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Wall Street Journal - Rural Cleansing 7/26/01
from http://www.klamathbasincrisis.org/articles/ruralcleansing-wsj.htm
Commentary
Rural Cleansing
By Kimberley A. Strassel.
Ms. Strassel is an assistant
editorial features editor at the Journal.
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July 26, 2001 - Federal authorities were forced to cut
off water to 1,500 farms in Oregon's and California's Klamath
Basin in April because of the "endangered" sucker fish.
The environmental groups behind the cutoff continue to declare that
they are simply concerned for the welfare of a bottom-feeder. But last
month, those environmentalists revealed another motive when they
submitted a polished proposal for the government to buy out the
farmers and move them
off their land.
This is what's really happening in Klamath -- call it rural
cleansing -- and it's repeating itself in environmental battles
across the country. Indeed, the goal of many environmental groups
-- from the Sierra Club to the Oregon Natural Resources Council (ONRC)
-- is no longer to protect nature. It's to expunge humans from the
countryside.
The Greens' Strategy
The strategy of these environmental groups is nearly always the
same: to sue or lobby the government into declaring rural areas
off-limits to people who live and work there. The tools for doing
this include the Endangered Species Act and local preservation
laws, most of which are so loosely crafted as to allow a wide
leeway in their implementation.
In some cases owners lose their property outright. More often,
the environmentalists' goal is to have restrictions placed on the
land that either render it unusable or persuade owners to leave of
their own accord.
The Klamath Basin saga began back in 1988, when two species of
suckers from the area were listed under the Endangered Species
Act. Things worked reasonably well for the first few years after
the suckers were listed. The Bureau of Reclamation, which controls
the area's irrigation, took direction from the Fish and Wildlife
Service, and tried to balance the needs of both fish and farmers.
This included programs to promote water conservation and tight
control over water flows. The situation was tense, but workable.
But in 1991 the Klamath basin suffered a drought, and Fish and
Wildlife noted that the Bureau of Reclamation might need to do
more for the fish. That was the environmentalists' cue. Within two
months, the ONRC -- the pit bull of Oregon's environmental groups
-- was announcing intentions to sue the Bureau of Reclamation for
failure to protect the fish.
The group's lawsuits weren't immediately successful, in part
because Fish and Wildlife continued to revise its opinions as to
what the fish needed, and in part because of the farmers'
undeniable water rights, established in 1907. But the ONRC kept at
it and finally found a sympathetic ear. This spring, a federal
judge -- in deciding yet another lawsuit brought by the ONRC,
other environmental groups, fishermen and Indian tribes -- ordered an
unwilling Interior Department to shut the water off. The ONRC had
succeeded in denying farmers the ability to make a living.
Since that decision, the average value of an acre of farm
property in Klamath has dropped from $2,500 to about $35. Most
owners have no other source of income. And so with the region
suitably desperate, the enviros dropped their bomb. Last month,
they submitted a proposal urging the government to buy the farmers
off.
The council has suggested a price of $4,000 an acre, which makes
it more likely owners will sell only to the government. While the
amount is more than the property's original value, it's nowhere
near enough to compensate people for the loss of their livelihoods
and their children's futures.
The ONRC has picked its fight specifically with the farmers, but
its actions will likely mean the death of an entire community. The
farming industrywill lose $250 million this year. But property-tax
revenues will also decrease under new property assessments. That
will strangle road and municipal projects. Local businesses are
dependent on the farmers and are now suffering financially. Should
the farm acreage be cleared of people entirely, meaning no taxes
and no shoppers, the community is likely to disappear.
Nor has the environment won, even at this enormous cost. The fish
in the lake may have water, but nothing else does. On the 200,000
acres of parched farmland, animals belonging to dozens of species
-- rabbits, deer, ducks, even bald eagles -- are either dead or
off searching for water. And there's no evidence the suckers are
improving. Indeed, Fish and Wildlife's most recent biological
opinions, which concluded that the fish needed more water, have
been vociferously questioned by independent biologists. Federal
officials are now releasing some water (about 16% of the normal flow)
into the irrigation canals, but it doesn't help the farmers or
wildlife much this year.
Environmentalists argue that farmers should never have been in
the "dry" Klamath valley in the first place and that
they put undue stress on the land. But the West is a primarily
arid region; its history is one of turning inhospitable areas into
thriving communities through prudent and thoughtful reallocation
of water. If the Klamath farmers should be moved, why not the
residents of San Diego and Los Angeles, not to mention the Southwest and
parts of Montana and Wyoming? All of these communities survive because
of irrigation -- water that could conceivably go to some other
"environmental" use.
But, of course, this is the goal. Environmental groups have
spoken openly of their desire to concentrate people into cities,
turning everything outside city limits into a giant park. A
journalist for the Rocky Mountain News recently noted that in June
the Sierra Club posted on its Web site a claim that
"efficient" urban density is about 500 households an acre.
This, in case you're wondering, is about three times the density
of Manhattan's most tightly packed areas. And it's not as if there
were any shortage of open space in the West. The federal
government already owns 58% of the western U.S., with state and
local government holdings bumping the public percentage even
higher.
Balanced Stewardship
Do the people who give money to environmental groups realize the
endgame is to evict people from their land? I doubt it. The
American dream has always been to own a bit of property on which
to pursue happiness. This dream involves some compromises,
including a good, balanced stewardship of nature -- much like what
was happening in Klamath before the ONRC arrived. But this dream
will disappear -- as it already is in Oregon and California -- if
environmental groups and complicit government agencies are allowed
to continue their rural cleansing.
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