{"id":290174,"date":"2021-07-02T22:15:45","date_gmt":"2021-07-02T19:15:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/nobodys-winning-as-drought-upends-life-in-us-west-basin\/"},"modified":"2021-07-02T22:15:45","modified_gmt":"2021-07-02T19:15:45","slug":"nobodys-winning-as-drought-upends-life-in-us-west-basin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/nobodys-winning-as-drought-upends-life-in-us-west-basin\/","title":{"rendered":"#\u2018Nobody\u2019s winning\u2019 as drought upends life in US West basin"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#\u2018Nobody\u2019s winning\u2019 as drought upends life in US West basin<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n

TULE LAKE, Calif.\u2014 Ben DuVal knelt in a barren field near the California-Oregon border and scooped up a handful of parched soil as dust devils whirled around him and birds flitted between empty irrigation pipes.<\/p>\n

DuVal\u2019s family has farmed this land for three generations, and this summer, for the first time, he and hundreds of others who rely on a federally managed lake to quench their fields aren\u2019t getting any water from it at all.<\/p>\n

As the farmland goes fallow, Native American tribes along the 257-mile-long river that flows from the lake to the Pacific watch helplessly as fish that are inextricable from their culture hover closer to extinction.<\/p>\n

This summer, a historic drought and its consequences are tearing communities apart and attracting outside attention to a water crisis years in the making. Competition over Klamath River water has always been intense, but now there is simply not enough, and all the stakeholders are suffering.<\/p>\n

\"Gilbert
Gilbert Myers, left, and Jamie Holt, lead fisheries technician for the Yurok Tribe, right, count dead chinook salmon pulled from a trap in the lower Klamath River on Tuesday, June 8, 2021, in Weitchpec, Calif. <\/figcaption>
AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cEverybody depends on the water in the Klamath River for their livelihood. That\u2019s the blood that ties us all together,\u201d DuVal said of the competing interests. \u201cNobody\u2019s coming out ahead this year. Nobody\u2019s winning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those living the nightmare worry the extreme drought is a harbinger of global warming.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe system is crashing \u2026 for people up and down the Klamath Basin,\u201d said Frankie Myers, vice chairman of the Yurok Tribe, which is monitoring a massive fish kill on the river. \u201cIt\u2019s heartbreaking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Twenty years ago, when water feeding the irrigation system was drastically reduced amid another drought, the crisis became a national rallying cry for the political right, and some protesters opened the main irrigation canal in violation of federal orders.<\/p>\n

This time, many irrigators reject the presence of anti-government activists. Farmers who need federal assistance to stay afloat fear ties to the far right could hurt them.<\/p>\n

\"Jamie
Jamie Holt, lead fisheries technician for the Yurok Tribe, maneuvers a boat near a fish trap in the lower Klamath River on Tuesday, June 8, 2021, in Weitchpec, Calif. <\/figcaption>
AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Meanwhile, toxic algae is blooming in the basin\u2019s main lake, and two national wildlife refuges critical to migratory birds are drying out.<\/p>\n

The conditions have exacerbated a water conflict that traces its roots back more than a century.<\/p>\n

Beginning in 1906, the federal government reengineered a complex system of lakes, wetlands and rivers in the 10 million-acre Klamath River Basin to create tens of thousands of acres of irrigated farmland.<\/p>\n

The Klamath Reclamation Project draws its water from the 96-square-mile Upper Klamath Lake. But the lake is also home to suckerfish central to the Klamath Tribes\u2019 culture and creation stories.<\/p>\n

In 1988, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed two species of sucker fish as endangered. The federal government must keep the lake at a minimum depth to support the fish \u2014 but this year, amid exceptional drought, there was not enough water to do that and supply irrigators.<\/p>\n

\u201cAgriculture should be based on what\u2019s sustainable. There\u2019s too many people after too little water,\u201d said Don Gentry, the Klamath Tribes chairman.<\/p>\n

\"A
A salmon tattoo is seen on the leg of Jamie Holt, lead fisheries technician for the Yurok Tribe, while documenting chinook deaths in the lower Klamath River on Tuesday, June 8, 2021, in Weitchpec, Calif. <\/figcaption>
AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With the Klamath Tribes enforcing their senior water rights to help suckerfish, there is also no extra water for downriver salmon.<\/p>\n

The Karuk Tribe last month declared a state of emergency, citing climate change and the worst hydrologic conditions in the Klamath River Basin in modern history. Karuk tribal citizen Aaron Troy Hockaday Sr. is a fourth-generation fisherman but says he hasn\u2019t caught a fish in the river since the mid-1990s.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got two grandsons that are 3 and 1 years old. I\u2019ve got a baby grandson coming this fall,\u201d he said. \u201cHow can I teach them how to be fishermen if there\u2019s no fish?\u201d<\/p>\n

The downstream tribes\u2019 problems are compounded by hydroelectric dams that block the path of migrating salmon.<\/p>\n

In most years, the tribes 200 miles to the southwest of the farmers, where the river reaches the ocean, ask the Bureau of Reclamation to release pulses of extra water from Upper Klamath Lake. The extra water mitigates outbreaks of a parasitic disease that proliferates when the river is low.<\/p>\n

This year, the federal agency refused those requests.<\/p>\n

Now, the parasite is killing thousands of juvenile salmon in the lower Klamath River, where the Karuk and Yurok tribes have coexisted with them for millennia. An average of 63% of fish caught last month in research traps near the river\u2019s mouth were dead.<\/p>\n

\"A
A dead chinook salmon floats in a fish trap on the lower Klamath River on Tuesday, June 8, 2021, in Weitchpec, Calif. <\/figcaption>
AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThis is all unprecedented,\u201d said Jamie Holt, lead fisheries technician for the Yurok Tribe. \u201cWhere do you go from here? When do you start having the larger conversation of complete unsustainability?\u201d<\/p>\n

Near the river\u2019s source, some of the farmers who are seeing their lives upended by the same drought say a guarantee of less water \u2014 but some water \u2014 each year would be better than the parched fields they have now. Some worry problems in the basin are being blamed on a way of life they also inherited.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know turning off the project is easy,\u201d said Tricia Hill, a fourth-generation farmer. \u201cBut sometimes the story that gets told \u2026 doesn\u2019t represent how progressive we are here and how we do want to make things better for all species. This single-species management is not working for the fish \u2014 and it\u2019s destroying our community and hurting our wildlife.\u201d<\/p>\n

DuVal\u2019s daughter dreams of taking over the family farm someday. But DuVal isn\u2019t sure he and his wife, Erika, can hang onto the land if things don\u2019t change.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a plan on how we\u2019re going to grow our farm and to be able to send my daughters to a good college,\u201d said DuVal, president of the Klamath Water Users Association. \u201cAnd that plan just unravels further and further with every bad water year.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#\u2018Nobody\u2019s winning\u2019 as drought upends life in US West basin” TULE LAKE, Calif.\u2014 Ben DuVal knelt in a barren field near the California-Oregon border and scooped up a handful of parched soil as dust devils whirled around him and birds flitted between empty irrigation pipes. DuVal\u2019s family has farmed this land for three generations, and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":290175,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/07\/Klamath-River-Basin-023.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[110930,13096,70540,8030],"class_list":["post-290174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-7-2-21","tag-california","tag-droughts","tag-oregon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}