Talk:Klamath River

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Regarding the comment about the few rivers that punch through the Cascades, remember that the Pit River in California flows north of Mount Lassen.

I made the change. Also, I think the San Joaquin may be longer than the Klamath, so I changed the wording there too. FuQuaoar 04:15, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 River Natural History 2 River modifications 3 River salmon population 4 Controversy

[edit] River Natural History

I deleted "Subsequently VP Cheney was shown to have instigated the change in policy" because however the policy was changed does not matter in a natural history discussion and this is a political sidetrack to what is happening in the river. Also, according to [[1]] the House of Representative hearings that are subsequent to the Washington Post accusation throw doubt on the deleted language anyway.Holden1234 17:44, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] River modifications

Recently a proposal for removal of the lower four dams was put forth and a reference to that proposal is in this section. I changed the reference noted to that proposal to the document posted by the proposing parties. I also added four significant hurdles language.Holden1234 (talk) 11:27, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I changed the paragraph(s) discussing the impact of upper basin irrigation on stream flows, adding the impact of Trinity, Shasta, and Scott tributaries. The flow of the Klamath past Keno is only 1/8 the flow at the mouth of the river and therefore the river drainage should be treated holistically.

"and a vast commercial and recreational salmon fishing fleet stretching from northern Oregon to central California" is a little slanted, the upper basin agriculture is more diverse than just "various types of hay"Holden1234 (talk) 12:42, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] River salmon population

I revised the fish kill language to show that the Calif DFW report on the fish kill indicated at least three factors that contributed to the fish kill, not solely the Klamath low flow. If it were just low flow, the several lower flow years should have resulted in several other fish kills.Holden1234 11:35, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Under the History section it is stated...

"Once the third-largest producer of salmon on the West Coast, the river has produced only a fraction of its historic runs since the construction of six dams built between 1908 and 1962..."

Would it be Ok to add a table of the estimated Salmon population for the river, say current and past at century or half-century marks? I think it would be an appropriate item of information for this article.

If it was from a reliable source, and not freewheeling speculation, it would be a fine addition, I think. —EncMstr 04:27, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Since only the Columbia and the Sacramento systems are larger river systems on the Pacific coast of the lower 48, it seems that it is a pretty safe assumption that they are the only two with larger historical fish runs.Holden1234 10:37, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

In good years, the Klamath sees runs of about 35,000-100,000 fall chinook. Current Salmon status info is available at www.pcouncil.org under their "SAFE Documents". I wonder if the third largest run reference includes BC rivers like the Frasier or the other Northern BC rivers which also have big runs of salmon.--Smartone100 06:35, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Controversy

There seems to be little mention of the dispute over water rights here, even though there seems to be a significant controversy over environmental concerns versus the rights and livelihood of farmers. See eg. [2] (for the farmers' side). Maybe there should be more about the nature of the dispute. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.253.118.247 (talk) 15:47, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

There should be, but citing the website of one of the parties involved in the controversy would be a violation of our rule regarding reliable sources. So if you can find newspaper articles about this, those would be fine. And feel free to start a new section; if someone disagrees, they can move the information elsewhere in the article. (P.S. Framing the debate as environmental concerns versus the rights and livelihood of farmers could be seen as a violation of our policy regarding "point of view"; phrasing it something like "dispute between environmentalists and farmers", for example, would be much more neutral.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:00, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Bits of the whole story are at this article, Klamath Falls, Oregon, Klamath Tribes, Klamath Basin, Klamath Reclamation Project, Upper Klamath Lake, and probably a couple other places. I'd suggest starting an article titled Klamath Basin water rights dispute. It's been on my to-do list forever, but it would be good to gather all the information in one place. Katr67 17:21, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

See also: Warren Buffett and Winningreen LLC. Katr67 17:40, 6 November 2007 (UTC)