Editorial: Congressional conservatives kill Klamath compromise

For a fleeting moment, compromise flourished along the California-?Oregon border. Then the gnarled hand of congressional tea partyers reached across the nation to crush the Klamath agreements. If America can’t solve the relatively modest conflicts over water rights in the Klamath Basin, hope fades that we will be able to deal with challenging water disputes to come.

The Klamath agreements emerged from the hot, dry summers of 2001 and 2002 when irrigation was cut off to farmers and ranchers, then restored at the cost of a fish kill that numbered in the tens of thousands.

Washington saw no easy way to resolve the conflict over limited water resources, so it threw the fight back to local stakeholders and told them to return when they had come up with a deal. To many people’s surprise, they did just that.

Their compromise has three parts. Agricultural users would use less water but will have guaranteed access to at least some water every year. Tribes would see environmental restoration and some water set aside for healthy fish runs. Finally, four privately owned hydro-electric dams, three in California and one in Oregon, would be demolished to restore natural river flows and remove barriers to fish and birds.

The agreements called for up to $800 million from the federal government to fund projects and up to $250 million from California for dam removal.

There’s certainly a fare discussion to have about whether all American taxpayers and all Californians should be on the hook for so much money to solve what amounts to a very local dispute. Then again, the federal government exists in part because some otherwise intractable problems require everyone to pitch in. All taxpayers fund hurricane disaster relief and fighting large wildfires even though they, too, are local.

Yet many conservatives have made opposition to dam removal an article of faith divorced from rational analysis. If it helps fish and reduces energy generation, it must be bad. Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Elk Grove, called dam removal “greens gone wild.”

Oregon Republican Rep. Greg Walden, the third-highest ranking member of the House GOP caucus and a tea party darling, agreed. He made sure Congress did not approve funding even though the Oregon portion of the Klamath Basin is in his district.

Walden went out of his way to stoke opposition from the left. His competing bill would have transferred 200,000 acres of U.S. Forest Service lands to localities and tribes for logging and demanded the tribes give up their senior water rights, eliminating the impediment to diverting water from environmental needs to agricultural ones.

Cutting down America’s national forests might be on the conservative agenda, but we hope that most Americans recognize them as a precious resource we hold in trust for future generations

Congress left for the holidays without acting, and the Klamath deal crumbled.

Several key provisions expired on Jan. 1. Both tribes and farmers have said they are not likely to return to the negotiating table. Who can blame them? They overcame their differences to strike a deal, but there’s no room for compromise among the likes of McClintock and Walden.