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Originally published on May 14, 2021 7:05 am
It’s been an epically bad week for everyone who relies on water from the Klamath.
On Wednesday, the Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the 114-year-old Klamath water project, announced that for the first time ever, the “A” canal will be closed for the season – meaning no water will be drawn from Upper Klamath Lake for irrigators in the federally-managed Klamath Project.
Reclamation’s initial operations plan allocation for the Klamath Project projected 33,000 acre-feet would be available for more than 150,000 acres of farmland, a fraction of what irrigators would use in a typical year. But Wednesday the Bureau announced that the deepening drought and worsening hydrologic conditions in the Basin would no longer allow diverting even that much water from the lake.
Reuters Reuters
14 May, 2021, 5:06 am
Juvenile Chinook Salmon are released into the ocean after being transported from the Nimbus Fish Hatchery in the Central Valley to Mare Island, California, U.S, on May 11, 2021. Picture taken May 11, 2021. REUTERS/Nina Riggio NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES
GOLD RIVER, Calif. (Reuters) – During a typical spring, the silver young salmon swimming in long tanks at the Nimbus Fish Hatchery east of Sacramento would be released into the American River and then make their way out to the Pacific Ocean to grow to adulthood.
But with extreme drought now gripping California and much of West Coast, the rivers are too warm for the salmon to survive.
As drought dries California rivers, salmon take truck rides to sea Reuters 1 hr ago
By Sharon Bernstein
GOLD RIVER, Calif. (Reuters) - During a typical spring, the silver young salmon swimming in long tanks at the Nimbus Fish Hatchery east of Sacramento would be released into the American River and then make their way out to the Pacific Ocean to grow to adulthood.
But with extreme drought now gripping California and much of West Coast, the rivers are too warm for the salmon to survive.
This week, the 3.5-inch (90-mm) smolt, as the young fish are known, embarked on a much different journey when they were loaded on to trucks and driven to the San Francisco Bay for release into cooler waters.
click to enlarge Richard Heim, NOAA/NCEI
The federal government is strictly curtailing irrigation this year in an attempt to protect endangered fish important to Indigenous tribes. Farmers say this will make it all but impossible to farm, while tribal groups say the plan doesn t go far enough to save their fisheries.
In mid-April, a farming region in southern Oregon began to release water from the Klamath River into its irrigation canals. According to the local water authority, this was a standard move to jumpstart the farming season during one of the driest seasons in recent memory. But according to the federal government, it was an illegal maneuver that could further jeopardize the survival of multiple endangered species and food sources important to Indigenous tribes and fisheries in the region.