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The
latest from Jim McCarthy in response to article
regarding the broken dike and flood in Klamath Lake.
McCarthy is from ONRC, Oregon Natural Resources
Coalition environmental group, who takes every
opportunity to advocate taking farmland and ranches
out of production to create more wetlands,
evaporating 2ce as much water as irrigated ag land.
More than 100,000
acres ag land in Upper Klamath have been
converted to government-acquired or Nature
Conservancy wetlands. KBC 6/13/06.
The
dike article follows.
----- Original Message -----
June 08, 2006 Upper Klamath Lake dike fails,
floods
From the
description, the flooded area is a place
called Caledonia Marsh. 2,000 acres of former
lake bed. Wocus Marsh, to the south, is even
larger, I'd guess 3,000 acres at least.
Obviously, this unexpected breach is a
terrible thing for the landowner and the other
people leasing land and trying to get an
income from farming on the Caledonia Marsh.
But it also is a reminder of just how much of
Upper Klamath Lake's storage capacity has been
lost to diking and draining. This is just one
area behind an old dike, and it's 2,000 acres.
There's a 3,000+ acre area of old lake just
behind it. And this is just one lobe of the
old lake---there are many other diked and
drained areas around the lake, and many
opportunities either through long-term
easements or purchase of land from willing
sellers to open these areas to the lake and
quickly restore some of the lake's former
water storage capacity in a cost-effective
way. In turn, this would increase our ability
to send water downriver to salmon when they
need it.
Regards,
Jim McCarthey, ONRC
Upper
Klamath Lake dike fails,
floods
Highway 140
between K-Falls, Medford shut
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Posted: 8:09
AM, Jun. 8, 2006
By
KTVZ.com news sources
On Wednesday afternoon, beginning at about
2:30 pm, the Geary Dike began to fail,
eventually flooding former marshland used
for farming. Approximately 2000 acres were
flooded during the evening hours after a
300-foot-long breach in the dike holding
back Upper Klamath Lake occurred
unexpectedly.
A short
stretch of Highway 140 was affected and the
Oregon Department of Transportation and the
Klamath County Sheriff's Office closed the
road to allow crews to reinforce the highway
embankment in the affected area. However,
attempts to reinforce Highway 140 were
halted at 9:30 pm when engineers and
construction workers found the road bed to
have been degraded to a point that the
equipment had to be removed from the road in
the flooded area.
Incident commanders on the scene in
conjunction with the land owner have now
focused on reinforcing a shorter dike
protecting the Wocus Marsh agricultural area
immediately to the south of Hwy 140.
There have been no injuries.
Wednesday
afternoon's flooding affected leased grain
fields, grasslands and farm implements that
were left behind when the breach occurred.
Crews worked through the night to reinforce
a shorter dike protecting the Wocus Marsh
agricultural district because this land is
pasturing up to 3500 head of cattle and a
working ranch with seed crops and other
equipment.
Water has saturated some areas on the edges
of the Running Y Resort Golf Course, however
the Pro Shop and other structures are not
threatened..
Contractors, PacifiCorp employees, ODOT, law
enforcement, fire and public works personnel
have formed an incident command center near
the dike breach and are continuously working
to protect the public and minimize property
damage. |
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