The annual migration of these fish sustained American Indian tribes for centuries and once supported a thriving commercial fishery. Today, both portions of this remote region located on the California-Oregon border are facing great change as the values of yesterday clash with the values of today. Much of the focus is on the Klamath Project, the second oldest federal reclamation project in the West. For society s values, that was doing something good. Society s values changed, what was good became bad, when people realized the negative impact to the environment.
Farmers feel threatened because things have changed.
Despite a series of subsequent wet years, these water users are facing an uncertain future as federal and state officials work to accommodate other demands on the system. Simmons, a partner in the law firm Somach, Simmons and Dunn, represents Klamath Project irrigators. The Klamath Project is asked to mitigate, with its water, for impacts of other consumptive users, as well as for such things as impacts of mining, forestry, over-fishing and hydropower development. In some ways, what is occurring in the Klamath Basin mirrors the struggle facing Nevada s Newlands Project and California s Central Valley Project, where attempts to stretch a scarce resource to supply traditional uses while meeting new demands has generated conflict and controversy. Each of the competing stakeholder groups involved in the basin has disparate goals and interests.