The West Can End the Water Wars Now

In my experience, out here in the West, people are, by and large, aggrieved. This is not entirely their fault. Federal and state governments have made lots of promises to people in the West, or to their parents or grandparents. Some people were promised that their land would not be taken, while other people were promised free land. Some were told that they could withdraw water from this or that lake or river every year until the end of time, others that their right to hunt or fish on their territory would never be infringed.

But the natural abundance those promises were based on has been squandered by generations of mismanagement. In the Klamath Basin, in Southern Oregon and Northern California, where I live, Klamath tribal members haven’t been able to exercise their “exclusive right of taking fish in the streams and lakes,” as protected in a 1864 treaty, for decades, because the fish keep dying. The water quality is just that poor now. And as the climate changes, water is no longer predictably available when it is needed most.

This year has been particularly bad. Most of the basin is experiencing “extreme drought,” and farmers and ranchers who usually irrigate their crops and pastures with water from Upper Klamath Lake have been told