If I understand the global warming models correctly,
this situation will be normal in California within a
decade or so. Sending bottled water to farmers may be
"nice" but it's no way to run an economy. Farming is
dead in the far north, for good, apparently.
tim
Siskiyou County running dry
Scott, Shasta river conditions are life threatening to
salmon
Redding Record-Searchlight - 6/23/01
By Jim Schultz, staff writer
YREKA - Siskiyou County, caught in the grips of its
worst drought since
1936, is a county under siege.
"It's getting horrible," Siskiyou County Supervisor
Bill Overman of
Yreka
said Friday. "It's drier than the dickens."
With no end in sight, 44 wells have gone dry in Scott
and Little Shasta
valleys in north central Siskiyou County, and others
are close to being
dry,
he said.
"We fear there will be a lot more before summer's
out," Overman said.
Earlier this week, Grizz Adams, head of the county's
Office of
Emergency
Services, told supervisors that he expects that the
Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) may soon step in to help fund
emergency
relief operations.
But, Adams said Friday, he's not sure exactly what the
nature of that
aid
would be.
"I have no idea," he said. "It's kind of the
million-dollar question."
Adams said the county may have to step in to ensure
that residents have
water.
"But it could get to the point where we might have to
hire water trucks
to
get water to people," he said, adding that such help
would present a
"nightmare" of logistical problems.
In the meantime, the county has agreed to waive a
variety of fees so
those
with wells that have gone dry can be deepened, said
Overman.
Meanwhile, two Mount Shasta water bottling companies -
Crystal Geyser
and
Dannon - have donated 48 pallets of bottled drinking
water for those
whose
wells have failed.
"They have been very generous," Overman said.
Last month, Siskiyou County was declared as a state
and federal
disaster area due to its drought conditions, but a
presidential
disaster declaration has yet been issued, said Adams.
Adams, who noted that the Klamath Basin has been
reeling since
irrigation
water was nearly cut off to farmers by the U.S. Bureau
of Reclamation
to
protect endangered fish, said he's trying to treat the
Klamath Basin
and the
water emergency in the Scott and Little Shasta valleys
separately.
But, he agreed, Siskiyou County's drought will only
get worse in the
weeks
and months ahead, and perhaps longer, noting that the
small community
of
Etna has contacted him for water conservation
information.
"It's just started," said Adams. "I'm not sure what
we're going to do."
Meanwhile, state Department of Fish and Game officials
told the San
Francisco Chronicle that irrigation by Siskiyou County
ranchers is
decimating salmon and steelhead populations on
California's second
biggest river system, but they are not implementing a
state law that
could stop the diversions.
Ranchers have diverted most of the flow of the Scott
and Shasta rivers
in
Siskiyou County to irrigate alfalfa fields and
pastures, leaving
thousands of young salmon and steelhead without enough
water and
facing imminent death.
But agency officials say they are being told not to
cite offenders
out of concern that cooperative restoration projects
between the
state and ranchers
on the Scott and Shasta Rivers would end instantly if
the law were
enforced.
"We've got five or six thousand steelhead trout dead
on the Scott, and
(dead
juvenile steelhead) everywhere on the Shasta," Warden
Renie Cleland
said.
The Scott has been sucked dry, and the Shasta reduced
to a trickle at
its
juncture with the Klamath.
Temperatures in the river have reached or exceeded the
level considered
lethal for salmon species, which favor cold water.
Thousands of fish
have died and thousands of others face imminent death.
"Everything has died," Fish and Game Captain Chuck
Konvalin said of the
Scott River, according to the Chronicle. "The system
has been dried
up."#
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