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www.heraldandnews.com
 
Bucket Brigade activist dies. Grant Gerber helped establish the tax-free relief fund during the 2001 Klamath Basin Water Crisis
 
 by LEE JUILLERAT, Herald and News 10/29/14
 
     Grant Gerber, a Nevada lawyer and conservative political activist who helped organize the Klamath Relief Fund during the 2001 Klamath Basin Water Crisis, died Friday from injuries he received while participating in a protest in Kansas.

   Gerber, 72, a county commissioner in Elko County, Nev., died in a Salt Lake City, Utah, hospital from injuries he suffered when he fell off a horse in Kansas, while protesting a federal crackdown on livestock grazing.

   During the Klamath Basin Water Crisis, when water was cut off to Klamath Basin irrigators for most of the summer   because of concerns about endangered fish in Upper Klamath Lake, Gerber served as the attorney for the Klamath Relief Fund.

   Bill Ransom of Klamath Falls, who was involved in the relief fund and the Bucket Brigade that resulted in placing the 10-foot tall bucket in front of the Klamath County Courthouse, said Gerber helped establish the tax-free relief fund and arrange convoys for groups that provided the bucket.

   “He was very instrumental in the legal process,” Ransom said of Gerber, who visited Klamath County several times. “He was just very active in that type of work.”

   Over the years, Ransom said the Klamath Relief Fund generated   about $400,000, along with donations of food and clothing. The fund was allocated by an outside committee to farmers and ranchers affected by the loss of irrigation water.

   Gerber, who grew up in Nevada’s Elko County, was an advocate for private property and states’ rights. His advocacy efforts began in the early 1990s and continued until his death.

   Wire service reports said he was leading the “Grass March/ Cowboy Express” horseback ride from California to Washington, D.C., when his horse stumbled on a prairie dog hole in Kansas, and he was knocked unconscious. After complaining of nagging headaches, doctors in Cheyenne, Wyo., discovered internal bleeding, and he was transferred to a Salt Lake City hospital.  

   Gerber is known for helping to organize a “Shovel Brigade” in 2000, when groups opposed Forest Service efforts and used picks and shovels to reopen a road to the Jarbridge area.

   “Just an outstanding person. He believed very strongly in landowner rights,” Ransom   said. “He believed in reasonable and common sense conservation. He believed farmers and ranchers had a right to exist. Grant was just a great guy and a great crusader, a person doing the right thing.”

    lee@heraldandnews.com
 
  H&N file photo by Samantha Tipler

 Grant Gerber, a Nevada lawyer and conservative political activist who helped organize the Klamath Relief Fund during the 2001 Klamath Basin Water Crisis, died Friday from injuries he received while participating in a

 

 

 

 

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