[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 7 (Tuesday, February 5, 2002)]
[House]
[Page H126]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 PLIGHT OF THE PEOPLE OF KLAMATH BASIN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WALDEN of Oregon. Mr. Speaker, it is not the first time I have 
come to the well to address the House and my colleagues about the 
terrible plight of the people of the Klamath Basin in Oregon and 
northern California.
  Mr. Speaker, as my colleagues know, on April 6 of last year, the 
water was cut off to the farmers at Klamath Basin. Some 1,400 farms 
were affected. The decision was unprecedented. Never in the near-
hundred-year history of this water project run by the Bureau of 
Reclamation had the water been totally cut off; but a new scientific 
analysis and decisions by the various agencies, the Fish and Wildlife 
Service, the National Marines Fisheries Service, said, sorry, there is 
not enough water for the farmers. We have to maintain the highest lake 
levels we have ever maintained to protect sucker fish, and then we have 
to release water later on in greater amounts than we have before to 
provide water for the Koho salmon, which are in danger.
  Mr. Speaker, a number of us, especially the farmers and ranchers in 
the basin, argued against that, saying that there was no scientific 
evidence to prove that this was necessary; but those arguments fell on 
deaf ears. Later in the spring, the chairman of the House Committee on 
Resources agreed to let us have a field hearing in the Klamath Basin. 
Thousands of people turned out. Thousands of people turned out for that 
hearing, Mr. Speaker; and at that time we raised these issues and said 
the science just did not add up to the decisions that were being made.
  We called for the Department of the Interior to get peer review of 
that science. We also held a rally where close to 18,000 people, in a 
county of 60,000, turned out. They called it the ``bucket brigade,'' 
where we talked about the farm families. The veterans who were lured to 
this area by the same Federal Government with a promise of water for 
life, they were asked to come settle this project, this reclaimed land, 
guaranteed water to grow their crops to expand the Nation; but no water 
did they get this year, virtually none.
  So the fields dried up. We can see the sand here and a wheel line in 
the sand. There was so much sand and dust that there were traffic 
accidents that came about, but the biggest accident that came about 
were the bankruptcies and the losses that devastated this area. Oregon 
State University said $134 million of potential economic loss. 
Bankruptcies like the Carleton family, third generation in the basin, 
they had farmed there three generations.
  This administration, this Congress responded with a little bit of 
economic assistance, saying, here we will help a little bit, $20 
million into the basin and $134 to $200 million economic hit. This poor 
gentleman, when he got that, the money went to the bankruptcy court. He 
got stuck with a $60,000 tax bill out of $122,000 in emergency aid.
  I tell my colleagues that just to show the devastation not only to 
the environment of the farm country but the families who lived there; 
but the most important fact came out this weekend, Mr. Speaker, when 
the National Academy of Sciences finally finished their review of the 
data and the decisions.
  Do my colleagues know what that showed, Mr. Speaker? It showed there 
was no scientific justification for the high lake levels or for dumping 
the water in the Klamath River. This is the article out of the Herald 
and News, irrigation cut off was not justified.
  The damage done to these people is extraordinary. Some of it can 
never be undone. The decisions were flawed. They were based on science 
that did not add up to the decisions that were made.
  Further, had we not had this outside peer review by the National 
Academy of Sciences, we would have continued down a road of dumping 
potentially lethally hot water into the Klamath River, killing the very 
Koho salmon this whole plan was supposed to fix and help. The National 
Academy of Sciences said one of the reasons that these Koho are 
surviving in this rather warm river complex to begin with is probably 
due to natural seepage and some cold water springs where they can go 
off into micro-habitat and survive.
  The plan that the National Marine Fisheries Service wanted us to 
follow which denied water to the farmers said dump warm reservoir water 
into this same river system. In effect, pollute this river with warm 
water at the worst time of the year, providing lethal water to the 
salmon.
  Mr. Speaker, if there was ever a poster child for the need for 
reforming of the Endangered Species Act to have precisely this kind of 
peer review of the science, it is the Klamath Basin.

                              {time}  1930

  Beyond that, Mr. Speaker, if this government owes any debt to anyone, 
it is to the farmers and ranchers in this basin whose livelihoods were 
robbed from them, whose fields turned up dry, some of whom left; and I 
have not even talked about the farm-worker families that had to leave.
  During the bucket brigade rally, where 18,000 showed up, a Hispanic 
farm worker came up to me in the high school ball field where we had 
all gathered, tears in his eyes, and told me he had come to this 
country some 20, 25 years before and gotten a job on a farm in this 
basin the next day. He had raised his family, educated his kids, and 
worked every day since, until that week, when he had lost his job.
  A terrible wrong has been committed here. We have an obligation and a 
responsibility to make it right.

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