Published 7:00 am Thursday, September 14, 2023
Klamath Basin irrigators received a welcome reprieve last week from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which rescinded a previous warning that it would likely shut down the Klamath Project early because of a projected water shortfall.
That’s good news to the region’s farmers, who over the last decade have been the recipients of little good news.
Had the bureau closed the taps as it had threatened, farmers would have suffered millions of dollars of damage to row crops, including potatoes, onions and garlic.
The basin has had three years of severe drought. Generous snowpacks this spring prompted the bureau to allocate 260,000 acre-feet for irrigators. By comparison, during the 2022 season irrigators eventually got just 82,253 acre-feet to irrigate 170,000 acres of farmland.
With the promise of more than three times the water they got the year before, farmers planned accordingly. Had the bureau shut down early, crops would have been deprived that crucial last water they would have needed to fully mature.
As one farmer told Capital Press, that would have pulled the rug out from under irrigators, ruining many crops. It appears that disaster has been averted.
While 260,000 acre-feet is more than irrigators have been getting, it’s only 60% of full demand. What will farmers get next year? No one knows.
Severe drought and ongoing litigation continue to put farming in the basin at risk. Growers are not out of the woods until the harvest is complete, but it appears that they will endure another tough season.
Good news on the project is always relative.
