By Stuart Leavenworth -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Friday, July 18, 2003

A federal judge has ordered the Bush administration to redo its 10-year plan for balancing water needs in the contentious Klamath basin -- a ruling that could add to woes of farmers in the region, although not immediately, as some had feared.

Siding largely with environmentalists and Indian tribes, U.S. District Court Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong of Oakland ruled that federal authorities violated the Endangered Species Act when they approved a 10-year plan for managing the Klamath irrigation project on the California-Oregon border.

Armstrong said the plan didn't assure adequate water supplies for threatened coho salmon in the Klamath River. To the relief of farmers, however, the judge declined to reduce the water delivered to irrigators this year -- a decision that might have triggered a repeat of 2001, when federal officials cut back supplies to growers, causing months of protests.

"I think the judge made a careful and reasoned decision," said Dave Solem, manager of the Klamath Irrigation District. The ruling, he said, gives farmers some room to get their crops through the growing season.

Environmentalists said the ruling buttresses their contention that the Bush administration sidestepped wildlife concerns when it upped deliveries to farmers following the 2001 Klamath crisis.

Because of the ruling, the National Marine Fisheries Service must now redo its 10-year plan for assuring adequate water for coho salmon in the Klamath, and can no longer rely on "speculative" supplies provided by Oregon and California, said Kristen Boyles, a lawyer for Earthjustice, an Oakland-based legal group.

"This will be a big job," said Boyles, which represented environmental and fishing groups in the case. "We are talking about the extinction of a species."

Although small among Western irrigation districts, the Klamath basin has loomed large on the national radar. Conflicts among farmers, activists and Indian tribes reached a boil in 2001, nearly turning violent when irrigators lost water just as they were preparing to plant.

Over the last year, the Interior Department has tried to ease tensions by setting up a Klamath water bank, in which farmers are paid to fallow land and "bank" water for dry years. Last summer, however, 30,000 salmon died in the Klamath River downstream, prompting a new round of finger-pointing and lawsuits.

In her decision this week, Armstrong said it was impossible to rule immediately on whether federal irrigation policies might have triggered the fish kill, noting conflicts among biologists.

Even so, the judge declared there was a "triable issue of fact" that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation may have breached its legal obligation to tribes in operating the Klamath Project. That, say some lawyers, could lead to a historic court trial on how much water Klamath tribes need to revive their once-robust fisheries.

Such a trial could feature biologists on all sides presenting evidence on river flows, water temperatures and other factors that may have caused the mysterious fish kill. If the judge rules that the bureau was at fault and breached its tribal obligations, the result could be a reallocation of water supplies, said Curtis Berkey, a Berkeley lawyer who represents the Yurok tribe.

While winning in court, environmentalists and U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson, who represents northwest California and was a plaintiff in the lawsuit, lost in Congress Thursday.

Thompson and other Democrats had pushed an amendment that would have stopped farmers from planting water-intensive crops on new leases in the Lower Klamath and Tule Lake national wildlife refuges. Voting along party lines, the House killed the amendment, 228-197.