Will the Obama Administration back science in the Klamath River Basin?

In his inaugural address to the nation Barak Obama said: “We will restore science to its rightful place.” This pleased the environmental establishment which made Bush Administration misuse and abuse of science and scientists a cornerstone of their Bush critique.

During the campaign, Barak Obama made many pledges and promises. Prominent among them was the pledge to end the abuses of science which were a hallmark of the Bush Presidency. By repeating this pledge in his Inaugural Address Obama signaled that restoring the role of solid science in environmental decision making is a primary and initial “pay out” which his administration will make to the environmental community. We can expect big changes at EPA and the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

But how far will this pledge extend? The misuse and abuse of science was not limited to the issues which received major media attention and actions which ignored or adjusted science to conform to political desires were not practiced only by Bush appointees. Many line officials in federal agencies ignored or “adjusted” scientific information during the past eight years in order to do the bidding of Bush appointees. These officials are still in their jobs.

One example of a Bush Initiative in which science has been a casualty is the Klamath River Basin. After a high-profile and controversial irrigation shut-off for endangered fish and a massive kill of adult salmon the following year several Bush Secretaries pledged to “fix” the Klamath.

The main result of that initiative are a Klamath Water Deal (the proposed Klamath River Basin Restoration Agreement) and an “Agreement in Principle” to consider removing four of the five mainstem Klamath River dams.

The Klamath Water Deal promises to restore the Klamath River, Klamath salmon and Klamath communities, and to end water conflicts, by dividing Klamath waters between fish and farms, providing federal funding for fisheries and habitat restoration and giving a variety of subsidies to irrigation interests. The proposal has the support of the California and Oregon governors and three of the five Klamath River Basin federally recognized tribes.

The Deal’s detractors, however, say the Klamath Water Deal can not deliver what it promises. As an illustration they point to the proposed division of water between fish and farms which they claim ignores the second independent Klamath Science Report issued by the National Research Council – one of the nation’s most prestigious science bodies.

According to that report, the Water Deal’s division of Klamath waters is based on incomplete science, that is, on a river flow needs assessments which treat the Klamath River as if it were “the Upper Basin and a gutter to the sea.” NRC scientists recommended a “basin-wide” flow assessment in order to properly determine flows needed in the Klamath and major tributaries. But no such assessment is in the Water Deal. Drought planning and assessing climate change impacts are two other science recommendations which the Klamath Water Deal defers to a future time.

As for the Agreement in Principle on Klamath River dams, it too appears to show the effects of the Bush Administration’s antipathy for science. While it has been hailed by some environmental organizations as a major step toward dam removal, others (including KlamBlog in which I report on Klamath River issues) claim it would make dam removal less likely by basing the decision whether or not to remove the dams on economic rather than scientific criteria.

Will Obama appointees who inherit the Bush Klamath Initiative insist that recommendations of the National Research Council’s independent scientists – including their call for a basin-wide flow needs assessment before final water allocations are determined - are incorporated within the Water Deal? Will they reinstate science as the criteria by which the future of the Klamath dams is determined? And will those tribes and environmental organizations which have abandoned science for political reasons now also embrace the recommendations of top scientists?

The Klamath is one of those places where the rhetorical promise of President Obama to restore scientific integrity will meet the realities of western politics; it will be one of the places where we will see how good his promises prove to be in practice.