Folks,

I am asking that this email be placed on the Rogue Forum for discussion and asking family and friends to take action.

Government management of the Klamath Falls water supply is a disaster,
unmitigated disaster.  By several reports I have received from responsible
eyewitnesses, the Klamath Lake is full; the Klamath River is running full,
and the irrigation water supply is turned off and the fields are dried up.

Folks, what more will it take? Is there anything at all that will pry us
from our apathy?

Will you please, please take time to contact your friends and your
government representatives?  Ask that the water be turned back on and that
substantial financial relief be provided to the farmers.  Ask for a full
congressional investigation.

Read the story below: it is typical of what I am hearing from 90% of the
eyewitnesses.

As most of you know my wife and I are retired living in the Rogue River
valley and a short distance from the Klamath valley.  I am a private citizen
and also support the Rogue Forum, a webpage for discussion of local issues.
Please accept my regrets for contacting you this way but our government,
your and my government, has produced this disaster.  We are most seriously,
desperately needed to take action.

Please, take action.

George Fuller,

RogueForum, Editor


From: "Ray Dickerson" <rdickers@hdni.cc>
To: <edposting@home.com>
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2001 10:41 AM
Subject: Klamath Falls, Or. Disaster

On Sunday I drove from my home to Klamath Falls, Or. to participate in a 2
PM protest of the shut off of water to some 1400 Farmers formerly
serviced by the irrigation project.

The first impression as I approached Klamath Falls was that the
lake/reservoir was full.  There is no beach or exposed shoreline showing. In
downtown Klamath Falls, a nice community of less than 20,000 folks, there
are boats bobbing on the lake that forms the northern perimeter of the town.

The protest was at what the locals call the "A" canal.  There is a diversion
ditch blocked with a series of head gates that control the outflow of water
from the lake into the canal. I arrived about one hour before the protest.
The protest spot is just a little pull out off Washington Street in Klamath Falls.
Organizers had a few tent shelters erected; one had a video running which tells

the story of the struggle against the endangered species act by
the locals beginning back in 1992.  Free food and chemical toilets were
furnished.  Spotting glasses were set up in a "Feds" viewing area so that
protesters could step up and watch closely the law enforcement guarding the
head gates.  Really, glasses are not needed since the two sides are only
twenty-five yards apart.

At 2 PM protesters moved in a pipeline, a pump and tractor and started
pumping water from the reservoir around the head gates into the canal.
It was mostly a symbolic gesture, but I think it caught the law enforcement
folks off guard. I don't know the final outcome of that gesture but I
believe law enforcement probably confiscated the equipment if it was not
removed. Also at 2 PM, a lady, who identified herself as a member of the
local Indian tribe, began what turned out to be an inspirational and very
well prepared and presented speech lasting about twenty minutes.  She
enumerated all of the Constitutional grievances we all understand, and
added a personal plea that her water, which represented about three percent of
the flow, be turned on.  She identified many of the federal officials and law
enforcement people by name and pulled no punches. She claimed her tribe had
been betrayed once again by the federal government agents who negotiated
awater use agreement with what she said was a non-member of her tribe.

During the one hour I was there before the protest, I wandered around
introducing myself trying to find the leadership and to just express my
support.  I could fill pages with the stories of personal despair that
poured out to me, a stranger.  The most striking was a gentleman who said he
had filed bankruptcy on Friday on five million dollars in debt held by a
local bank. He fought back tears as he told me his personal story.

My guess is the protest consisted of about 200 people.  It appeared to me
that few were farmers.  They seem to have tired of the protest, or they were
home hauling water to livestock or doing what they could to find water. The
one I did talk to spoke of anger toward the federal government more than
anything else.  The 52 to 48 vote in the Senate against a plea by Senator
Smith to turn on the water broke the spirits of at least this one man.

The water shed is a giant area of 1.2 million acre feet of water of which
about 400,000 are used for farming and wildlife refuge management.  The lake
is full, the Klamath river is running way above normal flow; the only ones
without water are the farmers who depended on the canal system.

I do not want to go into detail about the history of the water project
except that the reservoir was once a lake.  The original lake was dammed and
enlarged into the present reservoir system.  The project was apparently paid
for by the water users over a number of years, the last of which was paid
off about twenty years ago.  Apparently, fish management agencies have
poisoned the lake in the past to rid it of trash fish.  Whether the sucker
that has been used in this situation is the same sucker that originated in
the lake probably only some obscure retired biologist knows.  I get the
sense that if it were not this sucker it would be some other.  The sense is
that until the endangered species act is ended or changed, it will be used
to wreak havoc on free Americans everywhere.

The people know the entire issue is about control of the people, the land
and the water by the federal government doing the bidding of environmental
extremists.  The real problem is the endangered species act that permits
these "takings" to take place.  Without changes to this law the process and
bitterness will only grow as the environmentalists now feel empowered by
this one big project. The press too seems empowered to support the
environmental extremists.

Present at the protest were a lot of press.  Some claimed to be making
documentaries, etc. but I felt that they were probably FBI filming the
protestors only.  The press threw away the press releases handed them by
protest organizers and were looking only for some dramatic issue to report
on.  Nothing seemed to hit the evening news locally or nationally.

I wished I had the words and ability to present the sense of despair I felt
in my conversations with the protest participants.  Many said they had
exhausted all of their personal funds paying local attorneys to fight the
Feds with only negative results. The leadership is fragmented and the
protesters are disorganized.  My guess is the Feds have had a lot to do with
that as well.

It was a long trip from Ontario to Klamath Falls and return in one day. I
drove 740 miles of back country road  over mostly open spaces of Eastern and
South Central Oregon, past hundreds of small family farms and ranches. It
gave me time to wonder how long it will be before all of these families will
be removed from their lands by what has to be one of the cruelest acts any
government ever perpetrated against its citizens.  Ray

For more Klamath Falls links and more information: Click here

Ten talking points to the Klamath Falls situation: Click here

Providing balance on the Klamath Falls issue: Click here

"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government." ---Patrick Henry

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