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Science panel water report delayed
Activists, water users must wait until summer instead of March
By DYLAN DARLING
Farmers, environmentalists, commercial fishermen and everyone else who wants to read the National Research Council's final report on endangered fish in the Klamath Basin will have to wait longer than they expected.
The report should be out in the middle of the summer instead of the end of March as had been expected, said William Lewis, chairman of the report committee.
Release of the report has been pushed back because the Department of the Interior, the report's sponsor, asked the committee to consider a report on last fall's lower Klamath River fish kill and an early version of a flow study in its research.
"They didn't want us to overlook something that people would think would be relevant just for the sake of meeting a deadline," Lewis said.
Dave Sabo, Klamath area manager for the Bureau of Reclamation, said that even if the report had come out in March it wouldn't have changed what the Bureau is going to do with Klamath Project water this year.
"We would not really have been able to react in time," he said.
Bureau spokesman Jeff McCracken said the agency had hoped to get the full report in time to use it to plan for water use this year.
The delay means the Bureau of Reclamation will base its 2003 water allocations on existing biological opinions on the needs of endangered sucker fish in Upper Klamath Lake and threatened coho salmon in lower Klamath River, McCracken said.
"We had hoped to use it, but obviously we won't be able to," he said. "We will just continue to act on the information we have at hand."
Last September, an estimated 33,000 fish - mostly chinook salmon - died in the lower Klamath River.
The National Research Council committee is reviewing the findings of the California Department of Fish and Game report on the fish kill, which found the fish died of gill rot caused in part by low flows from the Klamath Reclamation Project.
The committee is also considering the preliminary findings of Utah State University professor Thomas Hardy, who is working on a study for the Bureau on minimum water flows required for salmon throughout their life cycle in the Klamath River in writing a draft of the report, which is now being reviewed by committee members, Lewis said.
An interim report issued by the National Research Council - sometimes referred to as the National Academy of Sciences - in January 2002 said federal agencies didn't have scientific justification to cut off water to Klamath Project irrigators during the summer of 2001.
The bureau restored full irrigation to the Klamath Project in 2002, over the objections of environmentalists, commercial fishermen and Indian tribes.
Lewis gave no indication if the final report would reaffirm the interim report, or whether it would be reversed.
After the draft report is reviewed by members of the committee, it will be reviewed by the National Research Council. Precisely when the final report comes out depends on how long the review process takes, Lewis said.
The committee is made up of twelve experts from around the country, ranging from a ecology professor at the University of Georgia to a professor of zoology at Michigan State University.
Lewis is the head of the limnology department at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Limnologists study bodies of fresh water, especially ponds and lakes.
Richard Adams, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at Oregon State University, is a committee member and focused on the economics of protecting fish in the Basin with his contribution to the report.
"It's people that control land and engage in many activities that can be harmful to fish," he said. "The challenge is to find the way that meets the needs of fish at minimum cost to water users in the Basin."
While the report will offer analysis of the water situation in the Klamath Basin, it probably won't offer suggestions of how things should be run, Adams said.
"That's a job for elected officials and other individuals to address," he said.
Lewis said he has chaired several other committees concerning reports like this before, and has always met his deadlines.
But he added that he doesn't think the committee is missing a deadline on the Klamath issue because the report's sponsor asked it to include more factors into the report.
- - -
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Reporter Dylan Darling covers natural resources. He can be reached at 885-4471, (800) 275-0982, or by e-mail at ddarling@heraldandnews.com.
By DYLAN DARLING
Farmers, environmentalists, commercial fishermen and everyone else who wants to read the National Research Council's final report on endangered fish in the Klamath Basin will have to wait longer than they expected.
The report should be out in the middle of the summer instead of the end of March as had been expected, said William Lewis, chairman of the report committee.
Release of the report has been pushed back because the Department of the Interior, the report's sponsor, asked the committee to consider a report on last fall's lower Klamath River fish kill and an early version of a flow study in its research.
"They didn't want us to overlook something that people would think would be relevant just for the sake of meeting a deadline," Lewis said.
Dave Sabo, Klamath area manager for the Bureau of Reclamation, said that even if the report had come out in March it wouldn't have changed what the Bureau is going to do with Klamath Project water this year.
"We would not really have been able to react in time," he said.
Bureau spokesman Jeff McCracken said the agency had hoped to get the full report in time to use it to plan for water use this year.
The delay means the Bureau of Reclamation will base its 2003 water allocations on existing biological opinions on the needs of endangered sucker fish in Upper Klamath Lake and threatened coho salmon in lower Klamath River, McCracken said.
"We had hoped to use it, but obviously we won't be able to," he said. "We will just continue to act on the information we have at hand."
Last September, an estimated 33,000 fish - mostly chinook salmon - died in the lower Klamath River.
The National Research Council committee is reviewing the findings of the California Department of Fish and Game report on the fish kill, which found the fish died of gill rot caused in part by low flows from the Klamath Reclamation Project.
The committee is also considering the preliminary findings of Utah State University professor Thomas Hardy, who is working on a study for the Bureau on minimum water flows required for salmon throughout their life cycle in the Klamath River in writing a draft of the report, which is now being reviewed by committee members, Lewis said.
An interim report issued by the National Research Council - sometimes referred to as the National Academy of Sciences - in January 2002 said federal agencies didn't have scientific justification to cut off water to Klamath Project irrigators during the summer of 2001.
The bureau restored full irrigation to the Klamath Project in 2002, over the objections of environmentalists, commercial fishermen and Indian tribes.
Lewis gave no indication if the final report would reaffirm the interim report, or whether it would be reversed.
After the draft report is reviewed by members of the committee, it will be reviewed by the National Research Council. Precisely when the final report comes out depends on how long the review process takes, Lewis said.
The committee is made up of twelve experts from around the country, ranging from a ecology professor at the University of Georgia to a professor of zoology at Michigan State University.
Lewis is the head of the limnology department at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Limnologists study bodies of fresh water, especially ponds and lakes.
Richard Adams, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at Oregon State University, is a committee member and focused on the economics of protecting fish in the Basin with his contribution to the report.
"It's people that control land and engage in many activities that can be harmful to fish," he said. "The challenge is to find the way that meets the needs of fish at minimum cost to water users in the Basin."
While the report will offer analysis of the water situation in the Klamath Basin, it probably won't offer suggestions of how things should be run, Adams said.
"That's a job for elected officials and other individuals to address," he said.
Lewis said he has chaired several other committees concerning reports like this before, and has always met his deadlines.
But he added that he doesn't think the committee is missing a deadline on the Klamath issue because the report's sponsor asked it to include more factors into the report.
- - -
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Reporter Dylan Darling covers natural resources. He can be reached at 885-4471, (800) 275-0982, or by e-mail at ddarling@heraldandnews.com.
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