In an apparent dramatic policy change, the Bureau of Reclamation sued the Klamath Drainage District in response to a 2021 water diversion that allowed farmers to continue irrigating. That decision was handed down last week and a federal judge upheld the BOR assertion that the KDD broke policy. Scott White of the KDD says that was a surprise as the KDD has pulled water under those rights since the 1970s with the full knowledge of the BOR. White said in an interview today that it’s a perfect storm of drought and government mismanagement, saying, ” I think, no question, you put all the different circumstances all coming together, you’ve got drought on top of species issues that are occurring, lawsuits that continue to occur relative to species and the management of resources related to those species, inadequately I might add. I mean we have done nothing to recover any species yet with these policies. And if you look at those different circumstances that are all coming together and the one thing that everybody keeps saying is there needs to be more water. At the same time, they’re drying up our refuges, they’re drying up our ag lands to the point where we’re pumping more groundwater and we have domestic wells running dry. Nobody is looking at what this single species management is doing to our ecosystem. And the ecosystem doesn’t lie. What the focus needs to be on is healing the ecosystem.”
