Liquid gold

BY JENNIFER MARGULIS | PHOTOS BY EZRA MARCOS

Don Gentry tried not to breathe. A sudden algae bloom in Agency Lake in 1995 was killing hundreds of fish, and Gentry, who was working for the Klamath Tribes Natural Resource Department, was on the deck of a fiberglass Boston Whaler, tasked with the unpleasant job of collecting dead fish to identify which species had died at what age. When algae grows quickly over the top of a lake on a hot summer day, the drastic change in pH of the water and the lack of available oxygen can be lethal to fish. 

Gentry motored through the bright green water, the acrid smell of rotting sewage and decaying fish turning his stomach. The Klamath Tribes Natural Resources Department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service were tracking Lost River suckers (“c’waam” in Klamath) and shortnose suckers (“qapdo”), both native to Southern Oregon and Northern California, and both historic staples of the Klamath and Modoc tribes. The shortnose sucker was already on the federal government’s list of endangered species. In 2001 the Lost River sucker would be added to that list.

“My dad taught me how to catch these fish,” Gentry, 59 years old now and the chairman of the Klamath Tribe, says matter of factly. He remembers feeling angry as he looked at the dead fish, some of which weighed 20 pounds, bobbing belly up in the water that day. “Sharing the catch with elders is a big part of our lifestyle.” 

Gentry, who represents 4,600 registered members of the Klamath Tribes, is a key player in brokering the latest agreement between those with vested interests in the Klamath Basin’s water, which has been under intense negotiation for the past eight months. The Upper Klamath Basin Comprehensive Agreement defines the means to achieve water savings described in a previous landmark agreement, the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement (KBRA), and would be largely funded by the KBRA. These agreements in turn are linked to the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement (KHSA), which specifies means to remove the lower four Klamath dams. The KBRA and KHSA were signed by more than 45 Klamath stakeholders (ranchers, agriculturalists, wildlife protection groups, water conservationists and other businesses on both sides of the state border) four years ago, although legislation required to implement the agreements has yet to be passed.

The history of water rights, as well as the degradation of the Klamath Basin and who is responsible for cleaning it up, is mind-bogglingly complicated and filled with contention. Still, the issue of degraded rivers, fish die-offs, and the need for water for cattle, farming, and wildlife rehabilitation all boils down to one simple truth: Too many people in Southern Oregon and Northern California have too great a need for too little water. 

Completed in March, the Upper Klamath agreement describes how to best allocate the water in the Upper Basin to each of the stakeholders. Gentry thinks the arrangement reached provides a balanced use of water for both fisheries and agriculture. The biggest change, he says, is that the actual amount of water in the Basin at any given time, which changes from year to year, will be taken into consideration when water is allocated. The Klamath Tribes are interested in solving the immediate problems but also looking toward the future, hoping to clean up the Klamath enough to get salmon back and undo years of riparian damage. (The Klamath River was once the third most productive salmon river in the United States, but damming and habitat destruction decimated their populations.) 

Gentry believes you can’t understand the complexity of the problems with who has what right to how much water in the Klamath Basin without going back to the early 1950s, when the United States government terminated its relationship with the Klamath Tribes — among the wealthiest and best organized in the nation — through an Act of Congress that was overturned some 30 years later. Though treaty agreements initially affirmed the Klamath’s seniority over water rights (since “time immemorial”), tribal termination set the scene for decades of fighting. This new agreement stipulates: 30,000 acre-feet of water must be added each year into the streams that are tributaries to Upper Klamath Lake (which will help protect the tribes’ fishing interests and aquatic wildlife); a riparian restoration project; and a $40 million economic development fund for the Klamath Tribes.