By: Zaynab Brown
Mark Twain is famous for saying “Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over” and that couldn’t be more true than it is in the present moment, especially in the Western United States. What started during European settlement as a feeling that the vast amount of water in the west could never be depleted has transformed into a point of tension and anxiety. Our need for water increases year after year while climate change simultaneously upends our norms while the Earth grows hotter. Predictably, humans react by trying to bend nature to our needs. In Oregon and California, and around the world for that matter, this manifests itself in epic engineering feats to dam mighty rivers and divert their water to irrigate millions of acres of otherwise dry farmland and to provide drinking water and fill swimming pools in growing suburban enclaves. This trend is also true for the waterways within the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument.
All throughout the Monument you can observe evidence of the “plumbing” so ubiquitous in the west. Various dams and reservoirs –such as Howard Prairie Reservoir, Hyatt Reservoir, Keene Creek Reservoir, and Little Hyatt Reservoir– throw splashes of human-augmented blue over the landscape. While they may provide recreational opportunities, meadows that were once wet grow parched in the summer and streams can no longer support beaver dams with their reduced flows. Now, more than ever, everything comes at a cost.
Most of the water that flows through the creeks and streams of the Monument originates from springs and snow melt. However, much of that water is diverted before it can reach its historic destinations and ends up in the Talent Irrigation District (TID) system that provides irrigation water to a large part of the Rogue Valley to the tune of billions of gallons per year. In fact, water that flows in Keene Creek would naturally flow into the Klamath River watershed. However, a diversion results in that water jumping watersheds into the Rogue River watershed instead. In light of the dam removals underway on the Klamath River, it is unlikely that this diversion will remain uncontested into the future.
On Friday evening, April 26, John Schuyler, a retired forester, gave us a broad view of the history of water policies and infrastructure in the West to inform our understanding of the current situation in Southern Oregon and Northern California. From the Hetch Hetchy reservoir to the Hoover Dam, the theme of human hubris clashing with the reality of water scarcity was found throughout. On Saturday, when a group of participants ventured out into the Monument to see this “plumbing” in person, the irony couldn’t be ignored as we walked along the PCT adjacent to Hyatt Lake. The Monument, designated for its incredible biodiversity and wild character, could not escape the pervasive touch of humans intent on extracting its resources via concrete dams and channels that conveyed cool, clear water into ditches irrigating greener pastures down below.
