Klamath Basin Project
Contact: Jeff McCracken, (916) 978-5100
Located in Klamath Falls in southern Oregon, the Klamath Project is a Federal storage project built in the early 1900's to provide irrigation for land in south-central Oregon and parts of north-central California. Three reservoirs store about 1,095,000 acre-feet of water in the Klamath and Lost River Basins. More than 1,400 miles of canals and drains provide service to water users.
The Project provides water to about 1,400 individual farms, totaling about 210,000 acres, fueling a $300 million agriculture-dependent economy throughout the Klamath Basin. The Project also provides water to about 20,000 acres of National Wildlife Refuge.
In order to operate the Project and provide irrigation water to farmers, Reclamation must also provide flows in the Klamath River downstream of Iron Gate Dam under a Biological Opinion for endangered coho salmon, and must maintain minimum lake level elevations in Upper Klamath Lake to protect endangered sucker fish under a second Biological Opinion.
President Bush established the Cabinet-level Klamath River Basin Federal Working Group on March 1, 2002, after the 2001 drought in the Klamath Basin and the legal requirements of these Endangered Species Act Biological Opinions resulted in a severe curtailment of water for agricultural use. The events of 2001 were the culmination of years of dispute over water quality and allocation in the Basin, and the reduction in water available for irrigation in 2001 caused severe economic consequences to the Basin's agricultural communities.
In February 2002, the National Academy of Science (NAS) found that the Biological Opinions offered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service had no scientific justification to withhold water from farmers while keeping the level of Upper Klamath Lake relatively high to protect two species of sucker fish that live in the lake. The NAS also found that sending warm Upper Klamath Lake water down river might have harmed the coho salmon by raising the Klamath River's temperature.
Reclamation continues to work closely with other federal agencies and all the stakeholders to protect endangered and threatened fish while managing water for the needs of agriculture, tribal and commercial fisheries, and wildlife refuges.
The President's FY 2005 budget request calls for investing more than $100 million Administration-wide in habitat restoration and water improvement projects and programs for the Klamath River Basin. This is an unprecedented level of commitment to help Klamath communities restore their watershed and avoid future water supply crises. The FY 2005 request is a 21 percent increase in funding over FY 2004, which resulted from recommendations from the Klamath River Basin Federal Working Group.
Relevant Links:
Klamath Basin Project DataWeb Site