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The draft Klamath agreement: draft agreement, summary and analysis

Information about the draft January 15, 2008 Klamath agreement.

Introduction

On January 15th, 2008 the Proposed Klamath River Basin Restoration Agreement, Draft 11 ("draft agreement") was publicly released. The draft agreement stems from confidential negotiations originally related to the relicensing of PacifiCorp's dams on the Klamath River before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), but quickly grew into a negotiation of basin-wide issues, many that are not typical in FERC negotiations.

Though the draft agreement states that it is to be executed concurrently with an agreement to remove PacifiCorp's four lower dams on the Klamath River, the dam agreement piece has not yet been agreed to.

While WaterWatch fully supports dam removal, we do not support the draft Klamath agreement (which does not yet even include dam removal) because, among other things, it contains provisions harmful to Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuges, and would guarantee an amount of irrigation water to the Klamath Reclamation Project while failing to include any minimum streamflows for fish, even in drought years. The WaterWatch summaries and analysis below cover these and other issues in more detail.