The Department of the Interior last week distributed a
one-page framework for a long-term agreement aimed at
resolving water issues in the Klamath Basin.
Alan Mikkelsen, senior adviser to Secretary of the
Interior Ryan Zinke on water and western resources,
spent Monday and Tuesday meeting with Basin stakeholders
about the one-page document, including water users and
Klamath Tribes on Tuesday.
Mikkelsen’s job is to facilitate talks with all
stakeholders in the Basin to work toward a long-term
solution.
The series of stakeholder meetings will set the stage,
Mikkelsen said, to receive comments about the framework
formerly known as the “skeleton” hopefully by mid-June.
It was created by Mikkelsen and a group of congressional
leaders who are looking to formulate an agreement for
water allocation in the Basin for years to come.
“At the end of the day, everybody wants some sort of
certainty, what they can plan for,” Mikkelsen told the
Herald and News Wednesday morning.
For water users, some of the most important priorities
is water certainty and affordable power for irrigators
and irrigation representatives, said Scott White,
executive director of Klamath Water Users Association.
White and more than 20 irrigators met with Mikkelsen
first thing Monday morning to talk about the skeletal
framework, and the road to a long-term agreement.
He
was optimistic about the meeting laying groundwork for a
solution to ongoing and conflicting needs for water in
the Basin.
Within the next month, White and other water users plans
to come up with a strategy and talk through priorities
within KWUA before mid-June, when Mikkelsen plans a
return trip.
“It’s shaping up to start moving,” White said.
White also added that the scenario for water is an “ugly
situation” for all parties involved.
“The downstream tribes, the Klamath Tribes — everybody’s
feeling the pinch on this year and trying to figure out
how this is all going to work,” White said.
Klamath Tribes Chairman Don Gentry declined to comment
on the meeting with Mikkelsen or the framework.
Going into the meeting with the Klamath Tribes,
Mikkelsen said the Tribes need a robust fishery, in both
Upper Klamath Lake and in the Klamath River.
“When we get to a point that fish will prosper, then
agriculture can also prosper,” Mikkelsen said. “Right
now, we are not at that point.”
In
addition to meetings in the Klamath Basin, Mikkelsen
said he met separately with downstream tribes and with
Upper Basin irrigators in the Medford area on Monday
regarding the framework.
“We’ve received input from the downstream tribes on the
framework document, and I think they’re all interested
in pursuing further discussions about the framework,”
Mikkelsen said.
While there seems to be no time limit for facilitated
talks by Department of Interior, Mikkelsen hinted that
legal actions between parties could hinder efforts
moving forward.
“If we go to litigation, all of a sudden Department of
Interior is removed from this and this becomes a
Department of Justice issue,” Mikkelsen said.
The framework says that a long-term agreement isn’t
intended to be a federally driven process, but that it
is recognized that federal participation is essential
because of the current level of federal influence over
resource management, Tribal trust obligations and
contractual obligations to water users in the Project.
“Funding, while important, should be secondary to
identifying sustainable resource management goals on
which local communities can agree,” the outline reads.
“This isn’t a solution for the government,” White said.
“This is a solution for the parties that are affected,
so it needs to be crafted in that manner for the
parties.”
White said that while the Klamath Basin Restoration
Agreement, which dissolved, took roughly a decade to
create and implement, he doesn’t envision it taking
nearly that long to formulate a new agreement between
parties.
“I
think the framework, the foundation has already been
built,” White said. “And I don’t think we need to
reinvent the wheel on this.”
======= ============================
The framework
The U.S. Department of
Interior distributed a frame work document last week to
Klamath Basin stakeholders, including on-Project and Upper
Basin irrigators and downstream tribes Hoopa Valley and
Yurok as well as Klamath Tribes.
The document is a baseline
for a long-term water agreement for the Basin, and lays out
six principles guiding what will be added later:
- Provide for self-sustaining
fish populations that will lead to delisting of ESA listed
species and harvestable levels for Tribes and will support
commercial, subsistence, and sport fisheries.
- Provide for sustainable
agriculture and other uses that reduce crisis management.
- Provide a sustainable
economy for communities in the Basin that are dependent on
fish and agriculture.
- Provide a regulatory
structure that assists, rather than impedes, implementation
of the above principles.
- Provide federal
authorization and funding to the extent necessary to address
the agreed to principles.
- Sources of non-federal
funding should be identified as needed.
