California Fishermen’s Group Attacks Klamath Dams: Meanwhile, River Turns to Poison
By Tom Chandler on Jul 2, 2007 in Environment, News
California fishermen - realizing they’re losing the water wars — are forming a group called “Water for Fish” and attempting to redress the balance.
From their Web site:
California is in the process of restructuring its water policies to meet the needs of its population growth. The “Water Wars” have reached new proportions and fish and fishermen are losing the battle. If fishermen don’t unite and make their voices heard in the political process, we will lose millions of fish and the many benefits they bring to fishermen and to the economy.
The list of supporters represents a broad spectrum of fishing-related businesses, including the FFF and commercial fishers, who haven’t always landed on the same side of environmental issues.
If last year’s near-total closure of the West Coast salmon season (due largely to the Klamath River’s failing salmon runs) has a silver lining, it’s that it’s finally galvanized disparate fisheries groups into action.
You can see a summary of this group’s plan and with a couple clicks, send letters to state and federal officials announcing your support.
Meanwhile, Back at the Klamath…
The Karuk tribe have monitored water quality in Iron Gate Reservoir since 2005, and we’re already seeing the toxic algae blooms in the lake that threaten human (and wildlife) health:
Siskiyou Co., CA – Water samples from Copco and Iron Gate Reservoirs contain extremely high levels of the toxic blue-green algae Microcystis aeruginosa for the third consecutive year since monitoring began in 2005. Microcystis aeruginosa produces the toxin microcystin which is known to cause liver failure and promote tumor growth. Microcystin exposure can lead to organ failure and death.
Recent samples suggest levels 100 times higher than needed to trigger local response.
So while the salmon runs perish, the river turns to poison, and the economic impacts to commercial and sport fishermen runs to $100 million annually, PacifiCorp stonewalls and Warren Buffet hides.
Gotta love it. See you at the toxic salmon river, Tom Chandler.
Technorati Tags: water for fish, salmon, klamath river, klamath, pacificorp
KW Morrow | Jul 3, 2007 | Reply
Klamath is an ecological disaster very directly caused by greed. It’s a textbook case. When there isn’t enough of something for everyone to get all they want, folks start trying to “compete” to protect their wanted share instead of every stakeholder taking proportionally less in accordance with historical usage allocation proportions. The end result is a bunch of court battles preventing anyone from doing the right thing ecologically (which is always the right thing ethically) and actually reducing consumption to an ecologically sustainable level.
Folks always scream, “But that will destroy the local economy (especially MY part of it)!” But destroying a watershed will ALWAYS result in far more long-term economic desolation than achieving sustainability will.
Tom Chandler | Jul 3, 2007 | Reply
Parts of this mess read like bad farce; for a long time, farmers received subsidized water AND power, and now that the cheap power is gone and the water isn’t there, the farmers are in dire straits.
Meanwhile, the salmon runs are disappearing, the various tribes are getting shafted, the sport fishers are wondering what’s happening, and the commercial fishermen are largely trapped in port.
The good news is that 28 groups (not including PacifiCorp, who want to know what’s happening, but aren’t willing to be part of the negotiation) have gotten together to see if they can make it work.
This might have happened earlier if a lot of self-serving political types hadn’t scooted out here to throw a little gas on the smoldering fires, including a few administration types and possibly the worst US Representative in the history of the thing — Wally Herger.
The list is a pretty long one, but the good news is that with nobody getting anything, the groups have figured out they’re going to have to work together to get something.