Friday, May 21, 2021
CapitalPress.com 5
Fighting to stay alive
“I think everybody is
just trying to fi nd their way
through this the best they
can,” Seus said. “This is an
extreme situation. We’re
making tough decisions
where we need to make
them.”
Zero water allocation
pushes Klamath
Project farms to brink
By GEORGE PLAVEN AND HOLLY
DILLEMUTH
Capital Press
KLAMATH
FALLS,
Ore. — What was already
forecasted to be a histori-
cally bleak water year in the
Klamath Project has quickly
become a living night-
mare for farms and ranches
fi ghting for survival in the
drought-stricken basin.
The U.S. Bureau of Rec-
lamation 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 fi rst time in more
than a century the A Canal
will deliver no water. Mean-
while, irrigators are left to
wonder how they will pay
the bills as fi elds turn to dust.
“We know what a zero
allocation is going to mean
to our indi-
vidual farms
and the com-
munity as a
whole,” said
Ben DuVal,
who grows
alfalfa hay
Ben DuVal and raises
registered
Black Angus cattle near
Tulelake, Calif. “It’s going
to mean a lot of farms go out
of business.”
DuVal, who is also pres-
ident of the Klamath Water
Users Association, said he
has already had that diffi cult
conversation around his own
kitchen table.
“I don’t think there are
any of us who are insulated
from this,” he said. “Every-
body is going to feel the
eff ects, even businesses on
Main Street.”
A Canal shut down
The Klamath Project
encompasses roughly 315
square miles of farmland
straddling Southern Ore-
gon and Northern Califor-
nia. The market value of
agricultural products sold in
Klamath, Modoc and Siski-
you counties totaled nearly a
half-billion dollars in 2017,
according to the latest USDA
Census of Agriculture.
Under the Endangered
Species Act, the Bureau of
Reclamation is required to
operate the Project so that it
will not threaten the survival
of endangered fi sh, includ-
ing suckers in Upper Klam-
ath Lake and coho salmon in
the lower Klamath River.
Lost River and short-
nose suckers are central
to the culture and iden-
tity of the Klamath Tribes,
while salmon are revered
by tribes and anglers alike
downstream.
With the region suff ering
through extreme drought,
Reclamation says there is
not anywhere near enough
water to satisfy its ESA obli-
gations. The agency initially
allocated 33,000 acre-feet
of water to the Project in
April, less than 8% of nor-
mal demand.
By May, the situation had
only grown more dire. Rec-
lamation took the dramatic
step of nixing water for the A
Canal, leaving the majority of
the Project high and dry.
Paul Simmons, execu-
tive director of the KWUA,
which represents 1,200 fam-
ily farms and ranches in the
basin, said 2021 will be an
“extraordinarily awful” year
for local agriculture.
Looking ahead into the
summer, Simmons said
he expects domestic wells
will dry up due to a lack of
recharge in the A Canal sys-
tem. Dust storms will be
an issue from blowing top-
soil in barren fi elds, and
farms will be lost — some
of which normally employ
100-200 people seasonally.
“Many of those jobs are
going to be nonexistent or
Supplemental water
right
Holly Dillemuth/For the Capital Press
Midland cattle rancher and Klamath Drainage District board member Luther Horsley is preparing for a devastating
summer in the Klamath Basin.
George Plaven/Capital Press
Holly Dillemuth/For the Capital Press
Scott Seus, owner of Seus Family Farms in Tulelake, Ca-
lif.
Paul Crawford looks over his farm near Malin, Ore., in
the Klamath Basin in this fi le photo.
lost,” Simmons said. “The
businesses that provide agri-
culture with tractors and
seed have lost revenue. All
of those people do business
with retail business in all
these little towns, so it just
echoes all the way through.”
left dry.
“I’m going to feel pretty
accomplished if I’m still in
business in 2022,” Craw-
ford said. “As a small fam-
ily farm, we have fairly tight
margins to begin with ...
Now I’m going to produce
40% of what I’ve already
invested in.”
Crawford said he typi-
cally spends up to 80% of
his annual expenses before
cutting his fi rst hay crop in
June, months before he will
see any return on investment.
“We’ll know at the end of
the season, depending on the
yields and price, but we’re
defi nitely not going to be
able to cover all the bills,”
he said.
Buyer’s market for
cattle
Luther and Candy Hors-
ley inherited their cattle
operation in Midland, Ore.,
from Luther’s dad. They
have been through their fair
share of bad droughts and
worst-case water scenarios,
including 2001 when water
was shut off , but nothing
like this year.
The herd has been down-
sized over the years. This
year, they are down to 57
cows and will have to sell
more than half of them
because of the drought
conditions.
Having to sell off many
of their cows is both an eco-
nomic and emotional loss
for the couple. Farming runs
in Luther’s blood.
“In 2001, we sold them
incrementally and we’ll do
that again this year,” he said.
“A cow’s not a complex
being. I mean, she wants to
eat, drink and raise her baby.
If we can’t provide that for
her, you’ve got to let some-
body else do it.”
Luther said it’s a buyer’s
market in the cattle industry,
because so many herds are
being liquidated. He antic-
ipates having to sell in the
next couple of months.
“If we make it a month,
I’ll be pretty happy,” he said.
In order to have a more
positive future for farm-
ing in the Klamath Basin,
Luther said growers need
certainty when it comes to
irrigation water. Stakehold-
ers had signed the Klamath
Basin Restoration Agree-
ment in 2010 to settle water
rights and usage, though
Congress failed to pass leg-
islation enacting the agree-
ment by the Jan. 1, 2016
deadline.
“What the community
needs is some kind of bal-
ance,” Luther said. “Law-
suits are fl ying ... We need
to get out of that and try and
fi nd some solution, because
I don’t think you really win
in courts too much.”
Making tough decisions
Paul Crawford, who
grows alfalfa, orchard grass
and small grains near Malin,
Ore., said he is farming just
40% of his normal acre-
age this year, focusing on
ground that he can irrigate
with wells. The rest, which
was already planted in hay
and winter wheat, will be
Scott Seus, of Seus Fam-
ily Farms in Tulelake, said
he is working with his neigh-
bors to stretch every drop of
groundwater they can.
PVC pipe is in short sup-
ply around the basin as farm-
ers buy up what they can to
deliver water from wells
to fi elds with higher-value
crops like garlic, mint and
onions.
Onion planting is now
underway, with fewer acres
available to farm, Seus said.
Processors buy onions in the
Klamath Basin which they
dehydrate to use in things
such as soup mixes, ketchup
and salad dressing. Farmers
risk losing those contracts if
they can’t deliver.
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Only the Klamath Drain-
age District has received
any water from the Klamath
River system in 2021, exer-
cising a supplemental water
right with the state dating
back to 1977. Two other irri-
gation districts, the Langell
Valley and Horsefl y districts,
are also part of the Klamath
Project, but rely exclusively
on water from the Lost River
system.
Scott White, KDD man-
ager, said the district is
diverting 42 cubic feet of
water per second — 8% of
its permitted rate — into the
North Canal, south of Klam-
ath Falls.
The diversions, which
began in April, drew a sharp
rebuke from the Bureau of
Reclamation, which ordered
the district to immediately
stop or be exempt from fed-
eral emergency drought
funding. White has asserted
the district is doing nothing
wrong.
“Whenever Project water
is curtailed, we exercise this
permit,” he said. “This is
no diff erent than any other
drought year.”
In its announcement shut-
ting down the A Canal, the
bureau cited both drought
and “unauthorized diversions
at private facilities along the
Klamath River and Upper
Klamath Lake,” though it did
not call out KDD by name. A
spokeswoman for the agency
did not return messages for
comment.
“We can only assume that
they acknowledge our rights
as being legal,” White said.
“We have certainly asserted
that our (diversions) are not
illegal.”
KDD’s
supplemental
water right applies to just
under 20,000 acres of private
land within the district. DuVal,
with the Klamath Water Users
Association, said that while
he does not necessarily like it,
he does not blame KDD for
taking advantage of supple-
mental water.
“I don’t think there’s any
resentment in the commu-
nity for them trying to sur-
vive,” he said.
The bigger fear, DuVal
said, is outsider and extrem-
ist groups coming into the
community and using the
Klamath Project’s crisis
as a soapbox for their own
agenda.
“We don’t need that,”
he said. “It’s the people in
this community who live
and farm here whose voices
need to be heard.”
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