Word: klamath
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Dates: during 2001-2001
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Last week that conflict between federal and local came to a head in Klamath Falls, Ore., where angry farmers forced open an irrigation canal that had been closed off by the Bureau of Reclamation to save an endangered species of suckerfish. Some 1,400 farmers in the Klamath River Basin have been cut off from irrigation since April and watched their land dry up because a federal court has said the water must be preserved for the suckerfish, protected under the controversial ESA. Local businesses are closing down, farm laborers are leaving and ranchers are selling off their livestock...
...People are angry," says Alvin Cheyne, 80, who farms 670 acres in the Klamath Basin. "What the government has done is unbelievable." Feelings are running so high in Klamath Falls that even the local sheriff, Tim Evinger, decided not to intervene as the protesters opened the head gates from the Upper Klamath Lake with a chainsaw...
...Washington, Secretary Norton called the Klamath showdown "a very difficult situation. Something I hope we can avoid in the future with more long-term planning." Norton also said that her department would be examining the ESA, which Republicans and some Democrats have begun to say needs revision. "We are looking at the science as to what the endangered species are so that we really have an understanding...
...least people talked. Sadly, that's not the case in Klamath Falls, Ore. In Klamath, another fight has broken out over land and water and economics, but also over language. To the Bureau of Reclamation, Upper Klamath Lake is habitat that supports endangered fish, and when the water level began to drop from drought this year, its federal keepers cut off irrigation water to 240,000 acres of cropland. To the Klamath's farmers, however, the valley has a simpler name: home. Its federally subsidized waters support their very way of life, and have for decades...
...sides was drowned out by the sound of rushing water, after some residents forced open one of the reservoir's headgates. Local officials declined to stop the outlaws, possibly because they call them neighbors. "It just appears to me that they are trying to save their lives," said Klamath County sheriff Tim Evinger. Though the fish had no statement, of course, their appointed spokesman, the Bureau of Reclamation's Jeff McCracken, did claim to understand the farmers "frustration." One senses an understatement here. Try rage...