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Upper Klamath Basin braces for irrigation shutoffs

May 9, 2013

Agriculture, Klamath River & Dams, Threats to agriculture, Tom Mallams-Klamath Co Commissioner, Tribes

Posted: Wednesday, May 08, 2013 8:56 AM

Capital Press

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — With drought looming, the state of Oregon is preparing for the likelihood it will have to shut off irrigation access for many of the 200 cattle ranchers and hay farmers in the upper Klamath Basin as the Klamath Tribes take control of senior water rights in the region for the first time in a century.

Since a formal declaration of drought last month, representatives of the governor’s office have been making regular visits to Klamath County to brief local law enforcement and other officials on what they can expect if irrigation withdrawals are shut off. A nearby federal irrigation project saw weeks of bitter protests in 2001 when drought triggered a water shut-off to conserve flows for protected fish.

“Now if there are shortages of water in the basin, people can request that newer more junior water rights are shut off so older water rights can be satisfied,” Richard Whitman, natural resources adviser to the governor, said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “There is a fairly high likelihood of that happening in the upper Klamath Basin this year.”

Snowpack in the Cascade Range is thin, and prospects are diminishing for a wet spring. The state of Oregon earlier this year recognized the findings of a lengthy legal process known as adjudication that gave the tribes the most senior rights to the majority of the water flowing into Upper Klamath Lake, dating to time immemorial.

Don Gentry, chairman-elect of the Klamath Tribes, said no decision has been made yet, but it is likely the tribes will exercise the senior water rights granted earlier this year to protect endangered sucker fish, which spawn in rivers running into Upper Klamath Lake. The tribes are closely monitoring the flows in the rivers, which are already below the levels covered by their water rights, and a decision is likely in coming weeks.

“Given the endangered status of our (short-nosed sucker and Lost River sucker) fisheries, we have to do everything we can to protect them,” Gentry said. “They are on the brink of extinction.”

The largely independent irrigators on the Williamson, Sprague and Wood rivers, which flow into Upper Klamath Lake through the communities of Beatty, Chiloquin and Fort Klamath, escaped the irrigation shutoffs of 2001, when drought forced a shutdown of irrigation on most of the land covered by the Klamath Reclamation Project to save water for threatened salmon and endangered sucker fish.

The shut-off triggered angry confrontations between farmers demanding their water, and federal authorities who shut it off under the demands of the Endangered Species Act. Some turned their anger toward the tribes because they supported devoting scarce water to fish.

The places are reversed this year. Farmers on the federal irrigation project straddling the Oregon-California border have made agreements with the tribes protecting their access to water, and won their own senior water rights in the upper basin. They have also joined the tribes in endorsing the removal of four aging hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River to help struggling salmon runs.

Many farms and ranches in the upper basin started withdrawing water May 1, and if a shut-off is ordered, they will lose crops of hay and alfalfa, said Tom Mallams, a Beatty hay farmer, Klamath County Commissioner, and Tea Party member. The threat of shutoffs has already hurt ranchers, who have lost contracts to feed cattle from California on irrigated pasture, he said.

Mallams is one of about 65 upper basin irrigators who have formally challenged the tribes’ water rights, hoping to have them overturned in the second phase of the adjudication process.

“I have talked to neighbors, talked to irrigators, talked to friends,” he said. “I hope that nothing bad happens here. But if something bad happens, I am going to point the finger at the state Water Resources Department and state leadership as the cause of it. The process they used has been very biased, very selective, in how they did the adjudication process.”

http://www.capitalpress.com/newsletter/AP-klamath-basin-050813

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Water war between Klamath River farmers, tribes poised to erupt

May 7, 2013

KBRA or KHSA, Klamath County, Klamath River & Dams, Tribes

PNP comment: I stopped copying the article at a paragraph that is such a blatant lie, I can hardly stand to even post this on PNP. Gee wiz. The Feds pulsed Trinity River with cold water that brought up chinook salmon from the Pacific Ocean (not endangered species) in a hot August during the natural drought of 2002.

Also, locals claim a meth lab dumped its garbage in there; and I talked to someone who arrived at the scene of the dead salmon in 2002, who said that “everything” was dead, not just salmon from a salmon disease.

Oh, and guess how long it took the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to show up to investigate? Yep, 10 days! And it was not much more than an hour’s drive from their Eureka, CA. office. That incident was so stinkin’ fishy. No pun intended. They did then test the water and found no chemicals and only took one fish to examine. Looked to me like they didn’t want to find anything, but the lies they spewed.

Oh, and under the Karuk Treaty with the U.S. government in 1851, they have no fishing rights except at Ishi Pishi Falls. The Yuroks do have a fishing right under their Treaty, which is 50 percent of the returning salmon. And the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service contracts with the Yuroks to count the fish, who nearly always cry there is not enough. Hum, looks like the fox is watching the hen house. — Editor Liz Bowen

By Tony Barboza,

Los Angeles Times

New water rights have given tribes an upper hand over farmers just as the Klamath River basin plunges into a severe drought.

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. — For decades this rural basin has battled over the Klamath River’s most precious resource: water that sustains fish, irrigates farms and powers the hydroelectric dams that block one of the largest salmon runs on the West Coast.

Now, one of the nation’s fiercest water wars is on the verge of erupting again.

New water rights have given a group of Oregon Indian tribes an upper hand just as the region plunges into a severe drought.

Farmers and wildlife refuges could be soon cut off by the Klamath Tribes, which in March were granted the Upper Klamath Basin’s oldest water rights to the lake and tributaries that feed the mighty river flowing from arid southern Oregon to the foggy redwoods of the Northern California coast.

Within weeks, the 3,700-member tribes are poised to make use of their new rights to maintain water levels for endangered Lost River and Shortnose suckers, fish they traditionally harvested for food. Under the “first in time, first in right” water doctrine that governs the West, the Klamath Tribes can cut off other water users when the river runs low.

Low flows have already raised tensions between tribes and farmers who draw from the river’s headwaters. Cutting off water this year could dry up farmland and bring that looming conflict to a head.

“A lot of people’s water could be shut off, and that has huge implications and it affects peoples’ livelihoods to the core,” said Jeff Mitchell, a tribal council member and its lead negotiator on water issues. “But I also look at our fishery that is on the brink of extinction. We have a responsibility to protect that resource, and we’ll do what we need to do to make sure that the fish survive.”

The tribes’ cutting off water could also spell the end to a fragile truce that was supposed to bring lasting peace to the river. A coalition of farmers, fishermen, tribes and environmentalists forged the Klamath Restoration Agreements three years ago to resolve the distribution of water and restore habitat and bring back salmon by removing four hydroelectric dams. But the deal has languished in Congress, and a year of drought and discord could unravel it for good.

Before the attempt at compromise, the Klamath had lurched from crisis to crisis for more than a decade: water shut-offs that left farmland fallow, flows so low they caused a mass fish die-off, recurring toxic algae blooms that fouled reservoirs, and salmon population declines that closed 700 miles of coastline to fishing.

The tribes fear that exercising their new water rights will make them a target for retaliation or violence. Klamath County is 86% white, and the long history between Indians and some farmers is strained.

Some of the farmers resented payments that some tribal members received after the U.S. government terminated their federal recognition and dissolved their reservation in the 1950s.

In recent months, members monitoring water levels have reported being threatened by farmers, and the tribes have sought assurances from law enforcement that they will be protected. State officials have taken the unusual step of assembling a 15-person Klamath Action Team to protect public safety and stave off water conflicts as the region plunges into a severe drought, said Richard Whitman, natural resources policy advisor to Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber.

::

The truce was supposed to bring peace along the Klamath. Instead the discord has surged since it was signed and sent to Congress, where it has sat unsigned.

Several environmental groups say the deal provides too much water to irrigation interests and not enough for fish and wildlife. Conservative groups have organized in opposition to dam removal and the Endangered Species Act through the Tea Party Patriots and have unseated pro-restoration officials from local posts in the watershed’s upper basin. In February, the Klamath County Board of Commissioners voted to withdraw from the deal altogether.

Tom Mallams, a hay farmer and tea party member from Beatty, Ore., who was elected Klamath County Commissioner in November, said the new tribal water rights are being used as a hammer to try to force opponents to sign on to the deal.

“The supporters of this are desperate,” he said. “They’re making a last-ditch effort to make it go through right now because they know it’s dying. I think some people will sign on to it in sheer desperation, but there is no trust in those agreements.”

Becky Hyde, a cattle rancher who lives across the road from Mallams on one of the Klamath’s upper tributaries, is a close ally of the Klamath Tribes and worked for years to build support for the settlement. Now, she is trying to assess how many of her and her neighbors’ pastures will go dry.

“A year like this,” she said, “may be the only thing that gets the people who represent us in Congress to get serious.”

Under the settlement, the Klamath Tribes agreed not to use their water rights to shut down the largest group of irrigators. In exchange, the tribes would see restored habitat and the probable return of their salmon fishery and would regain some 92,000 acres of private forestland, a small portion of the reservation the U.S. government dissolved when it terminated their federal recognition in the 1950s.

The Klamath River basin was harnessed for large-scale irrigation by the federal Bureau of Reclamation’s 1905 Klamath Project, turning a relatively dry expanse on the Oregon-California border into a rich belt of farms and homesteads, many settled by World War I and World War II veterans. The irrigated lands now support 1,400 farms on 200,000 acres, where fields of alfalfa, potatoes, grains and mint feed from an intricate system of canals, drains and pumps.

Clashes over the water supply boiled over in 2001, when the federal government cut off water deliveries to Klamath Project farmers in order to protect endangered suckers and coho salmon from a drought. The enraged farmers made national news after they formed a massive “bucket brigade” to manually pass water into irrigation canals as an act of civil disobedience.

The Bush administration resumed water deliveries the next year, leaving so little flow that tens of thousands of fish in the river’s lower reaches washed up dead. The fish kill devastated California’s Karuk and Yurok tribes, who depend on the salmon harvest.

For more lies:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-klamath-20130507,0,1265691.story

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Oregon Water Fight Revives

Apr 20, 2013

Federal gov & land grabs, Greenies & grant $, KBRA or KHSA, Klamath County, Klamath River & Dams, Salmon and fish, Tom Mallams-Klamath Co Commissioner, Tribes

PNP comment: There has been a BIG push by Greenies, Tribes and fed agencies to push the KBRA in large, well-known newspapers recently. They make it sound like it is a DONE DEAL.

It is NOT.

Bottom line: There will be millions of dollars in “restoration” monies for these Greenie groups, several Tribes and government agencies to continue a welfare existence. Even though taking out the dams will kill the fish, wildlife, destroy water quality for years and dump huge amounts of toxic sediment into the Klamath River and allow the unfiltered spread of noxious weeds, whereever water recedes.

Also, the salmon have swam 191 miles up the Klamath River, when they reach the first dam — Irongate Dam. They typically have sores and are ready to spawn and die, which they do in the Irongate Fish Hatchery. If we need more fish, they can certainly increase the number to release from the hatchery.

So our mantra remains:

SAVE the dams and we will SAVE the fish, wildlife, streambeds and water quality. Simple. — Editor Liz Bowen

The Wall Street Journal

Landmark 2008 Pact to Aid Region Remains in Limbo as a New Drought Hits

By JIM CARLTON

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore.—One of the most bitter water wars in the West is erupting again.

This past week, the Klamath County Commission in southeastern Oregon and Gov. John Kitzhaber both declared a drought emergency to help make farmers eligible for federal subsidies to alleviate any losses. The agricultural county of 70,000 has been dealing with unusually dry conditions for the past four months, with farmers and ranchers saying they face potentially crippling water cutbacks by federal agencies.

If “they shut water off here, there could be some violence,” said Tom Mallams, a rancher and member of the Klamath County Commission. The drought declaration “will help defuse some of the tensions—I hope, anyway.”

The move is the latest attempt to quell water concerns in the 6,135-square-mile county of rugged sage and timber land, where one of the West’s most heated water wars broke out in 2001. At the time, federal officials shut off irrigation to thousands of acres of farmland in Oregon and California to protect endangered fish during another drought. In the aftermath, federal marshals had to be called in to stop angry farmers from reopening locked irrigation gates.

The squabbles resulted in a landmark 2008 agreement to end the fighting, including a provision by PacifiCorp, a Berkshire Hathaway BRKB +2.21% Inc.-owned utility based in Portland, Ore., to remove four dams on the Klamath River by 2020. The agreement was unique because it brought many of the warring parties to the negotiating table, including PacifiCorp, the U.S. Interior Department and California and Oregon. At the time it was signed, many looked at the agreement as a model for resolving other water disputes in the West.

Enlarge Image

Joe Kline for The Wall Street Journal

A view of the J.C. Boyle Dam near Keno, Ore. The dam is listed for removal under the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement.

But in the five years since, the agreement has hit stumbling blocks, showing how difficult it remains to settle Western water disputes, even after the feuding sides have come together. And the recent dry conditions have renewed water tensions over who gets what. This past week’s drought declaration was partly an attempt to help protect mostly ranchers not covered by the 2008 agreement.

One big issue hindering the 2008 agreement is that the deal’s provisions have yet to be approved by Congress. The pact is languishing amid resistance in the Republican-held House to nearly $1 billion in projected federal costs to meet key goals, such as restoring wetlands.

In Klamath County, the agreement also has faced local opposition to dam removal among residents who believe it would reduce water further in the basin. In addition, locals who oppose the 2008 deal have risen in power. Last year, Mr. Mallams—a rancher who said the agreement favored farmers’ water rights over ranchers’ rights—was elected to the three-member Klamath County Commission. The commission, which had signed the 2008 agreement, voted last month to withdraw its support for the deal.

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424127887324763404578428962610094212-lMyQjAxMTAzMDIwMTEyNDEyWj.html?mod=wsj_share_email

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Frank Galusha’s op-ed on Redding Record Searchlight’s article on Klamath dam removal

Apr 8, 2013

Frank Galusha, KBRA or KHSA, Klamath River & Dams

Hi Bruce (editor of Redding.com) … every time I try to respond to one of your editorials your system kicks me out and fails to recognize my email address, so I’m just going to take this approach to this morning’s editorial about the “Klamath Dams are going to go…”

From Frank Galusha

This is a case of junk in and junk out.

There is no science that supports dam removal. The Hardy Flow Studies upon which the KBRA was based used a very wet period as the model, a period far removed from anything like we’ve had for about 75 years. That study was not even questioned. The reporter who digs out the facts on that one part of this fiasco will deserve a Pulitzer. Two very distinguished professors, Moyle and Mount of UC Davis told us just before the KBRA was announced there was no proof whatsoever dam removal would help the salmon or the steelhead. I have their letter – which was totally suppressed by the USFWS. There is no proof salmon ever made it beyond Keno Dam and a good deal of evidence they didn’t; no wonder the Klamath Indians revered the sucker fish. The Klamath has always been upside down, hot at the top and cold at the bottom. Even if salmon could make it to Upper Klamath Lake they would be so beat up and the water so hot they could not survive. UKL is a swamp; it is not hundreds of miles of great habitat, another lie you help spread. The algae is the result of naturally occurring phosphorous in that volcanic region. The algae feed on it, which is why the first explorers found the Upper Klamath to be pea-soup green and shallow enough to walk across and even non-existent at times during dry periods in late summer prior to building the dams. We also know TMDL data was jiggered by our own Water Quality Control Board so PacifiCorp had no choice but to sign the KHSA. We also know the river and the lake are totally unsuited for Coho Salmon, a coastal species that cannot survive in a Mediterranean-like climate such as we have in the Upper River, Scott/Shasta and the Klamath Basin – they never did and they never will – they are only there now because we started planting them as mitigation for putting in the dams in the late 1960’s and they have been falsely listed under the ESA – a bad law that needs fixing. Old-timers have told me repeatedly they never caught a Coho prior to the late 60’s or early 70’s in the Upper Klamath. We also know we had a record Chinook run in the Klamath last year, despite having the dams, which proves our salmon population fluctuations are due to conditions primarily beyond our control; namely, ocean conditions where Chinook spend about 5/6^th of their lives. Even if we destroyed the dams, which could destroy the Chinook run totally, we would at best only be giving the fish a few more miles of habitat, not even as much than we are giving the Sac Run in South Battle Creek – a sensible solution that everyone backs. Bruce, what we have had in the Upper Klamath for years has been a full employment act for the tribes, the environmentalists and other assorted special interest groups especially lawyers, who are thriving on government/taxpayer money or funds donated by naïve do-gooders to whom you have fed lies for years. If you want to save the fish, start advocating for no gillnetting by the tribes or the use of science to clean up the water behind the dams. Hell, Bruce, if we can make sewage water potable surely we can reduce the toxic algae build up behind the dams and find a way to eliminate the deadly fish diseases in the Upper Klamath that will only be worsened by dam removal. I’ll bet we could do it for a fraction of the money spent so far promoting lies about the dams, including the lie that blue green algae are harmful to humans. In all of this you are complicit. That’s right! You do nothing but spread big lies, something which is absolutely unforgiveable in a journalist. Paul Houser revealed the lies being told and he was railroaded and you went along with the purge. An entire team of KB scientists were let go because they dared to tell the truth – and you backed the inquisition. And you continue to support the lying DOI and other agencies and organizations that have everything to gain and nothing to lose if dams are removed. Losing green hydropower means nothing to you but it is killing agriculture and ranching just a few hour’s drive from your easy chair. I’m ashamed of you and my daily paper. Frank

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Ex-official criticizes Klamath scientific integrity review

Apr 4, 2013

Federal gov & land grabs, KBRA or KHSA, Klamath River & Dams, Paul R. Houser Ph.D. scientist, Sham Science

By TIM HEARDEN

Capital Press

Posted: Tuesday, April 02, 2013 11:50 AM

YREKA, Calif. – A former U.S. Bureau of Reclamation senior science adviser is criticizing the Interior Department’s review of his scientific integrity complaint about the Klamath River dam removal process.

Paul Houser, who reached a settlement with the government in December after claiming he was fired last year for speaking out, argues the government has failed to evaluate the full scope of his complaint.

Houser alleged last year that officials wrote a summary and news release to elicit support for dam removal while downplaying negative remarks from scientists that were in the full reports.

A panel assembled to investigate Houser’s allegations reported it did not find evidence that a communications official had “deviated from the standard practice” of the department, although it did conclude “the issue of how scientific uncertainty is represented in press releases needs to be addressed” by officials.

“The end result is that my scientific integrity complaint has been dismissed without being fully investigated or even cogently considered, and continues the department’s record of never finding itself in violation of its own scientific integrity policy,” Houser wrote in a rebuttal.

Houser, 42, became a darling of Klamath dam removal opponents and tea party activists after he went public about his February 2012 departure from Reclamation, over which he filed federal whistleblower and scientific-integrity complaints.

In a speech to a local group here last May, he said it appeared top Interior officials had already decided they wanted the dams out and were seeking the science to back up their decision.

A George Mason University professor and former National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist, Houser was hired by the bureau in 2011 to oversee the scientific studies on the Klamath project, which would include the removal of four dams as well as numerous river-restoration efforts.

Houser reached a settlement with the agency over his whistleblower complaint after mediation with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. Terms of the agreement required that neither side disclose specifics about the outcome.

Houser’s allegations that scientific data about the project was manipulated for political purposes was investigated separately. Interior officials have said a scientific integrity website was added to demonstrate the department’s commitment to transparency.

Agency spokeswoman Jessica Kershaw declined to comment about Houser’s rebuttal, saying in an email the panel’s report “really should speak for itself.”

Online

Summary of scientific integrity panel report: http://www.doi.gov/scientificintegrity/closed-cases.cfm

Paul Houser rebuttal: http://www.peer.org/assets/docs/doi/3_25_13_Houser_rebuttal.pdf

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Interior Denies Spinning Klamath Science

Mar 28, 2013

Federal gov & land grabs, KBRA or KHSA, Klamath River & Dams, Paul R. Houser Ph.D. scientist

PNP comment: We are so digusted that a government agency no longer has checks and balances. There is no REAL over-sight — just continued cover-up for lies and fraud. We support Dr. Paul R. Houser and his findings. — Editor Liz Bowen

Complaint Deemed Factual but Inaccuracies Excused as “Normal Practice”
Published on Mar 25, 2013 – 1:51:39 PM

By: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)

http://yubanet.com/california/Interior-Denies-Spinning-Klamath-Science.php#.UVR7cFdj8pG

Washington, DC March 25, 2013 – The U.S. Interior Department has rejected a complaint from one of its own Scientific Integrity Officers that it presented distorted summaries of studies on the effects of a still-pending decision to remove dams in the Klamath River. Interior’s review confirmed the substance of the complaint but concluded that blatant inaccuracies and critical omissions did not constitute scientific misconduct, according to a response posted today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

Dr. Paul Houser, a hydrometeorologist, took leave from his university position to become a Science Advisor to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and to serve as its Scientific Integrity Officer. In September 2011, he was asked to look over a draft press release and a summary of analyses on expected effects of removing four dams from the Klamath. The release described only positive aspects, omitting a number of major contingencies, uncertainties and possible negative effects. He elevated these concerns to the Secretary’s office. Although Reclamation’s technical staff seconded his objections and the release was ultimately changed, two weeks later he was put on probationary status and the Department took numerous related retaliatory actions. In February 2012, his position was terminated. Dr. Houser then filed a complaint that the actions against him violated the core tenets of the Interior Scientific Integrity Policy that he was formerly administering.

To help review the complaint Interior hired a consultant firm; the firm convened a three-member panel and produced a report in August that was only released last week. The panel concluded that the complaint was factually correct but did not amount to misconduct for some very curious reasons. For example –

· Instances of “false precision” (where a summary has a finding that does not exist in the studies it purports to summarize) are dismissed because they are “not inconsistent” with the underlying studies;

· Repeated inaccuracies – all slanted in one direction – in these short documents are excused by a panel finding that it is “normal practice” for press releases to exhibit hyperbole or falsities; and

· Explicit efforts to prevent these concerns from being put into writing were discounted because the panel found them “not sufficiently unusual” to be “automatically alarmed” by them.

“By blessing abuse as ‘standard practice’ this review stood Interior’s scientific integrity policy on its head,” said Dr. Paul Houser, who also filed a whistleblower retaliation complaint which has since been resolved. “I feel like I fell through the looking glass into a world propelled by circular reasoning.”

Although the panel interviewed no witnesses, did not question Dr. Houser nor did any kind of actual investigation, it made findings about motives and intent of several of the actors inside Interior. Rather than conduct its own inquiry, Interior’s Scientific Integrity Officer, Dr. Suzette Kimball, accepted the panel’s conclusions as “definitive” and formally declared the complaint to be “Not Warranted.” Her ruling came in a January 29, 2013 letter which did not include a copy of the report on which it was based.

“It is becoming obvious that Interior’s scientific integrity process suffers from a glaring lack of integrity,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that no scientific misconduct complaints filed under Interior’s integrity rules have been found to have merit. “These rules were created at the behest of President Obama to root out rampant political manipulation of science yet in more than two years Interior has managed not to find a single instance of it.”

Read Dr. Houser’s rebuttal

Revisit the original complaint

See the consultant report

View Interior’s adoption of the report

Look at Interior’s dismissal of every scientific misconduct complaint

See resolution of Dr. Houser’s whistleblower retaliation complaint

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Dr. Paul R. Houser: Why I filed a complaint of scientific misconduct

Mar 28, 2013

Federal gov & land grabs, KBRA or KHSA, Klamath River & Dams, Paul R. Houser Ph.D. scientist

Statement of Dr. Paul R. Houser, Hydrometeorologist

March 25, 2013

Why I Filed a Complaint of Scientific Misconduct

In September 2011, as part of my job as the Bureau of Reclamation Scientific Integrity Officer, I expressed concern about the accuracy of science reporting and summary documents related to the pending Secretarial Decision on Klamath River Dam Removal. I considered this case closed until the Department of the Interior escalated it through systematic reprisal and termination of m y job in February 2012.

Subsequently , I filed a scientific integrity complaint in accordance with the Department of the Interior’s Scientific Integrity Policy, and a whistle – blower protection claim with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.

I did a great deal of soul-searching and consultation before filing the complaint. Making the complaint has significant implications for my career and family, and I wanted to make sure I was not pursuing it for selfish or political reasons. I decided to file the complaint for three reasons:

(1) My obligation to scientific integrity as a scientist and my duty as a citizen to improve how our government operates;

(2) For the benefit of my replacement, so that he or she can uphold the public trust by providing honest scientific advisement without fear of losing their job;

and

(3) So that the Secretarial Decision is well informed.

I attest that I have no fiduciary or political ties or conflicts associated with the Klamath River Secretarial Decision process. I do not have any financial relationships with Klamath River associated industry, employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, expert testimony, either directly or through immediate family. I am not an author of any reports or the recipient of any research support associated with the Klamath River.

My philosophy has been to accept all interview and speaking requests, and I have been adamant about not accepting payment for them. I am also not for or against dam removal, but rather I am an advocate for the best science informed decision that meets the multi-objectives of obeying the law, protecting the environment and advancing society.

Official Response to Complaint

http://www.peer.org/assets/docs/doi/3_25_13_Houser_rebuttal.pdf

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News from Klamath Basin Crisis.org

Mar 25, 2013

KBRA or KHSA, Klamath Basin Crisis.org, Klamath River & Dams

This involves Klamath Dams, power rate hikes to pay for these ‘conservation plans’ and activities.

* COMMENTS DUE -PacifiCorp Klamath Hydroelectric Project Proposed Interim Operations Habitat Conservation Plan for Lost River and Shortnose Suckers
Interim means until the Klamath Settlement is terminated or the Klamath dams are destroyed
“PacifiCorp is funding long-term …water quality monitoring to support dam removal…”
PacifiCorp has already contributed $millions for land acquisitions and restoration to flood former ag lands in the Klamath Basin
PacifiCorp contributed and will contribute hundreds of thousands $ to The Nature Conservancy restoration projects. National Fish and Wildlife Foundation will administer Sucker Conservation Fund
PacifiCorp will recover costs through rate hikes to customers

* NEWS RELEASE – Draft environmental assessment of PacifiCorp’s Habitat Conservation Plan available for public comment – comments due March 29, 2013

NEWS RELEASE: Siskiyou County challenges critical habitat designations for Northern Spotted Owl, Siskiyou County, posted to KBC 3/24/13

www.klamathbasincrisis.org

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News from Klamath Basin Crisis.org

Mar 12, 2013

KBRA or KHSA, Klamath Basin Crisis.org, Klamath County, Klamath River & Dams

Klamath County Commissioners withdraw from KBRA

/12/13 Order by Klamath County Commissioners to withdraw from KBRA/Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement.

Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement/dam removal agreement; Can they do that?, H&N 3/10/13.
Followed by:

What does KBRA say about opting out?

What’s next for the KBRA?

Will the commissioners decision effect dam removal?

Reactions to the commissioner’s decision?

How to guarantee water?

KBC News Note- in a nutshell: Klamath County ousted 3 pro-KBA commissioners in the past 2 elections and voted in 3 commissioners who oppose the KBRA.

Citizens were denied a vote on whether they supported or opposed the KBRA so they voted for these 3 men to represent them. KCC voted to withdraw from the KBRA. Herald and News supports the KBRA, and the the above link contains their stories.

Siskiyou County was allowed a vote and they voted to oppose it.

Dozens of environmental groups, government agencies, tribes and Klamath Water Users Association are demanding Klamath County remain in the controversial dam-removal KBRA against the wishes of their constituents.

www.klamathbasincrisis.org

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Legal flap erupts over county’s exit from KBRA

Mar 7, 2013

KBRA or KHSA, Klamath County, Klamath River & Dams

PNP comment: We stand by Tom Mallams. The KBRA is an “agreement” not a contract. It is called the “Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement.” The Greenies are just angry they can not threaten Mallams and the other two Klamath County Commissioners into submission. — Editor Liz Bowen

http://www.capitalpress.com/newsletter/TH-kbra-w-photo-infobox-022813

Other signatories say the agreement is a binding contract

By TIM HEARDEN

Capital Press

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. — A county commissioner here rejected arguments from proponents of the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement that Klamath County cannot legally withdraw from the pact.

Commissioner Tom Mallams, a longtime project critic, said the panel was fully within its rights when it voted 3-0 on Feb. 26 to have County Counsel David Groff draw up an order to drop out of the project.

The Board of Commissioners will take a final vote on the issue March 12, only a few months after a previous commission voted to join the 41 other signatories in agreeing to a two-year extension.

“One board cannot by law in Oregon bind a future board,” said Mallams, a hay farmer from Beatty, Ore. “They cannot do it. They’ve been raising that argument, but in the KBRA meetings it was made very plain in all the discussions that if anybody wanted out, they would be let out.

“There was never, ever a concept of being forced to stay in it at all,” he said.

Two other signatories — the Karuk Tribe and the Klamath Water Users Association — have said the county can’t pull out because the agreement is a binding contract.

Ed Sheets, facilitator of the panel that oversees the project’s implementation, told the Capital Press he has asked Groff to point to the language in the agreement the county is citing as its basis for withdrawing.

“There are only a few, very narrow provisions for a party to withdraw from the agreement,” Sheets said.

One of those provisions is if a portion of the pact is found to violate existing laws, he said. The pact does acknowledge that one Congress cannot bind future congresses when it comes to the appropriation of money, but Sheets said he is unaware of similar language for other governmental bodies.

Groff said he could not comment about the county’s legal position without consulting the commission further. He said Oregon law “is fairly consistent with other state bodies of law” regarding commissions’ inability to bind future commissions.

The flap is only the latest in a long string of controversies and challenges facing the 3-year-old water agreement, which includes the removal of four dams from the Klamath River and numerous conservation efforts.

As funding and authorization has languished in Congress, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar last year indefinitely put off making a final determination of the feasibility of the project, which he had hoped to do by this month.

The latest setback comes as tribes may be on the verge of having their senior water rights affirmed by a long and complex adjudication process. In addition, another biological opinion on the water needs of imperiled suckers and coho salmon is due out this spring.

Mallams said the KBRA was successful at bringing people together, but he argued the parties should scrap the current agreement and craft a new one that doesn’t exclude some interested parties from the conversation.

“We need a settlement here,” he said. “That’s one thing I have been optimistic about is the tone in some of these last meetings we’ve had. The project irrigators and the tribes want us to be talking and that’s great. That has changed somewhat, so I am optimistic that’s what needs to happen.”

Online

Klamath County Board of Commissioners: http://www.klamathcounty.org/commissioners/

Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement: http://klamathrestoration.gov/

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Posted: Wednesday, May 08, 2013 8:56 AM

Capital Press

“Given the endangered status of our (short-nosed sucker and Lost River sucker) fisheries, we have to do everything we can to protect them,” Gentry said. “They are on the brink of extinction.”

The shut-off triggered angry confrontations between farmers demanding their water, and federal authorities who shut it off under the demands of the Endangered Species Act. Some turned their anger toward the tribes because they supported devoting scarce water to fish.

Mallams is one of about 65 upper basin irrigators who have formally challenged the tribes’ water rights, hoping to have them overturned in the second phase of the adjudication process.

Also, locals claim a meth lab dumped its garbage in there; and I talked to someone who arrived at the scene of the dead salmon in 2002, who said that “everything” was dead, not just salmon from a salmon disease.

By Tony Barboza,

Los Angeles Times

New water rights have given tribes an upper hand over farmers just as the Klamath River basin plunges into a severe drought.

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. — For decades this rural basin has battled over the Klamath River’s most precious resource: water that sustains fish, irrigates farms and powers the hydroelectric dams that block one of the largest salmon runs on the West Coast.

Now, one of the nation’s fiercest water wars is on the verge of erupting again.

New water rights have given a group of Oregon Indian tribes an upper hand just as the region plunges into a severe drought.

Farmers and wildlife refuges could be soon cut off by the Klamath Tribes, which in March were granted the Upper Klamath Basin’s oldest water rights to the lake and tributaries that feed the mighty river flowing from arid southern Oregon to the foggy redwoods of the Northern California coast.

Low flows have already raised tensions between tribes and farmers who draw from the river’s headwaters. Cutting off water this year could dry up farmland and bring that looming conflict to a head.

The tribes fear that exercising their new water rights will make them a target for retaliation or violence. Klamath County is 86% white, and the long history between Indians and some farmers is strained.

Some of the farmers resented payments that some tribal members received after the U.S. government terminated their federal recognition and dissolved their reservation in the 1950s.

::

The truce was supposed to bring peace along the Klamath. Instead the discord has surged since it was signed and sent to Congress, where it has sat unsigned.

Tom Mallams, a hay farmer and tea party member from Beatty, Ore., who was elected Klamath County Commissioner in November, said the new tribal water rights are being used as a hammer to try to force opponents to sign on to the deal.

“The supporters of this are desperate,” he said. “They’re making a last-ditch effort to make it go through right now because they know it’s dying. I think some people will sign on to it in sheer desperation, but there is no trust in those agreements.”

Becky Hyde, a cattle rancher who lives across the road from Mallams on one of the Klamath’s upper tributaries, is a close ally of the Klamath Tribes and worked for years to build support for the settlement. Now, she is trying to assess how many of her and her neighbors’ pastures will go dry.

“A year like this,” she said, “may be the only thing that gets the people who represent us in Congress to get serious.”

The Bush administration resumed water deliveries the next year, leaving so little flow that tens of thousands of fish in the river’s lower reaches washed up dead. The fish kill devastated California’s Karuk and Yurok tribes, who depend on the salmon harvest.

For more lies:

PNP comment: There has been a BIG push by Greenies, Tribes and fed agencies to push the KBRA in large, well-known newspapers recently. They make it sound like it is a DONE DEAL.

It is NOT.

So our mantra remains:

SAVE the dams and we will SAVE the fish, wildlife, streambeds and water quality. Simple. — Editor Liz Bowen

The Wall Street Journal

Landmark 2008 Pact to Aid Region Remains in Limbo as a New Drought Hits

By JIM CARLTON

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore.—One of the most bitter water wars in the West is erupting again.

If “they shut water off here, there could be some violence,” said Tom Mallams, a rancher and member of the Klamath County Commission. The drought declaration “will help defuse some of the tensions—I hope, anyway.”

Joe Kline for The Wall Street Journal

One big issue hindering the 2008 agreement is that the deal’s provisions have yet to be approved by Congress. The pact is languishing amid resistance in the Republican-held House to nearly $1 billion in projected federal costs to meet key goals, such as restoring wetlands.

READ more:

Hi Bruce (editor of Redding.com) … every time I try to respond to one of your editorials your system kicks me out and fails to recognize my email address, so I’m just going to take this approach to this morning’s editorial about the “Klamath Dams are going to go…”

From Frank Galusha

This is a case of junk in and junk out.

By TIM HEARDEN

Capital Press

Posted: Tuesday, April 02, 2013 11:50 AM

YREKA, Calif. – A former U.S. Bureau of Reclamation senior science adviser is criticizing the Interior Department’s review of his scientific integrity complaint about the Klamath River dam removal process.

Paul Houser, who reached a settlement with the government in December after claiming he was fired last year for speaking out, argues the government has failed to evaluate the full scope of his complaint.

Houser alleged last year that officials wrote a summary and news release to elicit support for dam removal while downplaying negative remarks from scientists that were in the full reports.

“The end result is that my scientific integrity complaint has been dismissed without being fully investigated or even cogently considered, and continues the department’s record of never finding itself in violation of its own scientific integrity policy,” Houser wrote in a rebuttal.

Houser, 42, became a darling of Klamath dam removal opponents and tea party activists after he went public about his February 2012 departure from Reclamation, over which he filed federal whistleblower and scientific-integrity complaints.

In a speech to a local group here last May, he said it appeared top Interior officials had already decided they wanted the dams out and were seeking the science to back up their decision.

A George Mason University professor and former National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist, Houser was hired by the bureau in 2011 to oversee the scientific studies on the Klamath project, which would include the removal of four dams as well as numerous river-restoration efforts.

Houser reached a settlement with the agency over his whistleblower complaint after mediation with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. Terms of the agreement required that neither side disclose specifics about the outcome.

Houser’s allegations that scientific data about the project was manipulated for political purposes was investigated separately. Interior officials have said a scientific integrity website was added to demonstrate the department’s commitment to transparency.

Agency spokeswoman Jessica Kershaw declined to comment about Houser’s rebuttal, saying in an email the panel’s report “really should speak for itself.”

Online

Summary of scientific integrity panel report: http://www.doi.gov/scientificintegrity/closed-cases.cfm

Paul Houser rebuttal: http://www.peer.org/assets/docs/doi/3_25_13_Houser_rebuttal.pdf

PNP comment: We are so digusted that a government agency no longer has checks and balances. There is no REAL over-sight — just continued cover-up for lies and fraud. We support Dr. Paul R. Houser and his findings. — Editor Liz Bowen

Complaint Deemed Factual but Inaccuracies Excused as “Normal Practice” Published on Mar 25, 2013 – 1:51:39 PM

By: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)

· Instances of “false precision” (where a summary has a finding that does not exist in the studies it purports to summarize) are dismissed because they are “not inconsistent” with the underlying studies;

· Repeated inaccuracies – all slanted in one direction – in these short documents are excused by a panel finding that it is “normal practice” for press releases to exhibit hyperbole or falsities; and

· Explicit efforts to prevent these concerns from being put into writing were discounted because the panel found them “not sufficiently unusual” to be “automatically alarmed” by them.

Statement of Dr. Paul R. Houser, Hydrometeorologist

March 25, 2013

Why I Filed a Complaint of Scientific Misconduct

Subsequently , I filed a scientific integrity complaint in accordance with the Department of the Interior’s Scientific Integrity Policy, and a whistle – blower protection claim with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.

I did a great deal of soul-searching and consultation before filing the complaint. Making the complaint has significant implications for my career and family, and I wanted to make sure I was not pursuing it for selfish or political reasons. I decided to file the complaint for three reasons:

(1) My obligation to scientific integrity as a scientist and my duty as a citizen to improve how our government operates;

(2) For the benefit of my replacement, so that he or she can uphold the public trust by providing honest scientific advisement without fear of losing their job;

and

(3) So that the Secretarial Decision is well informed.

Official Response to Complaint

Complaint Deemed Factual but Inaccuracies Excused as “Normal Practice”
Published on Mar 25, 2013 – 1:51:39 PM