Time to Take Action
Our Klamath Basin Water Crisis
Upholding rural Americans' rights to grow food,
own property, and caretake our wildlife and natural resources.
 

 http://www.heraldandnews.com/articles/2009/01/21/viewpoints/letters/doc4976d3b31130b401782912.txt

Dredge lake to gain water storage space

 
January 20, 2009 Herald and News letter to the editor by Harvey Houston, Klamath Falls
    If Burnaby in British Columbia, Canada, can clean up its lake, we can clean up Upper Klamath Lake.

    We can solve our water problems and get paid for doing it.

    Upper Klamath Lake is very shallow in most places. Dredging the lake in sections would not disturb the water flow down the river or the fish.

    The sediment is topsoil, fertilizer and algae from the ranches and farms around the rivers and lake. It is probably the richest fertilizer possible and could be sold to pay for a big portion of the cost.

    Why spend millions of the taxpayers’ money to remove the dams and flood parts of Northern California and give thousands of acres of forestland away?

    We need the electricity in the near future as the American car companies will wake up and realize that a car is only transportation and probably only 80 percent have one or two people per car.

    Golf-cart-sized electric cars would be sufficient, except on highways and bypasses. The Bureau of Reclamation stated it could only use 8 feet of the water from the lake. Removing sediment to make the lake 2 to 3 feet deeper would increase  storage by a large number of acre feet.

    The following officials were sent a letter and I received letters and phone calls and they thought dredging was of interest: State Rep. Bill Garrard, State Sen. Doug Whitsett, U.S. Rep. Greg Walden and then-U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith.
 

Home Contact

 

              Page Updated: Thursday May 07, 2009 09:14 AM  Pacific


             Copyright © klamathbasincrisis.org, 2009, All Rights Reserved