Page 42 - Southern Oregon Magazine Winter 2021

neck of the woods | prof ile

HOW DID YOU BECOME INVOLVED IN THE
KLAMATH BASIN WATER ISSUES?

JIM – It goes back to my grandparents’ ownership of a cattle ranch
in the Wood River Valley north of Klamath Falls and south of Crater
Lake. As a youngster I would go to social events with my family. My wife,
Valerie, is a cowboy. In 1992, we had an opportunity to buy a small cattle
ranch. For Valerie the barns and stables and cattle were attractive. The prop-
erty has a spring creek that winds through it, and I had taken up fly fishing.

We then added property to make a 700-acre cattle ranch. That got us
acquainted with the other ranching operations. And ... in 2001 the water
crisis emerged. I learned just how challenging the lack of water and alloca-
tion could be. My oldest and dearest friend, Mike Finley, was in the National
Parks Service. He introduced me to the conservation world. I had completed
restoration work on the creeks that went through our property, so I had some
actual experience in learning how quickly a watershed could recover with the
right care and attention. I had met local people and experts from out of the
Basin. I called a little summit at my house to discuss, “What to do about this
water crisis?” Out of that came a ten-page work plan.

One of the participants was a neighboring rancher who was very connected
to the cattle side. I had also developed many friendships with members of the
Klamath Indian tribe. We decided, “Let’s just call a meeting.” So, I rented a
conference room at the Shiloh Inn in Klamath Falls and put the word out to
anybody who was interested in talking. 30 people showed up, many who had
been litigating against each other. We put up topics and I thought, “We can
work through these topics over breakfast and maybe a cup of coffee at the
end.” By lunch we had only ticked off two of the topics. We ended up talking
for eight hours that day. We set up a monthly schedule doing deeper dives into
the topics and issues. We invited more people and ended up with about 60
who were regularly attending.

We found common ground. We met for eight months before some opposition
developed. The local newspaper showed up and interviewed protestors. The
font looked like Pearl Harbor headlines, “SHILOH SECRET TALKS.” And the
protests got bigger and bigger. We finally decided it would be well to disband.
A year later, on a more formal basis, these parties reassembled in Redding.
Out of those meetings came the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement and
the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement. Those two settlements were bundled
together and sent to Congress for funding.
WHERE DO THE KLAMATH BASIN WATER ISSUES STAND NOW?
JIM – The Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement basically affected the
upper Basin. It had a deadline, and Congress failed to act within the dead-
line, so it expired. The Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement had no
deadline. In 2016, a settlement with a funding mechanism was announced.
The Oregon portion was a legislative act that put a surcharge on PacifiCorp’s
customer base in Oregon and California. It raised $200 million and is now
complete. Then California passed a mega water bond, of which $250 million
was dedicated for Klamath dam removal.
WILL THE KLAMATH DAMS REMOVAL HAPPEN IN
OUR LIFETIMES?
JIM – Yes, the dams will be removed in our lifetime. The settlement par-
ties have assembled a private non-profit corporation called the Klamath River

40 www.southernoregonmagazine.com | winter 2021