from the SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
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Farmers initiate $50 million Klamath Basin aid program

Thursday, August 8, 2002

By MATTHEW DALY
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON -- An Oregon family that farms alfalfa, hay and livestock became the first recipients yesterday of a new $50 million federal aid program intended to improve water conservation in the drought-stricken Klamath Basin.

Jack and Lynda Baker, who farm 230 acres outside Klamath Falls, are the first farmers in the basin to enter into a contract with the U.S. Department of Agriculture under a program approved in the 2002 farm bill.

Under the program, the Bakers will receive technical assistance and an undisclosed amount of money to install gated irrigation pipes and a milelong fence along the Lost River and to reseed their pastures to increase forage.

Lynda Baker said in a telephone interview that the grant should be a major boost. "We've just gone through a real crisis in this area," she said. "Everybody's looking for ways to save water. We're very happy we're getting some help."

About 150 landowners in the Klamath Basin are expected to apply for the grants, which will be awarded on a competitive basis over the next several months, USDA officials said.

Funding will go to projects offered by individual farmers for their land. Farmers will pay for 25 percent of the project and the government 75 percent.

The grant program was approved this spring, after a series of confrontations between farmers and the federal government during last year's drought, when water was cut to 1,400 farms irrigated by the Klamath Reclamation Project to protect endangered suckers and threatened salmon.

The $50 million figure is far less than $175 million that had been approved by the Senate, but still represents a significant victory for Klamath farmers, officials said.

"This assistance will help people here enhance water quality, reduce water usage by increasing irrigation efficiencies ... and control weeds so they can grow a good crop or improve pasture forage," said Mack Gray, a deputy undersecretary of Agriculture who announced the grant yesterday at a ceremony at the Baker farm in Klamath Falls.

House members, including Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., who represents the Klamath Basin, opposed the Senate version, because it did not set out specific uses for the money and would have allowed the government to buy out farms and water rights to reduce demand.

As approved, the bill does not mention buying out farmers. The Klamath Water Users Association, the dominant farm group in the basin, had objected to buyout provisions in the Senate bill.

Dan Keppen, the group's executive director, said Wednesday that association members are excited about the grant program.

"It's going to help farmers, and that's what the farm bill is all about," he said.

Walden also praised the program, saying he was glad that federal funding was beginning to reach farmers and ranchers.

Wendell Wood of the Oregon Natural Resources Council, an environmental group, said the $50 million will certainly help, but that it will do little to address the fact that there is more demand than water in the Klamath Basin.

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