Victories

Water Diversions in the Klamath Basin

In Brief: In April 2001, Earthjustice won a major court order finding that the Bureau of Reclamation had violated the Endangered Species Act by diverting scarce water to irrigators at the expense of threatened coho salmon.

The Klamath basin was once an expansive wetland straddling the California/Oregon border which has been called the "western Everglades." Today much of the water that supplies the basin has been shunted from wetlands to farms raising low-value crops, forcing several local species to the brink of extinction.

On April 4, 2001, Earthjustice won a major court victory when a federal judge found that the water diversions' impact on threatened coho salmon violated the Endangered Species Act. The court ordered the Bureau of Reclamation to stop making irrigation deliveries until it had completed a plan, in consultation with the National Marine Fisheries Service, to ensure that coho and their habitat would not be harmed by the irrigation deliveries.

Updated: April 4, 2001