake
Kutzadika’a tribe as a distinct Native American Tribe. The
legislation was originally introduced by former Rep. Paul Cook.
The bill would address the tribe’s decades-long struggle for
indigenous sovereignty and would afford them the services,
benefits, and rights provided to federally recognized tribes,
says the communique.
They were expert hunters, gatherers and basket weavers who
lived for thousands of years on a trade route over the Sierra
Nevada connecting them with the rest of California. The modern
history of the Mono Lake Kutzadika Paiute people is told mostly
through economic hardship, displacement and a 150-year fight
for federal recognition as a distinct Native American tribe — a
step needed to establish a sovereign land base to call home.
This May, while collecting live fish for their annual aquatic
pathogen assessment on the Klamath River in Northern
California, Yurok Tribe biologists made a shocking discovery:
over 70 percent of the young, ocean-bound Chinook salmon
captured in their traps were dead. Almost all of the fish
tested upstream were infected with Ceratonova shasta, a
parasite that relies on both fish and annelid worms as hosts.
Barry McCovey, senior fisheries biologist for the Yurok Tribe,
expects most of the infected fish to die.
In response to record low precipitation in the Klamath Basin,
the Karuk Tribe has declared a state of emergency. This
emergency declaration acknowledges the reality that climate
change is upon us, and the dangers that it poses to rivers,
forests, wildlife and communities.
Tensions have been building in Klamath Falls in recent weeks
over a drought that is devastating farmland, fish deemed sacred
to native tribes, and wildlife. The Klamath Basin, along the
Oregon-California border, has a complex history. Drought and
fights over water aren’t new. Here are five things to know
about the unfolding Klamath water crisis:
The brewing battle over the century-old Klamath Project is an
early window into the water shortfalls that are likely to
spread across the West as a widespread drought, associated with
a warming climate, parches watersheds throughout the
region. In Nevada, water levels have dropped so
drastically in Lake Mead that officials are preparing for a
serious shortage that could prompt major reductions in Colorado
River water deliveries next year. In California, Gov. Gavin
Newsom has placed 41 counties under a state of emergency.
Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009,
NOAA funded 125 habitat restoration projects in coastal areas
throughout the country. Now, more than a decade later, we’re
taking a look back at some of the projects we funded. We’ll
explore the benefits this restoration work continues to bring
to communities and ecosystems across the country. … NOAA
partnered with the Yurok Tribe to restore habitat for
salmon and steelhead in Terwer Creek and McGarvey Creek,
tributaries to the Lower Klamath River.
In the summer of 2001, local farmers and other activists armed
with saws and blowtorches breached a chain-link fence and
opened the headgates of a federal canal that supplies farmland
in Oregon and far Northern California. Local farmer Grant Knoll
was among the activists there that year. The protesters forced
the gates open three times but were eventually blocked by U.S.
marshals. Now, with a drought just as severe as two decades ago
— and with farmers’ water again cut off — he’s prepared to
fight again.
A crippling drought — largely connected to climate change — is
gripping the Western United States, affecting over 70 million
people and around 40% of the U.S. … Farmers,
scientists, tribal officials, foresters and other groups
affected by the worsening drought testified at a House Natural
Resources Subcommittee on Water, Oceans and Wildlife hearing on
Tuesday, asking lawmakers for both short-term relief and
long-term solutions from the worsening conditions.
Twenty years after a shut-off of most irrigation water in the
parched Klamath Project brought the competing needs of farmers,
fishermen and tribes to a head, a new drought — and a fresh
federally-ordered water shut-off — is triggering a sense
of déjà vu. Now, two Klamath Project irrigators with
ties to radical activist Ammon Bundy have purchased private
property located next to the headgates of the “A” Canal in
Klamath Falls, which would normally deliver water to area
farms. And along with local members of the Oregon chapter of
People’s Rights, a group founded by Bundy in 2020, they’ve set
up an information center and gathering place to talk to the
public about the brewing water crisis in the Klamath Basin.
The water crisis along the California-Oregon border went from
dire to catastrophic this week as federal regulators shut off
irrigation water to farmers from a critical reservoir and said
they would not send extra water to dying salmon downstream or
to a half-dozen wildlife refuges that harbor millions of
migrating birds each year. In what is shaping up to be the
worst water crisis in generations, the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation said it will not release water this season into the
main canal that feeds the bulk of the massive Klamath
Reclamation Project, marking a first for the 114-year-old
irrigation system.
As it enters the Yurok Reservation, the Lower Klamath River is
as picturesque as it gets. Clear water rushes over gentle
rapids, framed by verdant hills and a cerulean sky. An
untrained eye would never notice the devastation beneath the
surface — save for the tiny fish floating lifeless in the
water. Over the past several weeks, an outbreak of the
parasite Ceratonova shasta has ripped through young
salmon throughout the lower reaches of the Klamath watershed.
Driven by high temperatures and low flows out of Iron Gate Dam,
the disease is resulting in what the Yurok Tribe is calling a
“catastrophic” fish kill.
What was already forecasted to be a historically bleak water
year in the Klamath Project has quickly become a living
nightmare for farms and ranches fighting for survival in the
drought-stricken basin. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation shut
down the Project’s A Canal for the entire irrigation season May
12 in response to worsening conditions — allotting zero surface
water from Upper Klamath Lake for thirsty crops and livestock.
It is the first time in more than a century the A Canal will
deliver no water. Meanwhile, irrigators are left to wonder how
they will pay the bills as fields turn to dust.
A group of protesters gathered at Sugarman’s Corner in downtown
Klamath Falls on Saturday, preparing to welcome a 25-car
caravan of mostly Klamath Tribal members calling for solutions
to the Klamath Basin’s water crisis. A man walked by the
demonstrators, eyeing their signs with statements like “Peace
and Healing in the Klamath Basin,” “Water Justice is Social
Justice” and “Undam the Klamath.”
A federal appeals court has rebuked the U.S. government for
failing to properly consider the interest of Native American
nations in developing allocation guidelines for the Colorado
River Basin’s waters and ordered it to prioritize obligations
assumed when it signed a treaty with the Navajo Nation in 1868.
The April 28 ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
may boost Native American negotiating clout as the basin’s
states ponder how to address impacts of ongoing drought in the
region.
The water crisis along the California-Oregon border went from
dire to catastrophic as federal regulators shut off irrigation
water to farmers from a critical reservoir and said they would
not send extra water to dying salmon downstream or to a
half-dozen wildlife refuges that harbor millions of migrating
birds each year. In what is shaping up to be the worst water
crisis in generations, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said it
will not release water this season into the main canal that
feeds the bulk of the massive Klamath Reclamation Project,
marking a first for the 114-year-old irrigation system.
The Biden administration will defend controversial water
delivery contracts to California farmers issued in the Trump
era, according to a court filing Wednesday, rejecting pleas
from a tribe and environmentalists to rescind them.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced Wednesday that
more than 1,000 farmers in the Klamath Basin will not receive
any reserved water from Upper Klamath Lake — a devastating
prospect for farmers who have already planted fields, hired
crews and made plans for the growing season ahead. … Farmers
in Klamath, Siskiyou and Modoc counties were already reeling
over the prospect of receiving less than 10% of their
allotment, or a total of 33,000 acre-feet of water. The
latest announcement feels “like a punch to the gut,” farmers
said …
Ben Tobin has questions about the Grand Canyon’s caves. The
University of Kentucky geologist started learning about caves
as a young man, in part because his mother was a geologist, and
a childhood fascination grew over time. … When he was in
college, an internship in Arkansas doing cave tours got him
hooked, and eventually his work brought him out West, to Grand
Canyon National Park. Tobin specializes in what’s known as
karst hydrology. These are underground systems made up of
soluble rock such as limestone. To Tobin, caves are like
another world, with blind animals, fossils and archeological
finds.
Only one week remains to register for our May 20 virtual
Lower
Colorado River Tour where you can hear directly
from experts offering a range of perspectives on the most
contested and meticulously managed river in the United
States. Practically every drop of water in the
Colorado River is already allocated, but pressure on the
hard-working river continues to grow from myriad sources —
increasing population, declining habitat and climate
change.
A riverbed that has been parched since the end of the
19th century — a portion of the historic lifeblood of the
Gila River Indian Community — is now coursing again with water,
luring things like cattails and birds back to its
shores. … The revival of this small segment of the
649-mile (1045-kilometer) Gila River, which has served the
tribes that make up the Gila River Indian Community — the
Akimel O’odham (Pima) and the Pee-Posh (Maricopa) — for roughly
2,000 years, was an added benefit of a grassroots
infrastructure overhaul, known as “managed aquifer recharge,”
or MAR, which aimed to restore the local groundwater
basin.
Reps. Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson, along with prominent
North Coast water managers and politicians gathered at a
virtual summit yesterday morning to discuss the severe drought
facing the North Coast and the entire state. At the summit (a
recording of which is available on YouTube), State Senator Mike
McGuire stated that the state legislature is moving forward on
a several billion dollar drought relief package, which would
include $1 billion in grants to help ratepayers and utilities
pay off back bills and $500 million to help smaller low income
communities develop enhanced drinking water supplies, among
other things (read the full list below).
A conflict over access to water in the Klamath Basin is
signaling the way climate change could play out across the
western United States. After a drier-than-normal spring,
farmers and indigenous tribes in the Klamath Basin are at odds
over water in Upper Klamath Lake. According to the U.S. Drought
Monitor, the Klamath Basin is experiencing “extreme drought,”
… Centuries ago, the area was wetlands; but in the early
20th century, the land was opened up to agriculture. Members of
the Klamath Tribes say tree removal and drainage hastened
drying as the climate warmed.
On Friday, a coalition of conservation groups, fishing
organizations, stakeholders in the Delta, and the Winnemem
Wintu Tribe sent this letter to the Biden Administration,
urging the Administration not to endorse the so-called
“Voluntary Agreements” for the Bay-Delta watershed.
Unfortunately, the State of California continues to negotiate
backroom deals with the biggest water users in the State that
fail to protect and restore water quality in the
Bay-Delta, threatening thousands of fishing jobs, farms and
communities in the Delta, and the health of this watershed and
its native fish and wildlife.
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed a clear connection between
access to clean water and public health, according to Navajo
tribal member Bidtah Becker. Becker is part of a group called
the Water & Tribes Initiative that advocates for water access
in Indian Country. She said the pandemic has made it easier to
ask Congress for money to solve the problem.
At a rare joint meeting between all three of their leadership
boards, Klamath, Siskiyou and Modoc Counties discussed ways to
support agricultural communities during the Klamath Basin’s
historic drought this year. Farmers and ranchers in the Klamath
Project will receive 33,000 acre-feet of water, less than 10%
of their normal allocation, more than a month later than
normal. Irrigators on tributaries to the Lower Klamath River,
like the Scott River, are also expecting water deliveries to be
curtailed during the summer.
Hear directly from a range of experts offering a variety of
perspectives on our May 20 virtual Lower Colorado River Tour as
they put into context the 20-plus year drought on what is the
most contested and meticulously managed river in the United
States. Among the experts featured are farmers, tribal
representatives, and managers from wildlife agencies, water
districts, the Bureau of Reclamation and others who will
discuss drought impacts, habitat projects, farming and
restoration efforts at the Salton Sea.
The federal government is strictly curtailing irrigation this
year in an attempt to protect endangered fish important to
Indigenous tribes. Farmers say this will make it all but
impossible to farm, while tribal groups say the plan doesn’t go
far enough to save their fisheries. In mid-April, a farming
region in southern Oregon began to release water from the
Klamath River into its irrigation canals. … [A]ccording to
the federal government, it was an illegal maneuver that could
further jeopardize the survival of multiple endangered species
and food sources important to Indigenous tribes and fisheries
in the region.
Phase 3C of the Lower Clear Creek Floodway Rehabilitation
Project has been completed, attracting fish and wildlife to new
habitats and people to new recreation opportunities. This phase
concludes the extensive and decades-long effort to restore more
than 2 miles of stream channel on Bureau of Land Management
property below Whiskeytown Dam. It was led by the Clear Creek
Technical Team, which includes BLM, Bureau of Reclamation, U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service, Yurok Tribe and other federal,
tribal, state, local agencies and stakeholders.
In 2021, access to running water and clean drinking water is a
given for most Americans. The Census Bureau has even considered
dropping a question on plumbing access from the U.S. census
questionnaire. But many of the nation’s tribes still lack
running water, access to clean water, and even flushing
toilets. Native American households are 19 times more likely
than white households to lack indoor plumbing, according to the
U.S. Water Alliance, and more likely to lack piped water
services than any other racial group. That problem is at an
inflection point for the Navajo Nation and 29 other tribes in
the Colorado River Basin, which stretches from the Rocky
Mountains to Mexico.
Seven years ago, after the fish died, Sarah Ryan decided she
couldn’t wait any longer for help. California at the time
was in the depths of its worst drought in the last millennium
and its ecosystems were gasping. For Ryan, the fish kill in
Clear Lake, the state’s second largest and the centerpiece of
Lake County, was the last straw. Ryan is the environmental
director for Big Valley Rancheria, a territory of the Big
Valley Band of Pomo Indians that sits on the ancient
lake’s western shore. She and others raised alarms for several
years about increasingly dire blooms of toxic
cyanobacteria.
A recent report looked into why Indigenous communities within
the Colorado River Basin are struggling to get clean, reliable
running water. A household in tribal lands is 19 times more
likely than a white household to not have indoor plumbing, and
during the pandemic this had catastrophic effects on some
Indigenous communities. According a 2019 report outlining the
action plan for closing the water access gap throughout the
United States, “race is the strongest predictor of water and
sanitation access,” and it’s Indigenous people who face this
problem most.
While most irrigators in the Upper Klamath Basin are enduring a
spring without surface water, canals in Klamath Drainage
District have been flowing since the middle of April. And KDD
says no laws were broken to make deliveries to its customers.
KDD opened the Ady and North canals on April 15, diverting
water from the Klamath River to serve its patrons. The Bureau
of Reclamation, whose operations plan for 2021 emphasized that
no water deliveries be made to the Klamath Project prior to May
15, sent a letter to KDD asking them to immediately cease the
diversions.
The Navajo Nation can pursue its lawsuit seeking to force the
federal government to secure water from the Colorado River for
the reservation, the Ninth Circuit said Wednesday, reversing a
lower court’s dismissal of the tribe’s breach of trust claim.
The tribe doesn’t seek a judge’s determination of its rights to
the river, which the Interior Department says would fall under
the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction, according to the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Instead, the tribe
seeks an order for Interior to determine the extent to which it
needs water, to develop a plan to secure…
In mid-April, a farming region in southern Oregon began to
release water from the Klamath River into its irrigation
canals. According to the local water authority, this was a
standard move to jumpstart the farming season during one of the
driest seasons in recent memory. But according to the federal
government, it was an illegal maneuver that could further
jeopardize the survival of multiple endangered species and food
sources important to Indigenous tribes and fisheries in the
region.
The competing needs of different protected fish species are
pitting the Klamath Tribes against the federal government in a
court battle with legal implications for Oregon irrigators. The
Klamath Tribes are seeking an injunction to scale back how much
water the federal government can release from Upper Klamath
Lake to the detriment of endangered sucker species that inhabit
it. … The bureau has prioritized flows in the Klamath
river to benefit threatened coho salmon, jeopardizing the
survival of the suckers by allowing the lake to fall below
levels needed to sustain them…
Along the Oregon-California border, the Klamath River Basin is
a crucial water source for Indigenous tribes, endangered
species, and farmers. This year, though, there is simply not
enough to go around. The Western US is enduring another
major drought, and the Klamath River Basin is at a historic
low. This resulted in different groups being forced to compete
and make their case for why water, now precious and scarce,
should be diverted to their needs. It’s a stark reminder of the
tough, no-win decisions that citizens will continue to face
amid the worsening climate crisis.
Humboldt State University’s Native American Studies Department
and Save California Salmon recently launched a spring webinar
series, “Traditional Ecological Knowledge,” a look at how
tribes’ traditional fisheries and fire management practices
could address environmental crises. As California prepares for
yet another year of drought, Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy,
department chair of Native American Studies at HSU, said local
tribes are concerned about the health of rivers.
Visit key infrastructure and environmental restoration
sites along the lower Colorado River during our online
tour May 20 of the iconic river as it weaves through the
Lower Basin states of California, Nevada and Arizona. Our
Lower Colorado
River Tour starts at Hoover Dam near Las Vegas and
stops at major agricultural regions, tourist
destinations and key wildlife areas such as the Salton Sea
and a wildlife refuge in Yuma, Ariz. resulting from a
tribal-city partnership.
Last Tuesday, American Rivers released its annual America’s
Most Endangered Rivers list for 2021. Because of a Trump-era
proposal to raise Shasta Dam, the group named northern
California’s McCloud River as the nation’s 7th most threatened
river. Over the past century, California has engineered the
structure of water capture and distribution in the state.
… During the Trump administration, then Secretary of the
Interior David Bernhardt advanced plans to increase the height
of Shasta Dam by 18.5 feet and to expand Shasta Lake by more
than 200 billion gallons.
The Klamath River Basin is in a dire situation this
year. The plan curtails irrigation diversions to less than
10% of demand while failing to meet the biological needs of
salmon and other fisheries downstream. … Reclamation also
announced $15 million in immediate aid to the Klamath Project
through the Klamath Project Drought Relief Agency, an
additional $3 million in technical assistance to Tribes for
ecosystem activities in the basin, as well as funding for
groundwater monitoring in the basin.
The Yurok Tribe has long faced state and federal policies meant
to eliminate its land base. Before American colonization and
conquest, the tribal territory stretched along what is now the
Northern California coast and inland within the Klamath River
watershed. The gold rush in the 1840s drew white
settlers West, where they killed tens of thousands of
Native people through forced displacement, enslavement, and
disease. In the 20th century, the Yurok continued to be denied
access to their land and water, leading to decades of
legal battles over fishing rights.
The Yurok Tribe said it’s sounding the alarm as culturally
invaluable salmon edge closer to extinction. The Yurok also
said it is canceling its commercial fishery for the fifth time
this year. Tribal officials said past water management
decisions and climate change have put Klamath river salmon
stocks at risk. The tribe said it’s gravely concerned about the
rapidly declining salmon stocks in the Klamath River
Basin … Tribal officials said [Reclamation's] plan
provides bare-minimum flows for imperiled Klamath salmon and
sucker fish populations.
Restoration flows will begin tomorrow, April 16, on the Trinity
River to help improve conditions after another critically dry
water year. A flow schedule based on the expected amount of
water available to support salmon restoration efforts on the
Trinity River is brought forward by the Trinity Management
Council each year. This week’s two-day schedule is slated to
increase daily average flows from 300 cubic feet per second to
1,300 cubic feet per second.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation delivered a gut-punch to Klamath
Project irrigators Wednesday, announcing a historically low
water allocation as the basin struggles with extreme drought.
Farms and ranches in the Project will receive an initial
allocation of just 33,000 acre-feet — the lowest total since
the shutdown of 2001 and barely 8% of historical demand. That
is dramatically lower than the bureau’s original estimate of
130,000 acre-feet based on hydrological conditions at the
beginning of March.
President Biden announced Wednesday that he will nominate Tommy
Beaudreau to be deputy secretary of the Interior Department,
ending a standoff between the White House and senators from
fossil-fuel-rich states who derailed the president’s first
choice. The selection of Beaudreau, an energy lawyer who was an
Obama administration official, came after Sens. Joe Manchin III
(D-W. V.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) objected to Elizabeth
Klein because of her past stance against fossil fuels.
Shasta Dam, which rises over 600 feet, flooded much of our
tribe’s homeland and inundated dozens of our sacred sites. It
stopped our salmon from reaching their spawning grounds. And by
holding back water when it is needed by the river, Shasta Dam
has driven our salmon to the brink of extinction. That threat
continues in the proposal to raise Shasta Dam. That project
would flood more of our sacred sites and further harm salmon.
The Trump administration made that project their top priority
water infrastructure project in the nation.
-Written by Caleen Sisk, the spiritual leader of the
Winnemem Wintu Tribe.
Hundreds of farmers who rely on a massive irrigation project
that spans the Oregon-California border learned Wednesday they
will get a tiny fraction of the water they need amid the worst
drought in decades, as federal regulators attempt to balance
the needs of agriculture against federally threatened and
endangered fish species that are central to the heritage of
several tribes. Oregon’s governor said the prolonged drought in
the region has the “full attention of our offices,” and she is
working with congressional delegates, the White House and
federal agencies to find relief for those affected.
The White House announced the intent to nominate several
officials to serve at the Department of the Interior, including
Tanya Trujillo as Assistant Secretary for Water and Science.
Trujillo is a water lawyer with more than 20 years of
experience working on complex natural resources management
issues and interstate and transboundary water agreements. She
most recently worked as a project director with the Colorado
River Sustainability Campaign. Before then, she served as the
Executive Director of the Colorado River Board of California.
There’s just one week left to register for our Water 101
Workshop, which offers a primer on the things you need to know
to understand California water. One of our most popular events,
this once-a-year workshop will be held as an engaging online
event on the afternoons of Thursday, April 22 and Friday,
April 23.
While the federal government sees the prospect of raising the
height of Shasta Dam as a way to increase water storage for a
thirsty California, the Winnemem Wintu of Shasta County see it
as a threat to their culture. It was a theme picked up
this week by American Rivers, a conservation group that named
the McCloud River one of America’s 10 most endangered rivers
because of the proposal to raise the height of Shasta Dam.
… Raising the height of the dam would raise the level of
the lake about 20 feet when full. It would also further
inundate about a third of a mile of the McCloud River …
Extreme drought conditions throughout the West are lowering
levels in the crucial water reservoir, Lake Mead. Scars of long
years of low precipitation are hard to go unnoticed at Lake
Mead, and the hot, dry summers have been felt for the last
several years in Arizona. 2020 was especially dry, with little
monsoon. Now, the West is in uncharted territory. Lake Mead is
projected to drop by several feet this year, from elevation
1,083 to about 1,068, according to officials with the Central
Arizona Project. The lake is hovering around 39 percent of its
full capacity.
[T]he 800 to 900 people in Tohatchi, and another 600 to 800 in
Mexican Springs, eight miles to the west, all depend on a
single well and single pump. If the pump running it fails,
or if the water level in it drops — both issues that have
troubled nearby Gallup this year — water will cut out for the
homes, the head-start center, the schools, the clinic, the
senior center, five churches, and the convenience store and gas
station. … [T]he Navajo Nation has waited more than a
century for pipes and water treatment plants that would bring
drinking water to all of its people while watching nearby
off-reservation cities and farms grow, swallowing up water from
the Colorado River Basin that the tribe has a claim to.
One of the worst droughts in memory in a massive agricultural
region straddling the California-Oregon border could mean steep
cuts to irrigation water for hundreds of farmers this summer to
sustain endangered fish species critical to local tribes. The
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees water allocations in
the federally owned Klamath Project, is expected to announce
this week how the season’s water will be divvied up after
delaying the decision a month.
With a salmonella outbreak in eight states already under
investigation by the Centers for Disease Control, officials are
watching in California for another disease that impacts
waterfowl. Botulism killed thousands of waterfowl and other
birds last year on two national wildlife refuges near the
border of California and Oregon. Some estimates were as high as
60,000 dead birds. The Lower Klamath Basin and Tule Lake
national wildlife refuges were among the first created more
than 100 years ago. Millions of waterfowl and shore birds,
along with songbirds, migrated along the Pacific Flyway into
the two refuges and beyond. Today, between severe
restrictions on water flowing into and out of the refuges
and a crippling drought that shows no sign of letting up,
the refuge marshes are going dry.
Robert (Bob) Anderson’s nomination as Solicitor of the
Department of the Interior was formally transmitted by the
White House to the United States Senate today. Bob
has served as Interior’s Principal Deputy Solicitor
since January 20, 2021. … For 20 years, Bob was a
law professor at the University of Washington and directed its
Native American Law Center. He has been the Oneida Indian
Nation Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School for the
past twelve years. He is a co-author and editor of the leading
federal Indian Law treatise, Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian
Law, and is a co-author of a leading textbook on American
Indian Law. He has extensive expertise and has published many
articles in the fields of natural resources law, water law, and
American Indian law.
The Colorado River Indian Tribes will receive $209,000 for
irrigation canal projects, Congressman Paul Gosar announced
Tuesday. The federal funds were awarded by the U.S. Department
of the Interior to help CRIT pay for canal lining. The project
is intended to help stop water seepage from the canal. CRIT
relies on the Colorado River as its primary source of water,
and water conserved with help the Tribes meet existing demand
during times of drought, Gosar said. The project will line
nearly 4,000 feet of the earthen canal with a membrane covered
in sprayed concrete. The stretch of canal has been identified
as having the most significant seepage rate of all 232 miles of
canals in the Colorado River Irrigation Project, according to
the Bureau of Reclamation.
State officials are putting farmers in south-central Arizona on
notice that the continuing drought means a “substantial cut” in
deliveries of Colorado River water is expected next year. A
joint statement issued Friday by the state Department of Water
Resources and the Central Arizona Project said an expected
shortage declaration “will result in a substantial cut to
Arizona’s share of the river, with reductions falling largely
to central Arizona agricultural users.” The Central Arizona
Project is an aqueduct system that delivers Colorado River
water to users in central Arizona and southern Arizona,
including farmers, cities and tribes.
President Biden announced the first components of his proposed
$2 trillion national infrastructure plan to rebuild failing,
aging, and outdated water, energy, transportation, and
communications systems. While the current information provides
only the broadest outlines of his proposals, and the details
will have to be worked out in specific legislation to be
debated in Congress, it is clearly the most ambitious plan to
have been put forward in many years.
In recent years, the Wiyot Tribe in Northern California secured
ownership of its ancestral lands and is working to restore its
marine habitats; the nearby Yurok Tribe fought for the removal
of dams along the Klamath River and has plans to reconnect with
salmon, its traditional food source; and the Quapaw Nation in
Oklahoma has cleaned up contaminated land to make way for
agriculture and cattle businesses.
The Fort Yuma-Quechan Indian Tribe is situated at a nexus in
the Colorado River Basin. That’s true in a geographic sense.
The tribe’s reservation overlays the Arizona-California border
near Yuma, Arizona. The two states are heavily reliant on water
from the Colorado River. The reservation also abuts the
U.S.-Mexico border where the river flows into Mexico for use in
cities and on farms. One of the river’s largest irrigation
projects, the All-American Canal, was dug through the tribe’s
land, and flows from the reservation’s northeastern boundary to
its far southwestern corner, on its way to irrigate crops in
California’s Imperial Valley. The confluence of the Colorado
River and one of its historically important tributaries, the
Gila River, is nearby.
Updated water supply allocations announced last week would
still drain upstream reservoirs in order to deliver 4.5 million
acre feet of water to the contractors of the federal Central
Valley Project (CVP) and State Water Project (SWP), devastating
fish and wildlife. This week, the fisheries biologists at the
National Marine Fisheries Service projected that these planned
operations are likely to result in lethal water temperatures
that will kill 89% of endangered winter-run Chinook salmon
below Shasta Dam this year. This mortality estimate is even
worse than what was observed in 2014 and 2015, when salmon
populations were devastated by warm water in their spawning
grounds.
Arizona tribal officials told a Senate committee Wednesday that
the federal government can help address a crisis with water
infrastructure on their lands through more funding, and less
meddling. Navajo Department of Water Resources Director Jason
John and Colorado River Indian Tribes Chairwoman Amelia Flores
made the comments during a Senate Indian Affairs Committee
hearing on water infrastructure for Native communities. Leaders
of Oregon and Alaska tribes also testified at the
hearing.
A showdown is looming on the Colorado River. The river’s
existing management guidelines are set to expire in 2026. The
states that draw water from it are about to undertake a new
round of negotiations over the river’s future, while it’s
facing worsening dry conditions due in part to rising
temperatures. That means everyone with an interest in the
river’s future — tribes, environmentalists, developers,
business groups, recreation advocates — is hoping a new round
of talks will bring certainty to existing water supplies and
demands.
Colorado Governor Jared Polis and Dan Gibbs, executive
director, Colorado Department of Natural Resources, announced
recently the establishment of a Water Equity Task Force to
better understand existing equity, diversity and inclusivity
(EDI) challenges in Colorado water issues and inform the
Colorado Water Plan. … The 2005 Water for the 21st Century
Act (HB 05-1177) ushered in a new area of regionally inclusive
and collaborative water planning. That spirit was further
codified in the 2015 Colorado Water Plan, which ensured that
all water uses in Colorado are interconnected and of equal
value.
[I]t was with some surprise that last year Warren Buffett found
himself recently embroiled in a hugely important California
water issue – removal of the Klamath River dams. The
socioecological effects of dams on the Klamath River have been
massive, almost uniformly negative, and ongoing. The Klamath
watershed has been estimated as the third-most productive
drainage on the West Coast for salmon and steelhead. Yet salmon
runs declined substantially over the last century in part
because dams fragment and isolate salmon from their historical
upland spawning habitats. … Indigenous peoples have
disproportionately dealt with the brunt of ecological impacts
from dams on the Klamath River.
While water shortages and lack of access are usually associated
with developing countries, there were more than 2 million
people in the United States without running water or
basic indoor plumbing as of 2019, according to the U.S. Water
Alliance. Among them are members of the Navajo Nation who
drive 40 miles every few days to haul water to their homes;
communities in California dealing with contaminated wells; and
people across the country living with outdated water systems.
An Oregon judge has agreed to hear further legal arguments over
his ruling that tribal water rights in the Klamath basin must
be re-quantified. Because the judge’s legal opinion from last
month hasn’t yet been reduced to an order, that means the
Klamath tribes can enforce their water rights to shut off
irrigation in the meantime.
Tribal leaders see President Joe Biden’s administration as
an opportunity to increase tribal consultation regarding issues
like water management, oil and gas leasing, and land
conservation. Here, we look at four major projects … that the
new administration is tasked with advancing…. Negotiations
among federal, tribal and state governments on water flows and
allocations in the Colorado River Basin began last year and are
set to conclude by 2026…. After years of political,
social and regulatory barriers, the undamming of the Klamath
River is within sight….
Grain by grain, sandbars are ecologically important to the
Colorado River system for humans and wildlife, say scientists.
How sand, silt and clay move along and become deposited within
the river corridor in the Grand Canyon National Park,
downstream from Glen Canyon Dam, has become an important
question to a number of government agencies as well as to
Native American tribes. The answer impacts the entire Colorado
River ecosystem and will help scientists better understand how
the Colorado River system works.
Spurred by the rising price of gold, K2 Gold Corp., of
Vancouver, Canada, is drilling and trenching in hopes of
selling its findings or partnering with a bigger company that
would, perhaps, transform the public lands into an open pit
cyanide heap leach mine, just a few miles from Death Valley.
… Opponents … worry about air pollution … and
the water required for mining gold. Pumping out millions
of gallons from desert aquifers, or underground lakes, they
fear, could exhaust regional springs in valuable wildlife
habitat, and attract wildlife to ponds of cyanide-laced water.
The National Marine Fisheries Service is considering whether
the spring-run and fall-run Chinook salmon that occupy the
rivers of Northern California and southern Oregon are
genetically distinct. The decision … would almost
certainly result in a listing under the Endangered Species Act
if seen as a separate species. … [T]he dams and
reservoirs that have been installed at various points
throughout the rivers of the West Coast create problems for
spring-run Chinook that are unique and separate from their
closely related cousins. It also allows the fall-run
species to outcompete the spring run since they both are able
to reach the same spots in the river to reproduce.
Representative Deb Haaland of New Mexico made history on Monday
when the Senate confirmed her as President Biden’s secretary of
the Interior, making her the first Native American to lead a
cabinet agency. … Beyond the Interior Department’s
responsibility for the well-being of the nation’s 1.9 million
Native people, it oversees about 500 million acres of public
land, federal waters off the United States coastline, a huge
system of dams and reservoirs across the Western United States
and the protection of thousands of endangered species.
A unique deal between ranchers and wildlife advocates may at
long last bring a reliable water supply to Lower Klamath
National Wildlife Refuge — and the wetlands and birds that
depend on it. Since it was largely drained in the early 20th
Century, the mosaic of wetlands formerly known as Lower Klamath
Lake has relied on water from the Klamath Irrigation Project to
grow food and provide suitable habitat for millions of
migrating birds along the Pacific Flyway each year. Wetlands in
the Klamath Basin support nearly 80% of the Pacific Flyway’s
migratory waterfowl during the spring and fall.
Local tribes, schools and nonprofits have developed a new high
school curriculum that seeks to encourage environmental
advocacy through an Indigenous lens. The advocacy and water
protection curriculum meets state standards in science, social
studies, health, history and language arts and seeks to bolster
“culturally informed education” in the classroom. The
curriculum is based on the “Advocacy and Water Protection in
Native California” speaker series that was developed by Save
California Salmon …
As thousands of Native Americans watched online, Rep. Deb Haaland
(D-N.M.) was confirmed as secretary of the Interior Department by
a 51 to 40 vote in the Senate, making her the first American
Indian to lead an agency that manages a vast portfolio of
[water and] federal land and the oil and mineral wealth that
lies beneath it.
Dwindling Chinook salmon runs have forced the Pacific Fishery
Management Council to shorten the commercial salmon fishing
season. The Sacramento Valley fall-run Chinook salmon runs are
projected to be half as abundant as the 2020 season while the
Klamath River fall Chinook abundance forecast is slightly
higher than the 2020 but is still significantly lower than the
long-term average. During a press briefing on Friday morning,
John McManus President of the Golden State Salmon Association
said the added restrictions will deal a blow to commercial
fishermen.
Despite a February court opinion that vacated the quantified
water rights of the Klamath Tribes, the Oregon Water Resources
Department announced Friday that they will continue to enforce
the Tribes’ water calls until a judge orders
otherwise. The Klamath Tribes maintain senior water rights
in the Klamath Basin, which were affirmed by the Klamath
County Circuit Court last month, but Judge Cameron Wogan
wrote in his proposed order that those rights need to be
re-quantified.
Last year, tens of thousands of water birds became paralyzed
and died in a gruesome botulism outbreak caused by lack of
water at two wildlife refuges on California’s border with
Oregon. And it could happen again this summer. The crippling
drought that has plagued the region for years shows no sign of
ending, and there’s been little relief from the bureaucratic
gridlock and lawsuits over water that has slowly starved the
Klamath Basin refuges of their supplies over the past two
decades.
One of the largest undammed river systems in California, the
South Fork Trinity watershed supports vulnerable populations of
salmon and steelhead, and boasts dramatic scenery. The South
Fork National Recreation Trail parallels the river’s rapids and
pools through stands of pine, fir, and oak. Nearly 500 miles of
water, including parts of the South Fork Trinity River and its
tributaries, would be permanently protected by the Northwest
California Wilderness, Recreation, and Working Forests Act,
sponsored by Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), which was also included
in the Protecting America’s Wilderness and Public Lands Act
that recently passed the House.
Today, [Tribes, Schools, and NGOs] released the Advocacy
and Water Protection in Native California High School
Curriculum and Teacher’s Resource Guide. The curriculum
… responds to California’s urgent water, climate and
educational crises, along with the need for Native American
culturally informed education and representation in
schools. The curriculum features online, classroom, and
nature-based learning and responds to reports that Humboldt,
Del Norte, and other counties are failing Native students, and
that Native youth are facing a mental health crisis due to
COVID-19 and the state’s water and climate crises.
Rep. Deb Haaland’s bid to become the first Native American
interior secretary was made more likely Thursday by an unlikely
Republican supporter, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of oil-rich Alaska,
who said she still had serious reservations about Haaland’s
past opposition to drilling. Murkowski was the only Republican
on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to approve
Haaland (D-N.M.) in the narrow 11-to-9 vote. Haaland’s
nomination now moves to the full Senate, where the entire
Democratic caucus and two Republicans, Murkowski and Susan
Collins (Maine), are expected to back her, cementing her
confirmation.
It was a Friday in late August when four jet boats made their
way up the Klamath River under a cloudless blue sky. The boats
carried three tribal chairs. From the Karuk Tribe, there was
Russell “Buster” Attebery, who’d found pride as a boy catching
salmon from the river and bringing them home to his family, and
later come to believe some tribal youth’s troubles — from
suicides to substance use — could be traced back to their never
having had that opportunity, growing up alongside a river now
choked with algae and diminishing fish populations.
When Malini Ranganathan, PhD, an associate professor at
American University and interim faculty director of the
Antiracist Research and Policy Center, conducted research in
Exeter, a flourishing agriculture town in California’s Central
Valley, she didn’t expect to see similar conditions to what
she’d witnessed in India’s low-income housing areas. Residents
in one of the world’s richest states were depending on bore
water and water tankers to drink because tap water was
unsafe.
One of the first two Native American women to be elected to
Congress, Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) is well on her way to being
confirmed as the first Native American to serve as secretary of
the Interior. Last week, Haaland went before the U.S.
Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources for her
confirmation hearing in which she answered questions for two
days. Today the committee will host a business meeting to
consider the nomination of Haaland and members can vote in
person or by proxy.
The coal-fired power plant that sat on Navajo Nation land in
the northeastern corner of Arizona did not just generate
electricity. It also drew water from the Colorado River, an
essential input for cooling the plant’s machinery. What
happens to that water now that the plant is being
decommissioned? Who gets to decide how it is used? In a drying
region in which every drop of water is accounted for and
parceled out, the stakes are high and the legal claims are
unresolved.
Anyone who has hosted a good dinner party knows that the guest
list, table setting and topic of conversation play a big role
in determining whether the night is a hit or the guests leave
angry and unsatisfied. That concept is about to get a true test
on the Colorado River, where chairs are being pulled up to a
negotiating table to start a new round of talks that could
define how the river system adapts to a changing climate for
the next generation.
The US Green Building Council Central California (USGBC-CC) has
received a grant from the San Joaquin River Conservancy
(Conservancy) to commence planning for a Native American and
Environmental Resource Center at the San Joaquin River. The
project will enable public access and create an Indigenous and
Environmental Resource Center at the Circle V property located
on the San Joaquin River, outside of Fresno in Madera County.
The USGBC-CC received final approval for the grant funding as
part of the California Clean Water, Clean Air, Safe
Neighborhood Parks, and Coastal Protection Fund and the Safe
Drinking Water, Water Quality and Supply, Flood Control, River
and Coastal Protection Fund of 2006 from the Wild Life
Conservation Board.
Though the nonprofit tasked with Klamath River dam removal is
about to submit its definite plan to federal regulators, Del
Norte County and the Crescent City Harbor District are still
worried about potential negative impacts. Harbor commissioners
on Thursday agreed to sign onto a memorandum of understanding
that includes the county and the Klamath River Renewal
Corporation. The MOU contains conditions that ensures the
harbor and county can recover potential damages to the port and
the fishing industry that occur as a result of dam removal and
reservoir drawdown on the Klamath River.
On Feb. 22, 2021, Lake Powell was 127.24 feet below ‘Full Pool’
or, by content, about 38% full. Based on water level
elevations, these measurements do not account for years of
sediment (clay, silt, and sand) accumulation—the millions of
metric tons on the bottom. Geologist James L. Powell said, “The
Colorado delivers enough sediment to Lake Powell to fill 1,400
ship cargo containers each day.” In other words, Lake
Powell is shrinking toward the middle from top and bottom. The
lake is down over 30 feet from one year ago, and estimates
suggest it could drop another 50 feet by 2026. The Bureau of
Reclamation estimated the lifespan of Glen Canyon Dam at
500–700 years. Other estimates aren’t as optimistic, including
some as low as 50 years.
Humboldt, Trinity and Mendocino counties could play host to
part of the largest new designation of federal wilderness in a
decade if Democratic sponsors of the land-protection package
can find a way through the divided U.S. Senate. A bill
sponsored by Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, would designate
257,797 of new acres of wilderness in Northern California while
placing 480 miles of river in the region under the nation’s
strictest environmental protections for waterways.
Michael Preston grew up in the old village site of the Winnemem
Wintu tribe, along the McCloud River in Northern California
where the Shasta Dam has flooded spiritual and cultural lands.
Since the 1940s, the creation of the dam has also blocked the
usual migration of winter-run salmon, effectively endangering
the species. Now, there are proposals to raise the dam by an
additional 18.5 feet, which will cause further destruction.
“Our tribal goal is to bring the salmon back … ” he said,
adding that it’s more than just the fish. With the lack of
salmon, which is a keystone species, other animals, such as
bears, eagles and mountain lions are being starved.
This month, the comment period for a potentially landmark piece
of legislation ended. Since California v. Arizona in 2000, the
Colorado River Indian Tribes have the sole rights to more than
600,000 acres-feet of water from the Colorado River, but they
are barred from selling or leasing any of this water to outside
communities. The proposed federal legislation, led by
the tribes themselves, would allow them to lease some of this
water as long as they reduce their own water consumption by an
equivalent amount.
-Written by Isaac Humrich, a senior at Sunnyslope High
School in Phoenix and a member of American Conservation
Coalition.
Arizona, California, and Nevada will need to cut their use of
Colorado River water by nearly 40 percent by 2050. A
study by researchers at Utah State University, which
the Arizona Daily Star reported this past Sunday, noted
that Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming—the Upper Basin
states—will have to reduce their usage, as well, though not by
as much as those pulling water from the Lower Basin.
From California’s perspective, the view upriver is not
encouraging. More than half of the upper part of the river
basin is in “exceptional drought,” according to the U.S.
Drought Monitor, while the Lower Basin is even worse off: More
than 60% of it is in the highest drought level. In January,
water levels in Lake Powell, the river’s second-largest
reservoir, dropped to unprecedented depths, triggering a
drought contingency plan for the first time for the Upper Basin
states of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico. Since
2000, the Colorado River Basin has seen a sustained period of
less water and hotter days. This is, as climate scientists like
to say, the “new normal.”
The state’s Ocean Protection Council has awarded $1.3 million
to preserving and safeguarding estuary habitat at Elkhorn
Slough, which boasts the second-largest tidal salt marsh in
California. The wetland, once degraded by farming activities
such as diking, is at risk of impacts from climate change —
particularly rising sea levels.
Climate change will continue to impact the West, and
particularly its water supply—the many impacts include longer
and more damaging wildfire seasons as well as prolonged
drought. Federal leadership and action are needed to address
the climate crisis. With the 117th Congress now in session,
Audubon is advocating at the federal level for funding and
policy priorities that restore habitat, protect communities,
and support birds through proactive water management and
conservation.
Tuolumne Utilities District provided an update on Thursday
regarding negotiations to acquire Pacific Gas and Electric Co.
assets in the South Fork Stanislaus River watershed and rights
to water in New Melones Reservoir, though the possible costs
remain unclear due to a confidentiality agreement. The TUD
Board of Directors hosted a rare joint meeting via video with
the county Board of Supervisors, Sonora City Council, local
Me-Wuk Indian tribes, and other stakeholders, during which
members spoke about the need for community-wide cooperation and
collaboration due to the scope of the undertaking.
“Basic climate science reveals that Lake Powell is not a
reliable water source for this ill-conceived project.” The
reference to ‘basic climate science’ refers to recent computer
models that show a drier climate throughout the American
Southwest over the next few decades, allegedly due to the
continued use of fossil fuels all around the globe. But even
without access to clever computer models, we have all seen Lake
Powell and Lake Mead — America’s two largest water reservoirs —
struggle to remain even half full, as we watch water users
extract more water than nature can replace.
The largest dam removal in United States history is set to take
place along the Klamath River by 2023, but getting to this
point was neither easy nor quick. Water management, especially
in densely populated and water-scarce places like California,
is a challenge from practically every aspect: ownership and
operations of water infrastructure, local politics, maintenance
costs, and sustainability concerns.
The Department of the Interior today announced additional
members of the agency leadership team working to steward
America’s natural, cultural and historic resources, and honor
our nation-to-nation relationship with Tribes. Among those
named is Daniel Cordalis of Arcata, Calif., who was appointed
Deputy Solicitor, Water.
The Tuolumne Utilities District hosted a joint meeting to
provide local stakeholders an update on efforts to acquire
PG&E assets like Pinecrest Reservoir and Lyons Dam, and
water rights from New Melones. The informational meeting
included the Tuolumne County Supervisors, Sonora City Council
and local tribal representatives.
Following a disappointing 2019 adult fall run on the Klamath,
2020 proved to be only slightly better. Unfortunately, the
numbers weren’t enough to get us out of the “overfished”
category, and it’s likely we’ll have some severe
restrictions both in the ocean and in the Klamath and Trinity
rivers in 2021. … According to CDFW, the number of returning
fall run kings in 2020 was 45,407, about half the long-term
average. In 2019 only 37,270 adult kings returned. The return
of fall Chinook jacks was 9,037 fish, which is also below the
long-term average of 17,740.
Many of today’s under-resourced communities have no more access
to blue gold (scarce water) than the under-resourced white
residents of the Owens Valley have had since the 1920s. In 1924
greedy public and private water interests transformed the lush
Owen’s Lake into a noxious dust bowl. One of the guilty
parties LADWP (Department of Water and Power), recently
celebrated partial restoration of Owens Lake by constructing a
ghostly monument of granite and sculpted earth in the long
desiccated lake bed. … For many indigenous peoples denied
their rights to water for a century, partial restoration of the
lake without full restoration of their water rights is too
little, too late.
Last month in an announcement on Business Wire, the Klamath
River Renewal Corporation (KRRC) and Resource Environmental
Solutions (RES) announced they have signed a contract for RES
to provide restoration services in connection with the removal
of four dams on the Klamath River. The agreement between RES
and KRRC finalizes habitat restoration, maintenance, and
liability transfer responsibilities for a fixed price, opening
the door to a successful restoration of native vegetation and
anadromous fish habitat along the historical, pre-dam path of
the Klamath River.
The Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District and the Trinidad
Rancheria are moving forward with a feasibility study to
investigate the possibility of extending water service from
McKinleyville up to the Rancheria. The Trinidad City Council
and the Westhaven Community Services District declined to
participate in the study last month, citing risks of
overdevelopment.
Utah House Speaker Brad Wilson says the state needs to do
everything it can to protect its share of water in the
drought-challenged Colorado River, and the creation of a new
entity would foster that protection. … He and Senate
President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, are sponsors of the Colorado
River Amendments, HB297, which would set up the Colorado River
Authority of Utah with $9 million in one-time money and
$600,000 of ongoing money.
A Northern California water users’ association has filed a
motion against a $450 million plan to tear down four dams on
the Klamath River they claim irrevocably hurts local
homeowners. The motion was filed with the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission (FERC) last Wednesday by the Murphy and
Buchal Law firm on behalf of the Siskiyou County Water Users
Association. It claims the interstate agreement reached by
Oregon and California last year to remove the dams has incurred
“irreparable damage” to lakefront home values in the COPCO Lake
area as water levels are feared to decline.
Two decades ago, Nicole Horseherder, a member of the Navajo
Nation, coordinated a community meeting. Beneath the shade of
Juniper trees at her late grandmother’s house, several dozen
people gathered to find a way to protect their pristine water.
The springs and wells along Black Mesa, a semi-arid, rocky mesa
that overlies the Navajo Aquifer, were increasingly drying up,
as tens of billions of gallons of potable water were used to
extract, clean, and transport coal mined in the region. This
meeting was the start of a long struggle to safeguard the
community from coal projects, which threatened the drinking
water supply of both the Navajo and Hopi people.
The Colorado River supports over 40 million people spread
across seven southwestern states, 29 tribal nations, and
Mexico. It’s responsible for the irrigation of roughly 5.5
million acres of land marked for agricultural use. Local and
regional headlines show the river is in crisis. The nation
mostly isn’t listening.
With Democratic New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland poised to become
the first Native American Interior secretary, tribal
governments historically marginalized by the agency expect not
only a greater respect for their autonomy, but also a more
significant role in the nation’s land and water management
decisions.
New federal legislation that will enable the Colorado River
Indian Tribes to lease a portion of its federal water
allocation is gaining broad support from Arizona stakeholders.
Following the conclusion of a listening session held by the
Arizona Department of Water Resources in December, 2020,
interested parties were invited to submit public comment on the
proposal.
The Klamath River Renewal Corporation last week signed an
agreement with Resource Environmental Solutions, a Texas-based
ecological restoration company, to provide restoration services
following the removal of four dams on the Klamath River. The
agreement with RES brings North Coast tribes one step closer to
their decades-long goal of dam removal.
In an act of cultural appreciation, two open spaces in Redding
are being renamed using the native Wintu language. What has
been known as the Henderson Open Space along the bank of the
Sacramento River in the heart of the city will now be known as
“Nur Pon Open Space.” About $5-million have been spent in the
area in the last 10 years, including the construction of a
salmon spawning channel.
The organization tasked with removing four dams on the Klamath
River has contracted with Resource Environmental Solutions to
spearhead habitat restoration work. The Bellaire, Texas firm
will be the lead restoration contractor for the project led by
the Klamath River Renewal Corporation. In hiring RES, KRRC
meets federal and state permitting requirements, according to a
Friday news release from Business Wire.
[T]he decades-long effort to remove four hydroelectric dams
that clog the upper Klamath River should be seen not simply
through an environmental and economic lens but also a social
justice one, according to Craig Tucker, a natural resources
consultant for the Karuk Tribe.
Pascua Yaqui Council members called it “a blessing” Tuesday.
They were talking about $900,000 in federal funds that will be
used to bring water to the tribe’s lands for irrigation, the
first fruits of a successful effort last year by members of the
state’s congressional delegation to win $150 million in federal
funding for water projects around the state. … The money
comes from an Army Corps of Engineers fund dedicated to water
infrastructure projects in Arizona. Under the bill, local
governments can enter into agreements with the corps for water,
wastewater treatment, environmental restoration and other
projects.
Guardians of the River, produced by American
Rivers and Swiftwater Films, focuses on the hard-won
efforts of leaders of the Yuroks. Frankie Joe Myers, vice
chair of the tribe; Sammy Gensaw, director of
the Ancestral Guard; Barry McCovey, fisheries
biologist with the tribe; and members of the Ancestral
Guard and Klamath Justice Coalition share why removing
four dams across southern Oregon and Northern California is
vital to restoring clean water, food
sovereignty, and justice for the Klamath River.
The Trinidad City Council on Tuesday will consider whether to
participate in a feasibility study for a project that would
bring a steady flow of water to the city from the Mad River via
a new pipeline. The Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District
(HBMWD), which supplies water to Eureka, Arcata, McKinleyville,
Blue Lake and other area communities, is in the early stages of
researching the possibility of expanding its service area north
via a waterline extension at least as far north as the Trinidad
Rancheria…
In Oregon, the Klamath Basin wildlife refuges have fallen into
their winter silence now. The huge, clamorous flocks of geese
that fill the sky during migration have moved south. This
summer, a different silence gripped the basin. A dead silence.
The 90,000 acres of marshes and open water that make up the
Lower Klamath and Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuges are a
small remnant of vast wetlands that once filled this region on
the Oregon-California border. -Written by Pepper Trail, a contributor to Writers on the
Range and a conservation biologist in Ashland, Ore.
California is enveloped in balmy weather that’s more like
spring than mid-winter — and that’s not a good thing. We have
seen only scant rain and snow this winter, indicating that the
state may be experiencing one of its periodic droughts and
adding another layer of crisis to the COVID-19 pandemic and
economic recession. The all-important Sierra snowpack,
California’s primary source of water, is scarcely half of what
is deemed a normal depth. -Written by Dan Walters, CalMatters columnist.
Lorelei Cloud is a member of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe, a
relatively small tribe of 1,500 members, 1,000 of which live on
the tribe’s reservation covering a little more than 1,000
square miles south of Durango abutting the border with New
Mexico. Cloud’s experience is not uncommon in tribal homes
across the country, as nearly 48% of them — representing more
than half a million people — do not have “access to reliable
water sources, clean drinking water or basic sanitation,”
according to a 2017 congressional report.
Three people were appointed Thursday to the California Water
Commission by Gov. Gavin Newsom. The three are Amy Cordalis,
40, of McKinleyville, Kimberly Gallagher, 45, of Davis,
and Fern Steiner, 71, of San Diego.
After years of negotiations and agreements, roadblocks,
renegotiations, and new agreements, dam removal on the Klamath
river is closer than ever to becoming a reality. With almost
all of the bureaucratic hurdles overcome, four of the six dams
on the Klamath are slated to be removed by 2024, restoring fish
access to the entire river. If carried out as planned, it will
be the largest dam removal project in the history of the United
States, opening up 400 river-miles of habitat to
salmon, trout, and eels, for the first time in decades. The
Yurok Tribe and Klamath River Renewal Corporation hope it will
also mean a return to a healthy river…
The Yurok people have lived in the 15,700 square miles Klamath
River Basin, in what is now called Northern California, for
millennia. They are among the key organizers in a coalition of
Indigenous groups, environmentalists, concerned citizens and
commercial fishers that have joined forces in a decades-long
movement to Un-dam the Klamath.
The $227 billion budget proposed on Friday by Gov. Gavin Newsom
includes $4.1 billion in spending on a suite of environmental
initiatives meant to fight climate change, gird California
against devastating wildfires, reduce smog, and bolster the
adoption of clean vehicles on the state’s roads.
Now that the calendar has flipped to January 2021, it’s time to
say goodbye to the mess of the past year, yes? … The
pandemic’s economic dislocation continues to reverberate among
those who lost work. Severe weather boosted by a warming
climate is leaving its mark in the watersheds of the Southwest
[including the Colorado River]. And President-elect Biden will
take office looking to undo much of his predecessor’s legacy of
environmental deregulation while also writing his own narrative
on issues of climate, infrastructure, and social
justice….Litigation over toxic PFAS compounds found in
rivers, lakes, and groundwater is already active. Lawsuits are
likely to continue at a brisk pace…
Even as research touted the benefits of prescribed fire more
than a half-century ago, the practice was long held back by
misguided forest management policies, a legacy of injustice
toward Native Americans and a more nebulous, deep-seated
cultural resistance to flames and smoke. Finally, the tide is
turning — slowly. California took a huge step forward this year
when it reached a landmark deal with the federal government to
reduce fire risk on 1 million acres of forest and wildlands
annually, including through prescribed fire.
