Protect and Restore Free Flowing Oregon Rivers

Environmental justice - as it relates to water – rightly focuses on which people and communities bear the impact of processes, policies, or investments that unfairly distribute environmental benefits as well as burdens. From the hepatitis outbreak in San Diego, to the drinking water crisis in Flint, to the Portland Harbor cleanup, to the many ongoing but often ignored struggles of Native American people, water-related environmental injustices impact communities all around us. Research reveals overwhelming evidence confirming what many disadvantaged communities have suspected for a long time. In the words of Dr. Amy Vanderwarker, “Race and class matter in the distribution of environmental burdens.”

Federal water policies that have contributed to environmental injustices, particularly regarding pollution and water quality, have received growing criticism and some federal agencies have taken initial steps toward reform. But there has been little accompanying analysis of state-level water policies in the West, including Oregon. This is a significant blind spot. States like Oregon have enormous power to allocate and manage water through prior appropriation and water right permitting systems. Unfortunately, the processes surrounding Oregon’s decisions on water are frequently bewildering and opaque. Oregon is also increasingly becoming a water investor, providing public money for water infrastructure – often controlled by private interests. All of these decisions distribute benefits and burdens, sometimes unfairly and at the expense of the public interest and communities dependent on healthy freshwater ecosystems. For example, Oregon’s ongoing unsustainable groundwater permitting debacle unfairly burdens specific communities as well as future generations. These issues require Oregonians’ collective scrutiny and action.

One environmental injustice, which deserves your scrutiny and action, recently brought the Klamath Basin back into national headlines. Last year, federal investigators found agribusiness interests in the federal Klamath Irrigation Project had “wasted” $32.2 million in taxpayer funds intended to secure water for the basin’s struggling fish and wildlife between 2008 and 2015. Over this same period, salmon in the Klamath River and waterfowl in the Klamath’s National Wildlife Refuges suffered catastrophic losses due to lack of water. For example, in 2015 Klamath Project irrigators bought themselves 31.4 billion gallons of supplemental water using millions in taxpayer dollars, but that spring the Project’s managers refused to boost Klamath River flows by just 1.6 billion gallons. Federal fisheries officials had requested the water to reduce mass mortality of outmigrating young salmon during drought, losses which had skyrocketed above ninety percent.

The few 2015 outmigrants who survived now make up the 2017 returning adults - projected to be the lowest Klamath salmon run ever recorded. In response, officials have shut down salmon fishing while the region’s salmon-dependent Native American tribes and coastal fishing communities bear the brunt of this injustice. Oregon’s Governor has requested a federal disaster declaration in anticipation of millions of pounds of lost food production, hundreds of lost jobs, and millions of dollars in lost economic activity.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which provided the $32.2 million, has refused to acknowledge wrongdoing, despite corroboration of the investigators’ findings in a review by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. Meanwhile, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has ignored the findings of his own investigators.

Perhaps worst of all, Oregon’s U.S. Senators Wyden and Merkley have not only remained silent in the face of this scandal, they inserted language in the pending 2017 Senate Energy Bill to authorize millions more dollars for more harm, injustice, and waste in the Klamath. Their language in Section 9301 of the bill authorizes an irrigator-authored water use plan for Klamath Project that isn’t required to conserve water, return a single drop to the river, or even consult other interests in the basin, including tribes, fishermen or conservationists. The language also proposes sweetheart subsidies, funded by taxpayers, for the costs of pumping irrigation water in a region already plagued by runaway water use. These subsides would overturn the biggest concrete water conservation gains in the Klamath since 2001, when the basin’s water conflicts first grabbed national headlines.

Please take action and donate to fight against unjust and damaging proposals and hold our government accountable for the harm done to Oregon’s communities.

Links:

• http://waterwatch.org