Tapping Water Markets

Abstract

In May 2001, an estimated 13,000 people gathered in downtown Klamath Falls, Oregon, in protest of the federal government’s decision to cut water supplies to most of the area’s 1,400 farms.¹ The area was in the grip of drought and thus farmers were in dire need of water for irrigating crops. But instead of irrigation, the water was being impounded to maintain lake levels and stream flows for endangered suckerfish and coho salmon. In a bold and unified display of defiance, area farmers, ranchers, and their families formed a mile-long bucket brigade to bring water, one bucket at a time, from the Upper Klamath Lake, down Main Street, and into the basin’s principal irrigation canal. Others carried posters that read “call 911, some sucker stole my water,” “feed the feds to the fish,” and “farmers: the endangered species.” Later in the growing season, after much political wrangling, the Bureau of Reclamation authorized the release of some water to farmers. Unfortunately by then it was too late, and area farmers lost an estimated $157 million in revenues from crops lost because of the lack of water for irrigation (Hathaway 2001, 14).