Water crisis reaches boiling point between fishing, farming

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WB Staff
Posts: 12504
Joined: Thu Jan 26, 2012 10:56 am

Water crisis reaches boiling point between fishing, farming

Post by WB Staff »

20210706-195452-watercrisis_fish_66963.jpg
Gilbert Myers, left, and Jamie Holt, lead fisheries technician for the Yurok Tribe, count dead chinook salmon pulled from a trap in the lower Klamath River on June 8 in Weitchpec, California. A historic drought and low water levels are threatening the existence of fish species along the 257-mile-long river.

TULELAKE, Calif. - Ben DuVal knelt in a barren field near the California-Oregon state line and scooped up a handful of parched soil as dust devils whirled around him and birds flitted between empty irrigation pipes.

DuVal's family has farmed the land for three generations, and this summer, for the first time ever, he and hundreds of others who rely on irrigation from a depleted, federally managed lake aren't getting any water from it at all.

As farmland goes fallow, Native American tribes along the 257-mile-long river that flows from the lake to the Pacific Ocean watch helplessly as fish that are inextricable from their diet and culture die in droves or fail to spawn in shallow water.

Just a few weeks into summer, a historic drought and its on-the-ground consequences are tearing communities apart in this diverse basin filled with flat vistas of sprawling alfalfa and potato fields, teeming wetlands and steep canyons of old-growth forests.

Competition over the water from the river has always been intense. But this summer there is simply not enough, and the farmers, tribes and wildlife refuges that have long competed for every drop now face a bleak and uncertain future together.
READ IT ALL https://www.theitem.com/stories/water-c ... ing,366729
mark poulson
Posts: 10370
Joined: Sun May 08, 2005 4:16 am
Location: Antioch, CA

Re: Water crisis reaches boiling point between fishing, farming

Post by mark poulson »

Private greed over public good.
Attitude plus effort equal success
CLEAN AND DRY
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