The Klamath Water Users Association leaders’ claim of PacificCorp’s “private property rights” to demolish Klamath River Hydropower Dams is deceitful.

    PacificCorp didn’t propose demolishing them. It was forced into this by California bureaucrats who won’t issue clean water permits.

    The KWUA board knows these dams don’t harm water quality.

    In its publication, “Water Quarterly” (Vol. 1 Issue 3), it voices concerns over the water quality standards that could be forced upon Basin farmers because “Concerns remain about attainability given natural conditions.”

    The water is “naturally” impure from the source so it’s impossible for the dams to purify it.

    The KWUA board advocates the same kind of bogus science for dam removal that harmed Klamath Basin farmers.

    The KWUA leadership advocates the radical environmentalists’ agenda, such as “The Friends of the River,” who have called other beneficial dam projects in California “expensive, unneeded, and environmentally destructive” (California Progress Report Dec. 14, 2007).

    Under the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement, the KWUA board grants radical environmentalists such as The Friends of the River and California Trout power over us. 

    These few extremists are unelected by the people. They previously opposed logging and livestock grazing. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior and these groups aren’t kind.

    The KWUA board’s claim of long-term settlement of conflict through the restoration agreement is deceitful.

    Climate Change Section 18.4.5 states it’s for the “goals of sustainable communities in light of climatic change,” but there’s double talk. It also says the KBRA will change and be renegotiated when the “agreement is deemed by the Klamath Basin Coordinating Council to be insufficient to address the impacts of climatic change.” 

    This section allows extremists to change the agreement and push through further violations of your rights.

    We were all united before the KWUA board started advocating the arguments of radical environmentalists.

Brandon Criss