INDEPENDENCE DAY ISSUE-A BLOW FOR LIBERTY AT THE KLAMATH PROJECT

Independence Day Issue: A Blow for Liberty at the Klamath Project

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News from the Front #52:

". . . all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security."

The Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776)

For many years, the history of federal management of natural resources in the West has been a "long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object". The Abuses and Usurpations are well-known, premised upon fraudulent "science" and gross distortions of environmental "law": Endangered Species Act listings, National Monuments, Wilderness Areas, newly-minted Tribal rights, roadless areas, logging restrictions, wolf and grizzly reintroductions, mining prohibitions, enormous "buffer zones", and above all, theft of water.

The Object that the Federal Government is "pursuing invariably" is to remove rural Westerners from their land, so that the land may be swallowed up by ever-growing Government and its allies. Government already owns or controls more than 42% of the land in the Nation, with a much higher percentage in Western States, and the pending CARA bill would make things worse. Logging on public land in the Pacific Northwest now stands at 1% of the levels prevailing in 1990. More than 85% of the storage capacity of reservoirs in the Federal Columbia River Power System is now dedicated to the imagined needs of fish. Grazing on public lands is rapidly shrinking. The federal government is leaving more and more rural Westerners no choice but to leave, or perhaps work for the government.

Many in the West feel powerless to stop these developments. Certainly our present political leaders are no help. The Democrats promote the Object to attenuate the political power of their opponents and reward their allies; the Republicans suffer it to occur because many are no more than unprincipled fools. Eastern rivers have been reduced to a third of their former flows, and the once-mighty Rio Grande no longer even reaches the Gulf of Mexico, but no one threatens to cut off the water of the great cities of the East to restore historic flows. The EPA rolls over and plays dead for water problems in the Nation's Capitol. Westerners are suffering under a tyranny of the majority, and all Constitutional principles protecting their rights from that majority have collapsed.

Is the Law Useless?

Many communities across the West are beginning to realize that legal means for addressing their concerns have not worked. They have tried petitioning, lobbying, writing letters, going to court, voting for candidates that they thought represented their interests, legal protest, and still their views are ignored. Nowhere in the West is the realization keener than in the Klamath Basin.

They know that everyone is telling lies about them. The big lie is that irrigated farming in the Klamath Basin has caused enormous losses to fishing and tribal communities, so that it is somehow appropriate for the farmers to suffer. But the salmon canneries at the mouth of the Klamath disappeared long, long ago. That was back when it was cooler in the Pacific Northwest, and conditions were more favorable for salmon.

Back then, the mouth of the Klamath River was deep and wide, and no dams blocked the migration of salmon. Now historic salmon habitat is cut off by dams downstream from the Klamath farmers, and devastating mudslides long ago silted in the near-ocean portion of the River, so much so that the mouth is now a narrow race over a sandbar. If you visited there in April 2001, on one side of the River you would have seen the Yurok Tribe herding salmon into gillnets with powerboats -- hardly a historic practice -- and on the other side, you would have seen large populations of marine mammals that have grown all along the West Coast, consuming vast quantities of salmon.

In the Klamath River, Yurok Tribal salmon harvests have increased substantially in recent years. California-wide harvests of chinook salmon have held steady as well:

The coho runs have fallen off, but this is mostly from overfishing and poor ocean conditions, which have recently improved. All across the world, fishermen run marine resource after marine resource into the ground, and seek to cast the blame elsewhere. They continue heavy mixed-stock harvests, which would be illegal if the Federal government bothered to enforce the Endangered Species Act against fishing.

It is certainly impossible to link the declines in salmon fisheries to Klamath farming, because the Klamath River flows have not changed much for decades:

Those who blame salmon fishing declines on irrigation in the Klamath Basin are just plain wrong. Either they are ignorant, or they are deliberately lying. Most of the "facts" commonly held by environmentalists, fishermen, and their allies are simply not true. Those who say that suckers and coho are endangered species are either ignorant or liars. Those who say that water must pour down the Klamath River at twice historic levels this month to save suckers or coho are either ignorant or liars.

Sue Ellen Woodbridge, deputy chief of staff to Interior Secretary Gale Norton, declares "I think that any solution in the Klamath has to recognize that there is not enough water." While that is true this year, there is no call for government to impose "solutions" to a problem that the common law solved centuries ago. If there is not enough water, the junior rights holders go without.

Ms. Woodbridge's remarks do not bode well for the farmers. As I have written before, no amendment of the Endangered Species Act is needed to solve the problems of the Klamath Basin farmers. Ms. Woodbridge's boss can grant a God Squad exemption from the Act with little more than the stroke of her pen. The Bush Administration can de-list species like the sucker and the coho that are obviously not endangered with little more than the stroke of a pen.

This week, the Pacific Legal Foundation is expected to file an application for a God Squad exemption with the Secretary of the Interior. This puts the Bush Administration on the spot: it can either endorse the application and move forward to help the Klamath farmers, or it can ignore or deny the application. The Endangered Species Act provides the Secretary twenty days to decide whether to hold a God Squad hearing. If the Bush Administration turns its back on the Klamath farmers, they will have little recourse in law.

Many with an instinct to fight the federal government believe that the Constitution can somehow protect them. They know the Constitution and know that the federal government has no legitimate power to regulate the populations of fish in lakes. At most, a Federal government acting within Constitutional limitations could regulate interstate and foreign commerce in fish and enforce treaties concerning fish. Some communities, most famously Catron County, New Mexico, have had their county governments adopt ordinances purporting to override Federal directives. Unfortunately, the federal courts and state courts have swatted these ordinances down like flies.

The common sense interpretation of the Constitution is now a minority view, because the common sense is trained out of our lawyers in law school. The problem is more with the people than with the laws, paralleling Teddy Roosevelt's observations on the fall of the Roman Republic:

"The Roman Republic fell, not because of the ambition of Caesar or Augustus, but because it had already long ceased to be in any real sense a republic at all. When the sturdy Roman plebian, who lived by his own labor, who voted without reward according to his own convictions, and who with his fellows joined in war the terrible Roman legion, had been changed into an idle creature who craved nothing in life save the gratification of a thirst for vapid excitement, who was fed by the state, and who directly or indirectly sold his vote to the highest bidder, then the end of the republic was at hand, and nothing could save it. The laws were the same as they had been, but the people behind the laws had changed, and so the laws counted for nothing."

Going to courts with judges trained to uphold the government despite the Constitution is pointless. Small battles, such as pitiful compensation years after a government "taking", might be achieved, but more than lawyers will be required to restore the Constitution as a limitation on federal authority.

On Civil Disobedience

Ultimately, only a countervailing show of power can force the federal government to temper its exercise of power over the Klamath Project. The Klamath Community, and communities across the West, have their own, ancient source of power. It is a power within each individual to give voice to deep moral convictions that the federal government is wrong. Eventually, citizens become distressed enough to be motivated to go against the grain, to sacrifice personal comfort, to face unknown danger, to give up their freedom and risk going to jail to defend those convictions.

On Saturday, July 1, 2001, someone in the Klamath Basin did just that, opening a headgate to allow water to flow into the irrigation canals. That person joins a long line of heroes in American history. The American Revolution, after all, began with civil disobedience. At the Boston Tea Party, citizens of the colony of Massachusetts trespassed on a British ship and threw its cargo of tea overboard, rather than be forced to pay taxes without representation to Britain.

Civil disobedience has also been common in anti-war movements ever since Henry David Thoreau went to jail for refusing to participate in the war against Mexico in 1849. The American defeat in Vietnam is testimony to the success of such movements efforts. The Women's Suffrage Movement involved thousands of women marching in the streets, enduring hunger strikes, and submitting to arrest and jail in order to gain the right to vote. The movement to abolish slavery was founded upon disobedience to fugitive slave laws. The rise of labor unions, founded upon strikes that were initially illegal ultimately produced the eradication of child labor and established the 40-hour work week. The Civil Rights Movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr. and others, included sit-ins and illegal marches which broke segregation laws in the south.

More recently, civil disobedience tactics have been appropriated by the environmentalists, with astounding successes. No nuclear power plants have been built for decades. Logging on public lands has been crippled by sit-ins, blockades, tree sits and forest occupations. And most recently, citizens have begun to employ such tactics to protect their property rights. The saga of the Jarbridge Rebellion, which has reportedly succeeded in reopening access to a recreation area closed by a bogus endangered species listing of bull trout, should inspire all the West.

The opening of the Klamath headgates has the potential to inspire all the West as well. Perhaps that is why The Oregonian did not even deign to mention the event (the Seattle Times has picked up the story from the AP). The opening of the Klamath headgates is the first step toward empowering the Klamath community to fight back against the indifference and lies of the federal government.

Polarizing the Community

". . . what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?"

2 Corinthians 6:14

The act of opening the headgates will tend to polarize the community, because action threatens efforts at consensus. But that is a good thing. Many in the Klamath Basin have urged compromise, conciliation, and consensus with federal officials and their environmentalist allies at every step of the way. Margaret Thatcher has accurately described "consensus" as "the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead.". "What great cause," she asks, "would have been fought and won under the banner 'I stand for consensus'?"

The environmentalists have never heeded calls for consensus, which is why they are now in a position to force others to seek consensus with them. Indeed, Leftists have always known that the time for conciliation and consensus is after they have ascended into power. This is the fundamental lesson of Saul Alinsky's book "Rules for Radicals", and reputedly the subject of Hillary Clinton's senior thesis that remains under lock and key at Wellesley College. Oregon's Democrats in the Legislature didn't seek consensus on drawing the boundaries of legislative districts in Oregon last month. Instead, they illegally left their jobs -- civil disobedience -- until they could be sure that a fellow Democrat would draw the district lines to perpetuate Democratic hegemony.

With the polarization of the community, the enemies of the Klamath farmers, and of Liberty generally, will begin to stand out. For the community to win, enemies must be recognized as enemies. An old labor organizing song from the 1930s ("Which side are you on?") declares: "They say in Harlan County, there are no neutrals there." So too must it be in Klamath County, if the Klamath community is to beat the Federal government.

Environmentalists and the fishermen pushing outrageous lies concerning the Klamath Project are obvious enemies. So too are those who enable the liars. Many of the employees of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation are enemies. Henry David Thoreau wrote in his famous essay On Civil Disobedience:

"The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others--as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders--serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God."

The term "devil" may seem old-fashioned, but using lies to take things away from citizens is evil. And the worst part of this evil is that it preys upon the good instincts of the Klamath community, which has no desire to wipe suckers and coho off the face of the earth, and may secretly fear that their farming does harm fish. This evil undermines the confidence of the Klamath community in its own common sense.

It has been reported that the Sheriff of Klamath County, Timothy Evinger, retains his common sense. He is reportedly refusing to cooperate with federal officials. This is a good first step. Perhaps the Sheriff can go further, instructing his deputies to tail federal officials, and publicly post their whereabouts. Perhaps he can arrest federal officials who violate local laws, say, by going 26 mph in a 25 mph zone. Indeed, the entire community should shun the federal officials. Where do the federal employees eat lunch? Where do they buy gas? None should sell to them, and those that do should be picketed. If the Klamath community cannot deter collaborators within, it has little hope of influencing the powers without.

Organizing the Community

While opening the headgates was a good first step, the federal government promptly closed them. The Klamath community, like others in the West, cannot hope to make any long-term progress against the Federal government until it is united. The most difficult part of any campaign of civil disobedience is getting the entire local community pushing in the same direction. If the Klamath community is going to win their war, they are going to have to begin organizing into the brigades that are needed to fight it.

First and foremost, the community needs leaders who can come together to plan a concerted campaign against the federal government. If local politicans stand in the way of the campaign, the first part of the campaign can be to recall them, and put fighters into the local offices. Perhaps the campaign will never have to be executed; the mere resolve of the community in pursuing it could cause the Bush Administration to back down. The Puerto Rican protestors certainly got the Bush Administration to back down on continuing to use Vieques as a bombing range. And the Bureau says it won't even bother to investigate who opened the headgates.

The community leaders must articulate an acceptable goal for the community. There is no reason not to aim high, seeking an end to bogus ESA listings and bogus water operations. In the long run, citizens may want to ask why the federal government should own the Klamath Project at all, putting its operations at the whim of remote urban elites. The Klamath Tribe aims high, seeking its reservation back; perhaps the Klamath farmers ought to get title to the Project as part of a package deal.

And the community leaders must build support for those involved in civil disobedience, including raising money for fines and bail. The availability of such funds will give courage to those involved in civil disobedience. One post on the Klamath Crisis electronic bulletin board says: "I am a housewife in S. Cal. What can I do to help?" Isn't it obvious? Send money. Let this be the first army in history that posts its receipts and expenses on the Internet, for everyone to see. The holders of the funds can keep their distance from protestors until they are needed, to avoid charges of conspiracy.

Community leaders must also educate the community about civil disobedience, focusing upon the principle and power of nonviolence. There is a wealth of literature on civil disobedience, including much developed by Leftists. Many pieces deal with the philosophy of nonviolence, with important roots in Christianity and Eastern philosophies. Nonviolent civil disobedience has transforming power because its true adherents transcend their anger at the Government, and change themselves, becoming empowered by their resistance. Surely there are some preachers in the Klamath community who can find the time to sermonize on these subjects.

As for the acts of civil disobedience themselves, organization is counterproductive. The federal government has an immense ability to spy on Americans, and a long history of infiltrating movements that oppose it. The radical environmentalists have online publications on security and citizens' rights that may provide useful information for Klamath protestors; the radical right has pointed out that those interested in direct action ought to emulate the organizational structure of the Founders:

"During the American Revolution 'committees of correspondence' were formed throughout the Thirteen colonies. Their purpose was to subvert the government and thereby aid the cause of independence. The 'Sons of Liberty', who made a name for themselves dumping government taxed tea into the harbor at Boston, were the action arm of the committees of correspondence. Each committee was a secret cell that operated totally independently of the other cells. Information on the government was passed from committee to committee, from colony to colony, and then acted upon on a local basis. Yet even in these bygone days of poor communication, of weeks to months for a letter to be delivered, the committees without any central direction whatsoever, were remarkable similar in tactics employed to resist government tyranny. It was, as the first American patriots knew, totally unnecessary for anyone to give an order for anything. Information was made available to each committee, and each committee acted as it saw fit."

It is a unity of purpose that is critical; a unity of organization creates vulnerabilities. Internet bulletin boards, like the one at the Klamath Basin Crisis website, can help separate groups exchange information; Internet experts can tell you how to post on these forums by bouncing through offshore websites that make your posting virtually untraceable (anonymous postings done through domestic ISPs can be traced to an originating IP number). It is also possible to secure e-mail communications against government prying by downloading PGP.

A campaign of action also requires a force consisting of those dedicated to defending the truth about Klamath farming and fish, and refuting the constant stream of lies emanating from environmentalists, government and media. Citizens are needed to write letters to the Editor. Citizens are needed to bird-dog each out-of-town reporter that comes to Klamath Falls, educating them in the nature of the federal fraud.

The media is, of course, an enemy too, because it reflects the biases of its urban and liberal owners. While the Klamath Bucket Brigade was an enormous success, it got little press in the mass media; the opening of the headgates has gone unnoticed, in part because there wasn't enough organization to ensure resistance when they went to turn the water back on. The media will always go for what is most dramatic: if several thousand people sit down peacefully, but one throws a bomb, the coverage will be all about the bomb. Activists can expect nothing but relentless criticism from the media, at least in the early stages. This is nothing new. During the Civil Rights movement, even the so-called liberal columnists all deplored nonviolent direct action, and called upon the participants to go to meetings, and testify before Congress, etc. And the media will yawn at demonstrations unless they are particularly novel, creative, or funny. The challenge for Klamath activists is to figure out demonstrations and protests that will engage the media, perhaps even by making the media itself the target.

Citizens can also bypass the media now through e-mail, posting on the Internet, and even buying advertising time. Cable television commercials can be purchased in many markets for less than $10 a showing. Citizens could videotape the stories of suffering, and make compelling low-budget radio and television commercials. That's how Measure 7 got passed.

An important purpose of civil disobedience tactics is what the Leftists call "consciousness raising". The Klamath farmers and all the other victims of the War on the West must get so "in your face" that people in general can no longer deny there is a problem. The sit-ins and protests of the Civil Rights era angered people, and undoubtedly made life difficult for many wholly blameless individuals, but they focused the Nation upon a serious problem. The force of publicists supports the actions of protestors to raise the consciousness of our fellow citizens.

General Observations on Civil Disobedience Tactics

The best kind of civil disobedience is that which puts the Government in a dilemma: if the protest goes forward, the protestors accomplish an important objective; and if the Government represses the protestors, the Government puts itself in a bad light, and the general public is educated about the injustice. From that perspective, the "open the headgates" strategy is a good one for the Klamath farmers. Even if the farmers cannot keep the headgates open, they can tie up quite a lot of Federal resources in the process. The point is not to "make a stand" once and for all. The point is to gradually make the Klamath Project ungovernable without the expenditure of more and more resources. This is how the environmentalists shut down logging. They just made it more and more difficult for the Federal government to do its logging business.

And protestors must focus upon whom in particular they are trying to influence. At present, the efforts of the Klamath community appear focused upon influencing the entire Nation to realize that the the Endangered Species Act should be amended. While this is a worthy goal, how can ESA reform ever get past the Democratic Senate? Some in the Klamath community are promoting a caravan to Washington, D.C., with the same goal in mind.

Without a truly national effort, such a tactic can be no more than an early, first step. In the summer of 1965, a few hundred people had gathered in Washington to march in protest against the Vietnam war. By 1971, twenty thousand came to Washington to commit civil disobedience, trying to tie up Washington traffic to express their opposition to the War. Fourteen thousand of them were arrested, the largest mass arrest in American history. And it took four more years before the antiwar movement triumphed. Without a more focused approach, the Klamath Basin could turn into a dust bowl before anything changed.

The focus of the Klamath Basin protestors should by now be obvious: the Bush Administration, and, more specifically, the official with the power to solve the problem: Interior Secretary Norton. It may prove useful to focus attention on her personally, dogging her every public appearance with protestors whose signs ask, in substance, "why, oh why, have you turned your back on us?"

Mohandas K. Gandhi's first principle of strategy was to stay on the offensive. That means focusing civil disobedience over and over upon designated targets, not filing like sheep into Government meetings. If Secretary Norton is not accessible, those who report to her are available, and their every dispatch to D.C. should be a tale of woe about the erosion of their standing in the community, and the hostility they are experiencing.

The Larger Struggle

The Klamath problem is just one of a "long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object". Perhaps the opening of the headgates will be one small step in a long march toward to frustration of the federal designs for rural Westerners. Some idea about the size of the larger struggle may be gleaned from the history of the anti-nuclear movement. Since 1980, roughly 50,000 people have been arrested protesting nuclear power, and they in turn arrested the collective will of the federal government and the utility industry. 50,000 arrests may sound like a lot, but it's not, really. There are more battlefronts in the War on the West than there are nuclear plants. It is a War that can be won.

The War can be won because the federal government's Object provides ample allies all over the West, and their cause is just. When each community offers help beyond its borders, and seeks help beyond its borders, there is no limit to what these communities can accomplish. We hope and pray that the Klamath community will join the fight.

You have permission to reprint this article, and are encouraged to do so. The sooner people figure out what's going on, the quicker we'll have more fish in the rivers.

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Klamath Basin Headgates Re-Opened During Peaceful Rally
klamathbasincrisis.org news team 07.04.01

Klamath Falls, OR: The headgates are open again. This time by a calm but persistent group of local farmers, ranchers and supporters .... In the heat of the afternoon, today, Independence Day, 2001.

A group of about 300, met peacefully, yet purposefully today at the head gates to the Klamath Project. After gaining entrance to a fenced area where the gates are located, about half of the group crossed in, subjecting themselves to possible arrest for trespassing. Having brought the proper tools, several members of the group then proceeded to liberate the locking mechanism, all the time being cheered by the group both inside and outside the gate. Then at least twenty people, representing a cross section of the basin, helped to turn the long steel rod, that opens the gate. All the other peaceful protestors cheered and sang.

A moment of concern for the protestors occurred, when a couple Klamath Falls Police Department squad cars arrived, however they stayed on the other side of the street and did not interfere. Klamath County Sheriff Tim Evinger also showed up, when asked, he said he was just here to monitor the water level in the canal, nothing more. As a symbolic action only one of the six gates were opened, crating no danger of any flooding.

"If the Bureau of Reclamation closes it, we will come and open it again", one member of the group said, It's our water, it was given to us by the government, then we paid for it, worked for it, we have the right to get it back."

Another said: "Today I stood with my fellow Americans, with flags flying, patriotic songs in our hearts.. in our souls, we locked arms, we made our statement. Even if the gates are closed already, it still was truly one of the high points of my life, to show our strength, our resolve, together on the 4th of July!

See background and more on this continuing crisis at http://www.klamathbasincrisis.org/

Permission to reprint/republish granted, as long as you include the name of our site, the author, and our URL. www.SierraTimes.com
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Attorney calls for local civil disobedience

07/06/01

A Portland attorney who has made a career of challenging government policies met Thursday with local residents to discuss the Klamath Basin water crisis.

James L. Buchal, of the Portland law firm of Murphy & Buchal, spoke to the group that met at the Jefferson Square Shopping Mall about the principles of civil disobedience.

Among the participants were several people who participated in Wednesday’s opening of the A Canal.

Buchal has gained notoriety for filing a brief in federal court defending the Grants Pass Irrigation District’s Savage Rapids Dam, and has authored a book on the “myth” of salmon restoration efforts.

Buchal described the outcome of the federal brief as an incomplete victory, adding, “But they still have their water.”

Reporters were asked to leave Thursday’s meeting at the mall. Stan Thompson, a Klamath Falls resident and one of the participants in Wednesday’s demonstration at the A Canal headgates, said several people in the group were concerned about possibly being prosecuted for their actions in opening the canal.

“These people are just farmers faced with a complete loss of their way of life,” said Thompson. “They are worried.”

Earlier in the day, Buchal and the group sought assurances from Klamath County District Attorney Ed Caleb that the people who participated in reopening the A Canal headgates Wednesday would not be prosecuted.

“We talked about the laws regarding property and trespass,” said Caleb. “There are some folks in the group that do not relish the idea of going to jail. I told them the sheriff and I are still of the opinion that damage to federal property is a federal issue.

“What really struck me was that some of the people in that group didn’t realize a possible outcome of civil disobedience could be arrest and prosecution,” Caleb said. “I made it clear if things got to the point where somebody got hurt, every law enforcement agency, federal and local, would become involved.”

Asked his opinion on the inaction of the Klamath Falls Police Department and Sheriff Tim Evinger as the headgates were opened Wednesday, Caleb said, “I think both agencies are attempting to exercise restraint. If we have learned anything from history, it would be that restraint is called for in the situation we had Monday.

“These are law-abiding citizens who have reached a point where their frustrations are extremely high. I think the Klamath Falls Police Department and Sheriff Evinger have dealt with the situation professionally and with reason.”

In a July 4 essay posted on the Internet, the lawyer said the opening of the headgates “will tend to polarize the community, because action threatens efforts at consensus.

“But that is a good thing. Many in the Klamath Basin have urged compromise, conciliation, and consensus with federal officials and their environmentalist allies at every step of the way.”

But, he said, environmentalists “have never heeded calls for consensus, which is why they are no in a position to force others to see consensus with them.”

Buchal praised Evinger for not intervening in the headgate opening. He suggested that law enforcement agencies go further, by enforcing laws such as speed limits against federal employees, arresting them if they go 26 mph in a 25-mph zone. He suggested that the community shun federal employees, refusing to sell food and gas to them.

He said that should be part of a communitywide campaign of civil disobedience, led by local officials.

“If local politicians stand in the way of the campaign,” Buchal wrote, “the first part of the campaign is to recall them, and put fighters into the local offices.”

* * *

Reporter Kehn Gibson covers public safety and courts. He can be reached at 885-4425, (800) 275-0982 or by e-mail at kgibson@heraldandnews.com.

A Canal break-in unprecedented for Reclamation bureau

07/06/01

The break-in at the A Canal headgates is unprecedented not only in the history of the Klamath Project but also in that of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, a Reclamation official said Thursday.

With the break-in, Reclamation steps into uncharted territory. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there had never been an incident where people have forced their way onto Reclamation property and caused damage to water gates or other fixtures or equipment.

The agency that is responsible for developing and managing hundreds of irrigation projects throughout the West was created to serve farmers. Up until now, its unofficial sympathies have been with the farmers of the Klamath Project.

Klamath Project workers who were required to close the A Canal Monday did so with distaste. Closing the canal gate rubs against the entire mission of the agency.

Some of that sympathy appears to have evaporated with Wednesday’s protest and break-in. Reclamation officials are taking the incident very seriously.

Since the Bureau of Reclamation is a water-management agency, not an enforcement agency, it has no authority to investigate crimes or enforce laws. The FBI and federal marshals have been asked to investigate the break-in.

Bob Applegate, spokesman for Gov. John Kitzhaber, said the governor is monitoring the developments.

“The governor’s aware of the situation in the Klamath area and would urge that citizens make their views known legally and safely, and not engage in any acts of vandalism,” Applegate said. “We just urge all to be calm and peaceful while we try to make the best of a bad situation.”

U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials in the California-Nevada regional office in Sacramento were reportedly discussing the Klamath situation Friday morning and unavailable for comment.

Reclamation spokesman Jeffrey McCracken said Friday morning he did not know if the federal agencies will investigate. “We’ve heard nothing from the marshals or the FBI,” he said. In the meantime, McCracken said, Klamath Project officials have taken measures to make sure the gates cannot be opened again by force. He would not elaborate.

The third break-in occurred after a group of more than 100 people forced their way past a chain link fence surrounding the A Canal headgate and used welding equipment to re-open one of the six gates that control the flow of water from Upper Klamath Lake into the canal. The canal is the main feeder for farmlands of the Klamath Reclamation Project. The gate had been closed by Klamath Project officials twice previously after vandals opened it.

Following the first illegal opening sometime early Saturday morning, Klamath Project officials closed the gate after officials of the Klamath Irrigation District refused to do so. The irrigation district has a contract to operate the gate according to instructions from Reclamation, but its managers refused to comply with the bureau’s directive to close the gate.

The gate was closed by Reclamation employees Monday. Early Tuesday morning, Reclamation officials had to close the gate a second time and it was reopened. This time they welded it shut.

Tuesday afternoon, Kirk Rodgers, acting director of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Mid-Pacific region, and Mike Ryan, acting deputy director for the region, flew to Klamath Falls to discuss the break-ins with managers of the irrigation district.

The Reclamation official who spoke off the record expressed concern that local police chose to stand by rather than protect government property from damage. Police officers observed the events Wednesday but did nothing to interfere with the crowd.

The official suggested that when and if federal law officers did arrive, they would probably take a close look at television coverage and newspaper photographs that depicted the protesters inside the headgate enclosure and on the headgates.

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Both sides harden in Oregon water dispute

Monday, July 09, 2001, 11:46 a.m. Pacific

By Craig Welch
Seattle Times staff reporter

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. - Farmland here is so dry it crumbles like old cement, but tensions in this drought-desiccated valley are boiling over.

Three times in five days last week, protesters frustrated at the government's refusal to release irrigation water from nearby Upper Klamath Lake used saws or a blowtorch to open headgates and release water from behind a dam.

Meanwhile, residents unsuccessfully begged reluctant county officials to pass unorthodox laws to wrest more control of water from Washington, D.C.

The FBI is in town. County commissioners are worried. The sympathetic sheriff is under fire for not taking action. And the Bush administration is suddenly in the hot seat to resolve a conflict more reminiscent of the Clinton era.

"When your house is on fire you start looking for the nearest garden hose," Klamath County Commissioner Steve West said. "People are losing hope. I just hope they don't lose common sense."

As temperatures soar into the 90s and crops wither, farmers, merchants and residents are turning to ever more radical measures in their battle with the feds.

• Some residents, who promise a repeat performance of the dam release later this week, threaten within earshot of police to chain themselves to squad cars if anyone interferes.
• One group has hired a Yale-educated attorney who urges the political right to parrot the protest methods used at World Trade Organization conference in Seattle in late 1999.

• Mainstream farm groups, which organized a communitywide "bucket brigade" protest in May that drew thousands, kick around ideas such as tying up the highway with a tractor convoy from here to Eugene.

• A few more-militant individuals insist they've talked others out of plans to dynamite dams.

"There're a lot of people contacting us who want to do heavier stuff, but we're telling them we're not interested," said farmer Paul Arritola.

With erosion-blocking cover crops already planted, many of the region's 1,300 normally workaholic farm families are suddenly faced with too much idle time.

"They've cut and baled their only crop of hay. They've changed the oil in the tractor. There's nothing to do," said cattle rancher Bill Kennedy. "And it's going to get worse."

The resource battleground

Three months after the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced it would withhold nearly 90 percent of the region's irrigation water to protect two species of endangered suckerfish, the skirmish here along the California-Oregon border has become the central resource battle of the West.

Property-rights-groups from several states are coordinating events here, and conservatives in Congress see the region as a prime example for dismantling the federal Endangered Species Act.

But the Klamath Basin water war also represents a subtle coming-of-age for the so-called wise-use movement, a broad collection of interest groups that push for more traditional uses such as farming, logging, mining and ranching in the West.

In 1994, Dick Carver, a commissioner in Nye County, Nev., bulldozed through a road closed by a Forest Service ranger and later suggested that if the ranger had drawn his weapon, "50 people" with sidearms would have drilled him. In 1999, in Elko, Nev., residents calling themselves a "shovel brigade" who promised to rebuild a road closed to protect bull trout, were so menacing that Humboldt-Toiyabe Forest supervisor Gloria Flora resigned in protest.

While some tactics employed here directly descend from the defiant Sagebrush Rebellion of the early 1980s and mimic recent protests elsewhere, actions show an increasing sophistication.

Residents here work with the same wise-use groups and admit they took the idea for some demonstrations from Nevada. But here, farmers and merchants are media-savvy, producing videotapes of their plight, and staging less-threatening demonstrations of civil disobedience. Klamath irrigators are even represented by a lobbying firm that employs former U.S. Rep. Bob Smith, R-Ore., the onetime chair of the House Agriculture Committee.

Meanwhile,the county-supremacy measures sought but rejected last week in Kalamath Falls were similar to toothless laws passed in the early 1990s in Boundary County, Idaho, and Catron County, N.M. — constitutionalist edicts that shared philosophy with the militia movement and which were quickly struck down in court.

But here, maverick attorney James Buchal, who recently wrote a book, "The Great Salmon Hoax," urged residents to seek something equally controversial: money to bring in nonviolence trainers.

One organizer of last week's Fourth of July rally was a Washingtonian, Chuck Cushman, with American Land Rights in Battle Ground, Clark County, and a longtime wise-use activist. He wants to conduct a seminar here on "nonviolent civil disobedience and how not to go too far."

While a few angry residents mutter about tyranny and not wanting a repeat of Waco or Ruby Ridge — the siren song of Western anti-government movements—most take pains not to even hint at violence.

Stan Thompson, who is organizing another protest at the dams this week, said he planned radio messages today informing the FBI that participants would willingly be arrested without confrontation.

"Don't kick our doors down or storm-trooper us. Call us," Thompson said. "We'll go quietly."

Klamath County Sheriff Tim Evinger doesn't hide his support for the demonstrators and defends his decision not to interfere with last week's water release at the dam. He said he'd arranged months ago with the U.S. Marshals Office and the FBI that they would lead any investigation. "There were fliers up and it sounded like a protest, so I went to keep an eye out," he said, complaining that media accounts made it "look like I was a wild-eyed Western sheriff.

"It's difficult for me. It's never fun to arrest your neighbors, but I will if I have to."

Prompted by court decisions and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biological opinions, the decision to cut irrigation water here affects most of the 170,000 acres served by Upper Klamath Lake. While some farmers still have state water rights or private wells, and others still get water from two nearby lakes, most farms are so parched their crops have blown away and the soil may be damaged for years.

Elsewhere in town, food-bank supplies are stretched. The county's mental health services are up 60 percent over the same period last year.

Alfalfa prices are so high struggling cattle owners can't afford it, but hay producers short on water have no crop to sell to take advantage of the market.

Work at one local hairdressers has "dropped off like a lead sinker," one cosmetologist said.

County officials estimate some 30 wells also have gone dry, and they blame empty irrigation canals they say help recharge deep aquifers.

While residents of this town and the nearby communities of Merrill, Malin and Tulelake are quick to support each other, they're deeply divided on tactics.

"The solution is not to open the headgates," said Jimmy Carleton, who normally farms 1,100 acres of alfalfa. Instead, his cattle have been moved to Grants Pass, and he's taken a job this spring with the state Labor Department, coordinating retraining for farmers.

"It's a political problem, and it requires a political solution," he said.

He and other farmers are trying to put pressure on Congress, where a $20 million aid package has stalled. They've also become eager foot soldiers in the war against the ESA.

They support calling on the "God Squad"—a rarely convened committee of high-ranking officials in Washington, D.C., who judge whether an ESA decision is too detrimental to people.

While requests have been made more than a dozen times in the past 25 years, the committee has only convened in three cases - the snail darter, the whooping crane and the northern spotted owl. The one decision against the ESA - the spotted-owl case - was later overturned.

"I understand the frustration, but in the past, the God Squad has not really been helpful," said Jeff Eager, spokesman for U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., who has requested information about such a committee from Interior Secretary Gale Norton. It's not clear yet how Norton will respond.

Still others want to be more aggressive.

"I'm tired of playing by the rules," said farmer Arritola. "Nobody's listening."

And everyone, it seems, is both courting - and fearing - attention from outside the region.

"We want people to hear our story," said Commissioner Steve West. "But I fear there have been some with no ties to this basin who've come in and tried to get people to buy into their beliefs and get them more worked up."

He sighed.

"And the summer's only going to get hotter."

Craig Welch can be reached at 206-464-2093 or cwelch@seattletimes.com.

Thoreau the Bums Out
Oregon's farmers embrace civil disobedience. Will it be so long, sucker fish?

BY KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
Thursday, July 12, 2001 12:01 a.m.

Oregon's Klamath Valley made headlines this spring after the federal government brutally cut off 1,400 farms from water because of some "endangered" sucker fish. But the news coming out of Klamath Falls these days isn't really about legal briefs or junk science. It's about lawbreakin'.

Having been swindled by their government, the farmers, and a growing body of sympathizers, are engaging in a bit of conscientious objecting. Last week a group of 100 to 150 people calmly took a diamond-bladed chainsaw and cutting torch to an irrigation canal's headgate, reopening the flow of water to their land. The county sheriff, prosecutors and the local irrigation district refused to lift a finger to stop them, though it has happened three times; they sat and watched.

Now laws are laws and should the feds come arresting, the Klamath farmers deserve a stay in the hoosegow. But what's impressive is that the farmers are ready for that stay. Indeed, what's rousing about the whole Klamath case is that it truly is some good, old-fashioned civil disobedience. In sharp contrast to the terrorism some radical environmental groups practice, this is a principled stand. An entire community has openly stepped forward to challenge the government's unjust laws.

The environment has become an emotional subject for a lot of Americans, and as a result has become a frequent area for acts of defiance. Barely a day passes when the news doesn't report on some activist environmental group camping out in trees or incinerating a house or a biotech lab.

But when it comes down to it, honest-to-goodness civil disobedience in the environmental field is in short supply. The media, of course, desperately try to pretend otherwise. When the Earth Liberation Front burns down a vacation home, the perpetrators are often, amazingly, described as civil disobedients, as it sounds much better than arsonists, thieves or terrorists.

The irony is that the bible of many enviro activists is none other than Henry David Thoreau's 1849 essay "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience." Thoreau, of course, has been studied by and inspired many thoughtful people, from Gandhi to Martin Luther King. In recent years, though, poor Henry has been hijacked by green goons with far lesser minds.

Thoreau's essay dwelt on the question of one's duty to make a principled stand against unjust laws. Key to making a principled stand is performing an act openly, so that all know you are objecting. Also important is taking the consequences of your actions. In Thoreau's case, he spent a night in jail after refusing to pay his taxes.

There's little question that Klamath's farmers have put themselves and their handiwork out for all to see. Their transgressions have happened in broad daylight; their pictures appeared in local newspapers and television stations. The act they committed was peaceful. On each occasion the water ran for only a few hours before the Bureau of Reclamation came to shut it down.

There is also little question that the law they are fighting, the Endangered Species Act, is unjust, at least in its present form. Originally designed for the commonsensical purpose of preserving species alongside humans, the act has become an evil weapon with which antidevelopment groups get rid of people they don't like. Indeed, environmental groups in the state have already drafted plans whereby the government would buy out the Klamath farmers and return the entire valley to a state of nature.

Unfortunately, the Endangered Species Act is now in contention with other, basic rights and laws. The farmers' water contracts have been the law of the valley since 1907. The Fifth Amendment guarantees a citizen's property rights. And last time I looked, the very basis of this country was the life and liberty of humans, not mud-sucking, bottom-dwelling fish. Perhaps, if the farmers were thrown in jail it would at least force a judge to weigh the Endangered Species Act against the rights of property owners.

Compare the Klamath farmers with the majority of environmental crusades. The Earth Liberation Front, which in recent months has torched a research lab at the University of Washington and a tree farm in Oregon, has "cells" across the country, made up of individuals who don't know one another's names. They are cowards who do their dirty work in the dead of the night. The laws they break aren't unjust, because the laws they break are simply those that allow people to run businesses and to live safely.

Perhaps it is because the Klamath farmers have been so principled that they have swayed many important people to their side. Indeed, Thoreau, who hoped that such example would cause others to follow their conscience, would have been proud. The county sheriff has declined to intervene, intimating it was none of his business. The district attorney told a local newspaper: "The sheriff and I are still of the opinion that damage to federal property is a federal issue." The Klamath Irrigation District, which operates the gates under contract, has refused to shut the gates after they were open, forcing the Bureau of Reclamation to do the dirty work itself.

And if the purpose of civil disobedience is also to gain attention, the farmers have accomplished their goal. Since their acts of defiance, national newspapers have been devoting daily coverage to the events. Lawyers and nonprofit groups have flocked to the city, offering help and support. Just last week, the Pacific Legal Foundation, a nonprofit that specializes in property rights, submitted an official petition requesting the government convene the "God Squad," a rarely used federal panel that has the ability to overrule the Endangered Species Act if human interests are at stake. Of course, the Klamath farmers haven't gotten the kind of salivating media attention of, say, Al Sharpton and his Vieques campaign, but it isn't a bad start.

Truth be told, I've never been an enormous fan of Thoreau. He was an anarchist, a hypocrite and a little too wet when it came to nature. But his point that governments can and do enforce immoral laws, and that sometimes, in desperation, there is a benefit to taking a stand against such unjust laws--especially if they directly take from your life and liberty--isn't a bad one. I'd like to think that if Henry were around today, he'd waste no time in declaring very unjust a law that values fish above humans; a law that strips humble people of everything they've ever known and worked for, of their property and their livelihoods and their histories.

In fact, maybe he'd be wielding that diamond-bladed chainsaw himself.
Ms. Strassel is an assistant features editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. Her column appears on alternate Thursdays.

Copyright © 2001 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Feds reject plea for 'God Squad'
Attorney: 'Bureaucrats turn deaf ear to Klamath farmers'

Sunday, July 15, 2001
By Sarah Foster

© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com

Friday 13 was a bleak day indeed for the 1,400 farm families of the Klamath River Project, whose efforts to obtain water for their fields and crops have been repeatedly dashed over the last several months.

Yesterday, the U.S. Departments of Commerce and Interior summarily rejected a formal petition by two irrigation districts in the project area to convene the special cabinet-level Endangered Species Committee -- the so-called God Squad -- an ad-hoc group of agency heads which has the power to grant exemptions to agency decisions made under the Endangered Species Act.

Pacific Legal Foundation -- a Sacramento organization that advocates property rights and reform of the Endangered Species Act -- filed a formal petition July 2 on behalf of the Klamath and Tulelake Irrigation districts requesting the convening of the God Squad in hopes it would, after sensible review, reverse the unprecedented rulings made this spring by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service (which is a division of the Department of Commerce), to deny all water for irrigation to the farmers of the project in order to maintain a high water level in Klamath Lake ostensibly for the benefit of two species of sucker fish, and in the Klamath River for the coho salmon -- the three species having been listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

As discussed earlier by WorldNetDaily, the shut-off of water was the first time in the 100-year history of the project that water had been completely denied to the farmers of the project.

The foundation learned of the rejection late yesterday afternoon. In a two-page response Interior Secretary Gail Norton and Acting Under Secretary of Commerce Scott Gudes informed Pacific Legal Foundation that the Committee would not be convened in order to examine the issue -- the reason given being that the irrigation districts "lacked standing."

"Although the Districts are not eligible to file an application for exemption under [the Endangered Species Act], we wish to take this opportunity to emphasize that this Administration is deeply concerned about the severe economic circumstances your clients face and is committed to working with all affected parties, including the Districts, to work out a solution to this difficult problem," secretaries Norton and Gudes wrote.

"We specifically invite you to continue working, as your clients have in the past, with Sue Ellen Woolridge, Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary Norton and Craid O'Connor, Acting General Counsel of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration within the Department of Commerce, to seek long-range cooperative solutions to these difficult problems."

The decision shocked the petitioners' legal team.

"The people of the Klamath Basin have been victimized once again by their government, which has again turned a deaf ear to Klamath communities in crisis," said PLF attorney David Haddock in a press release.

"It says that communities that are economically devastated by reckless bureaucratic decisions under the Endangered Species Act have no recourse for getting the administration to reconsider those decisions," he said. "Unfortunately, the federal government continues to suffer from a drought of common sense on the Klamath issue," said Haddock. "First, the government victimized thousands of people in the Klamath Basin with a 'fish first, people last' policy that cut off water and threatens to destroy people's livelihoods and futures. Now it victimizes them a second time by denying them the opportunity to make their case for relief to the Endangered Species Committee."

The Endangered Species Committee, on which the farmers had pinned their hopes, is a ad-hoc group composed of the secretaries of Agriculture, Interior, the Army, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, the administrator of the National Oceanica and Atmospheric Administration, and one individual from each affected state. Gale Norton, as secretary of the Interior, is the chair of the committee.

Attorney Harold Johnson explained the reasons given for the decision. The act provides that the Committee may be called by a federal agency, the governor of the state in which an agency action will occur, or "a permit or license applicant may apply to the Secretary for an exemption for an agency action if, after consultation under section 7(a)(2) of the Act, the Secretary's opinion indicates that the agency action would violate section 7(a)(2) of the Act."

Governors Gray Davis of California and John Kitzhaber of Oregon had refused to reply to requests that they petition. The Bureau of Reclamation -- the federal agency in charge of the project -- also declined.

That left only the irrigation districts. Secretary Gail Norton has effectively closed that door.

"They used the argument that the irrigation districts don't have standing to bring a petition," Johnson said "We argued that the irrigation districts fall under the provision of being a permanent applicant or a licensed applicant because they hold licenses or contracts and are seeking to have those continued and not suspended. But they relied on a hyper-technical interpretation that implies that only if you are seeking something in the future, applying for something that will come in the future, do you have standing. But if you have some kind of license, permit or contract at the present time that you are seeking to have continued, that doesn't give you standing."

"We think it's a travesty," Johnson contined. "The practical effect is to deny a lot of parties in a lot of situations the opportunity to get a top-level review of reckless, bureaucratic oppression under the Endangered Species Act."

Johnson had suspicions about the timing of the response.

"They very cleverly waited till Friday afternoon to send it," he noted. "It came down late in a very skillful effort to minimize its impact. They have indicated in a number of ways that they do not want to bring a lot of attention to this issue or the petition for the God Squad."

John Crawford, 53, a third-generation farmer in the Project and a member of the board of directors of the Tulelake Irrigation District, explained to WorldNetDaily earlier this week the reasoning behind the request.

"People misunderstand that when you petition for the God Squad to be convened you're saying the choice has come down to a case of human activity or the activity of the species involved, and that one or the other is going to be sacrificed. That is not the case, and certainly that is not the issue that's being taken forth to the God Squad. It's our contention that we've coexisted with both the sucker fish and the coho for a long, long time through serious droughts in the past, with no measurable impact to either of the species involved or to the wildlife refuges that depend on the return flow from agriculture, and we can certainly continue to do so in the future as long as the Bureau of Reclamation has the flexibility it had in 1992 and 1994 to manage this very limited resource. Right now there is no flexibility at all."

Crawford recalled that the districts of the project had voluntarily rationed the water during those drought years, saving thousands of acre-feet of water.

"In both those years the Tulelake Irrigation District made a decision in the spring of those years to completely shut the system down eight weeks early in the fall," he explained. "And we also had a tremendous amount of regulation that we developed ourselves as far as changing of traditional cultural practices in the fall. Normally we will go in and fall-till that ground and irrigate it, and we didn't allow for any of that. We didn't allow any fall irrigation of harvested crops. We saved about 50,000-acre feet of water in both '92 and '94. Not only did we save that water, we designated where we wanted that saved water to go -- which was to the wildlife refuges, down the river for the salmon, and to be left in the lake for suckers."

Convening the God Squad has a couple of purposes, Crawford explained: "One, it is not to say, OK, we're in such dire straits agriculturally and economically community-wise, that we're willing to sacrifice either of these species. That is not the case at all. We're not asking for all the water: we never had, we never will. We're just asking for it to be shared equitably. We're asking the God Squad to make the determination that our activities are certainly not going to cause any extinction, and are not even going to cause any negative impact, based on what has happened historically.

"The other thing it does is to bring the Department of Interior and the Department of Commerce to the negotiating table in a meaningful way, to become engaged with us, the water users, to try to come up with some long-term, long-range solutions that makes sense for the species and for these small communities where these devastating decisions have been made.

"We're talking about four communities here that have no other economic activity except agriculture. Every single aspect of these communities is one-hundred percent dependent upon agriculture. The schools, the churches, the businesses, the labor force that allows our agriculture entity to exist, are all so dependent and interrelated with agriculture that without it they will cease to exist. The schools will close, people are going to be asked to pick up and move on. We're talking about veterans of World War I and II that were invited to come onto this land, with the promise that they would have it forever. And now the government is saying that even though they've upheld their part of the bargain, and spent a hundred years helping feed a hungry world, they're saying it's not a good idea any more, we've changed our minds; we're going to become dependent for all of our food resources and our petroleum on countries that don't like us very well to begin with.

"We don't think that's a very good idea," he concluded.

Since the decision came down so late in the day on Friday, many of those concerned have not learned of it. Crawford could not be contacted for comment.

Sarah Foster is a staff reporter for WorldNetDaily.

Oregon Farmers Defy Federal Order, Begin Draining Canal for Water for Crops

Jul 15, 2001

By Amalie Young
Associated Press Writer

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. (AP) - Farmers rigged an irrigation line into a canal Sunday in defiance of a federal order that has blocked water for crops to save endangered fish.

In April, the government shut down an irrigation canal serving land in the Klamath Project to protect endangered sucker fish in Upper Klamath Lake and threatened coho salmon in the Klamath River.

Farmers with no other source of water have been forced to sell off cattle, let pastures and hay fields go brown and forgo annual plantings of potatoes, grain and other crops.

In protest Sunday, farmers were siphoning between 5 and 10 cubic feet of water per second from the canal, said Jeff McCracken, spokesman for the federal Bureau of Reclamation.

"This is symbolic," McCracken said. "There's no way that amount of water could be used for the crops at this time of the year."

Pat Foulk, a spokeswoman for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said authorities intended to ensure farmers do not violate the federal Endangered Species Act, which prohibits acts jeopardizing the survival of protected species.

No farmers had been arrested because no fish were being sucked through the head gate and the lake's water level had not dropped, she said.

Dozens of farmers, camped out at the canal head gate for several days, placed a pump in Upper Klamath Lake and ran a 200-yard irrigation pipe along a fence into the canal, officials said.

In the past four months, irate farmers have also pried open the canal head gates four times allowing water to flow into the parched canal.

"We're paying these people to starve us out," said Bob King, a 71-year-old alfalfa farmer. "If they leave, we'll go back and open it up."

More than 240,000 acres of ranches and farms rely on water from the federal irrigation project in southern Oregon's Klamath Basin.

The federal action is the first time the Klamath Tribes and salmon fishermen have won a battle with farmers over water since the irrigation project opened in 1907.

AP-ES-07-15-01 2059EDT

This story can be found at : http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAIF7AJ7PC.html

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