For over 120 years, the farmers and ranchers served by Klamath Irrigation District have operated under a clear understanding: once the irrigation works were fully paid for, ownership would return to those who built and repaid them. That promise was made in 1905, reaffirmed in our 1954 contract, and remains unfulfilled to this day.

Key Historical Facts

• 1905–1954: Original project contract, 54x Land Trust Deeds secured by K.I.D. (originally organized as KWUA) for the development of the Klamath Reclamation Project in November 1905 (meaning lands that were donated), we also hold 674x individual contracts signed up lands in perpetuity for the Klamath Reclamation Project improvement to their lands, and correspondence with Reclamation assured landowners that title would transfer upon repayment.
• Read the 1954 Contract
• K.I.D. holds 54 Land Trust Deeds, representing thousands of acres donated in trust by our farmers to build the canals, dams, and reservoirs we rely on today. These documents prove our forebears paid in land, labor, $2M in cash donations, and 50 years of repayments—expecting ownership in return, as promised in our 1954 contract (Article 35)
• May 4, 1965: K.I.D. fully repaid the United States taxpayer for their investment
• 1977: K.I.D. and other Project districts agreed to assume operation and maintenance of “Reserved Works” with K.I.D. taking over Reclamation's administrative burden; However, the federal government never executed the transfer contracts.
• Clinton 1990s: K.I.D. informed that an "Act of Congress" was needed for title transfer.
• 2001-2002: K.I.D. aggressively pursued legislative support, but legal counsel suggested the board opt to put its legislative resources into following the efforts of a negotiated ESA settlement with the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement (KBRA)
• 2019: The John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation Act (P.L. 116-9) streamlined the title-transfer process nationwide — 44 projects have since successfully transferred.
• June 11, 2021: K.I.D. Board Resolution 2021-004 formally renewed our request for title transfer under the Dingell Act with the failed KBRA.

Recent Progress (June 2021– October 2025)

• 2021-2024: Multiple Klamath Project irrigation districts provided written and verbal support for K.I.D.’s title-transfer effort.
• February 2025: K.I.D. participated in discussions with Congressman Cliff Bentz and other districts to explore a multi-district transfer framework.
• June 2025: K.I.D. Board members and staff traveled to Washington, D.C. for five days of meetings with the Trump Administration. These meetings were productive and generated strong interest in completing the transfer as a common-sense, low-cost victory for rural America and the people we serve.
• Read our Appeal to Congress and Secretarial Action
• October 2025: The federal government shutdown temporarily paused progress and resulted in some staff turnover, but Congressman Bentz’s office immediately provided renewed guidance and support.

Where We Stand Today – November 2025

We are closer than ever to fulfilling the 1905 promise. The new Administration and congressional champions understand that:

• K.I.D. has met all of its contractual obligations, including full repayment.
• K.I.D. has physically operated and maintained our facilities since 1955.
• Reclamation continues to incur costs on behalf of the farmers, on their balance sheet; however, the federal expenditures are not authorized under contracts for obligations for the farmers to repay, leaving a black book of debt over the farmers.
• Local ownership will enable faster, lower-cost infrastructure improvements while maintaining full compliance with applicable laws.

How You Can Help Right Now

To keep momentum strong, we need your voice.

Please consider sending a short letter or email of support to the District, simply stating that you support the transfer of select Klamath Project facilities to the Klamath Irrigation District in fulfillment of long-standing contractual obligations:

Your participation will demonstrate to decision-makers that the entire community stands united behind honoring the original agreement — an agreement that helped make the Klamath Basin one of America’s most productive agricultural regions.

You can send your letters of support to our Executive Director at Gene.Souza@KlamathID.org

Thank you for your continued support. Together, we will bring this 120-year promise home.


Not ready to sign a letter of support yet...read our Executive Director's analysis below and send him questions if you are not a believer in title transfer...we want to hear that too...and why.

We Build It Ourselves – And Save You Money

Most people don’t realize that a lot of the gates, stops, weirs, trash racks, and other metal parts you see along the canals are hand-built right here by our own K.I.D. crew in our shop.

Instead of ordering expensive, custom-made pieces from a factory hundreds of miles away (and paying big fees for design, engineering, and shipping), our team measures, cuts, welds, and paints exactly what we need.

The result?

• Lower costs – often 50% or more off what an outside company would charge
• Faster repairs – we don’t wait weeks for delivery
• Better fit – everything is built to match our old canals perfectly
• Reuse of materials – we often use good steel from old structures instead of buying new

Every dollar we save in the shop is a dollar we don’t have to collect from you through assessments. It’s just one more way your District crew works hard to keep your irrigation assessment as low as possible.

Turning Old Metal into Money for the District

When we replace worn-out culverts, gates, pipes, or other metal parts, we don’t just throw them away.

• If the pieces are still usable, we clean them up and put them back into service somewhere else in the system.
• If they’re too damaged (like the old culvert sections in the photo), we haul them to the recycling center or sell them at auction.

Every ton of scrap metal we recycle or sell brings cash straight back to the District. That money helps pay for new equipment and repairs — which means lower costs and lower assessments for you, the farmers and ranchers we serve.

Reusing and recycling isn’t just good for the environment — it’s good for your wallet!

Our Own Mechanic – Saving You Money Every Day

We keep a full-time diesel mechanic on staff right here at the District.

Why? Because tractors, excavators, pumps, and trucks get used hard – every single day. Things break, wear out, or need regular service. When that happens, having our own mechanic means:

• Repairs happen fast – equipment gets back to work quickly instead of sitting for weeks.
• Costs stay low – we’re not paying dealership prices or emergency service call fees.
• Your money stays in your pocket – every dollar we save on repairs is one less dollar we have to charge the farmers and ranchers we serve.

A broke-down machine costs all of us water and time. Our in-house mechanic keeps things running and keeps your assessments as low as possible.

Safety Third – Our Crews Are Working Smarter and Safer

Maintaining miles of earthen canal and ditch banks is tough, dirty, and sometimes dangerous work. Rain, burrowing animals, and soft ground can cause a bank to collapse under a worker’s feet in an instant.

We’re proud to report that in 2025 our team has made huge strides in staying safe:

• Better training, new safety rules, and always watching out for each other
• Far fewer workers’ compensation claims this year
• Almost no trips to the emergency room – even when the ground gives way beneath us

Things still go wrong (that’s part of working with dirt, water, and weather), but because our crew embaces a culture of safety, they’re coming home to their families in a lot better shape than in years past.

In 2024, we brought on Willy Stevens as our Assistant Operations and Safety Officer; in 2025, Nate Blevin picked up this role late in the irrigation season.

Thank you to every employee who looks out for their coworkers – your careful habits are paying off!

Upgrading Our System – Finally Moving Past Egyptian Technology

Much of the Klamath Irrigation District was built in 1883 using the best ideas of that time – basically the same canal and gate designs people used thousands of years ago. For decades, we’ve been running your water system with inefficient technology, hard to control, and often can waste both water and power when we are not paying attention.

The good news: we are now replacing that old technology with modern, automated controls that save water, save electricity, and give us much better information about what’s happening across the entire system.

How are we paying for it?

We’re not putting the whole bill on you. Instead, we’re bringing in outside money:

Bureau of Reclamation WaterSMART grants

$5 million in federal funding secured by Senator Merkley in 2021 for new SCADA (computer monitoring and control) equipment

Grants and partnerships with the Farmers Conservation Alliance and the Oregon Water Resources Department

These dollars let us install new automated gates, better meters, remote sensors, and upgraded software – all without raising your rates as much as we would have to if you paid for everything ourselves.

Bottom line: every grant dollar we bring in means more reliable water delivery, less waste, and lower long-term costs for the farmers and ranchers we serve.

We’ll keep you posted as each new project comes online – you’ll start seeing (and feeling) the difference in the years ahead!

Keeping Your Water Flowing – Our Year-Round Battle

Every day, the District team fights to keep water moving smoothly to your farms and ranches. It’s not as simple as just opening a gate – we’re constantly dealing with things that clog, damage, or slow down the canals and drains.

Here’s what we’re up against:

• Invasive weeds and grasses that grow fast and choke the channels.
• Burrowing animals (yellow-bellied marmots, badgers, beavers, gophers, ground squirrels, foxes, coyotes, and other varmits) dig holes in canal banks and cause collapses and breaks of the canal banks.
• Trash and debris blown in by wind, washed in by storms, or oftentimes even tossed in by feral humans with no respect for our ecosystem – everything from tumbleweeds and plastic bags to shopping carts to elk hides and old tires.
• Giant tree limbs that fall into the canals. Imagine trying to pull a huge log out of the water when 90,000 gallons per second (that’s enough to fill an Olympic swimming pool every 3 seconds) is slamming it against the concrete wall!

All of these things can lead to dangerous bank failures.

Our crew uses an Integrated Pest Management Program – a smart, safe mix of mowing, approved herbicides, trapping, and physical removal – to stay ahead of weeds and burrowing animals. When big debris shows up, our team is out there with cranes, boats, and chainsaws to get it out as quickly and safely as possible...sometimes at 2am.

It’s hard, non-stop work, but it’s the only way we can keep water flowing reliably to every field in the District. We appreciate your patience and understanding when you see our crews along the canals – they’re working to protect your water.

Electrical Outage Emergencies – We’re Facing Them

Since 2024, PacifiCorp has made changes to how it delivers power, and the result has been repeated outages across the entire District – even when there is no storm or wildfire.

These sudden power losses affect everything:

• Our 1,100 kW hydropower plant gets cut off.
• Our large recirculation pumps shut down.
• In 2025 alone, a power surge destroyed an expensive variable frequency drive (VFD).
• The emergency bypass gates on the A Canal lost power and could not open when needed.
• Our SCADA system (the computer network that lets us see and control the canal system in real time) goes blind.

These are not just inconveniences – they are safety and operational emergencies that put water delivery at risk.

To protect the hydropower plant (which sits on an island surrounded by water), the District has now installed a large propane backup generator (shown in the photo above). This generator will keep critical equipment running WHEN PacifiCorp cuts power again.

We pay for reliable, dedicated electricity, but we are no longer getting it. The backup generator is a necessary safety fix, but it should not be required – reliable power from PacifiCorp is supposed to be there 24/7 and was not an issue from 2012 through dam removal.

We are working with PacifiCorp and regulators to fix the root cause, but until that happens, your District is taking every step possible to keep water flowing safely to your farms and ranches.

Water Year 2026 Outlook: What to Expect for Klamath Basin Farmers

As we head into Water Year 2026 (October 2025–September 2026), the Klamath Reclamation Project is watching a mix of promising signs and potential challenges. Water supply here depends heavily on snowpack in the Cascade and Siskiyou Mountains, winter rains, and big-picture weather patterns like ocean temperatures. Based on the latest long-range forecasts from NOAA, the Old Farmer's Almanac, and USGS models, here's a straightforward breakdown of what we're projecting—and what it means for you before the irrigation season kicks off in April.

Pete Parson uses the analog years of 2018, 1982, 1968 as being similar to the conditions we have seen over the past 2 years. Reminder, 2018 was a late start to the irrigation season with significant issues. We anticipate an on-time start to the 2026 irrigation season.

The Big Picture: La Niña Takes the Wheel

Ocean conditions in the Pacific are shifting toward a La Niña pattern this winter (60–70% chance through February 2026), where cooler waters can steer storm tracks north. For the Pacific Northwest—including our Basin—this often means wetter and cooler conditions overall compared to last year's drier El Niño influences. That's good news after years of drought, as it could boost inflows to Upper Klamath Lake (UKL) from rain and snowmelt. However, La Niña is expected to weaken by early spring (January–March 2026), transitioning to neutral conditions (55% chance), which might ease up on the heavy precip by planting time.

USGS hydrologic models are already factoring this in, predicting above-average early inflows to UKL if the pattern holds—potentially150–200% of EARLY median based on current trends from fall rains and the start of winter storms. (For context, last year's April–July inflows hit 203% of median, leading to full allocations.) But remember, these are projections—actual supply could shift with unexpected dry spells.

Winter Weather in Klamath Falls: Snow and Rain Ahead

Local forecasts for Klamath Falls paint a mild but drier-than-average winter with bursts of action:

• November–January: Warmer temps overall (highs in the mid-40s°F, lows around 20°F), but with below-average total precipitation and snowfall. Expect scattered storms from La Niña's northern push—maybe 10–12 inches of snow total so far, focused in late November and early December. Rain/snow chances hit 60–90% in the next couple weeks alone.

• February–March: The snowiest stretch comes early February (potentially 4–6 inches in a week), but overall snowpack could end up 10–20% below median if dry periods dominate. Total winter precip: Around 8–10 inches (vs. 13-inch average), with cooler snaps in early February.

• April Outlook: Cooler than normal up north (including us), with a 40–50% chance of above-average rain (1–2 inches) as La Niña fades. Snowmelt should start strong if February delivers, but watch for variable runoff if temps warm early.

Snowpack is key—it's our "frozen reservoir." Current early-season buildup is tracking near median, but we'll need consistent storms to hit 120–140% by April 1 for solid summer flows. USGS airborne surveys will give us real-time tweaks to these estimates.

What Should Farmers Expect Before April?

• Optimistic Start: La Niña's wet bias could mean decent early snow/rain accumulation, building UKL levels (currently at ~626 TAF, or 111% of average). If we see 140%+ precip like early 2025, initial allocations might hit 100% by spring—enough for full crop plans.

• Potential Hiccups: Below-average snow overall raises drought risk if February fizzles. Groundwater and fall rains are helping now, but dry spells could trim April–July inflows to 80–100% of median (about 500–700 TAF total).

Planning Tips for You

• Crop Choices: Lean toward drought-tolerant varieties if you're risk-averse.
• Stay Informed: Check monthly updates at klamathid.org
• Stay updated on precipitation with Windy.com

The 2025 Sucker Technical Symposium is: Wednesday, February 4^th 2025, at the Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls, Oregon. The meeting will be hybrid with in-person and virtual options available. "

K.I.D. Executive Director - I feel compelled to provide EDITORIAL COMMENT ON CORDALIS CLAIMS: Cordalis uses inflammatory language (at least to the ears of me, the executive director of K.I.D. who has provided significant scientific evidence countering her claims) against the Klamath Reclamation Project Farmers. Unfortunately, I am having to expend limited K.I.D. (farmer) resources to counter disinformation expressed by Cordalis in her books, public engagements, and Congressional Testimony.

Cordalis claims Klamath water flows were the lowest ever on history for the 2002 fish kill? Her TEK is clearly lacking. Even 1931 was lower (87cfs), which is not even the longest or most extensive drought our region has seen in over 1000 years. Evidence suggest conditions were much, much, much worse in the mid-1600s, the early 1840s., much of the 1920s, and all of the 1930s.

Cordalis's misstatements in her books and in this video claim that the Klamath Reclamation Project took water from her fish. FACT: Cordallis is demanding water delivered to the Klamath River that was NEVER available to the Klamath River: At least 267,000 acre-feet EVAPORATED from Lower Klamath Lake; water from the Lost River watershed was never available to the Klamath River; water lost from the Klamath River to the Lost River Slough in most spring times was blocked from evacuation in 1890.

Cordalis' inflammatory remarks that toxins from farms killed the fish are an absolute false statement, disproved by science. Her own tribal science policy advisor/fish biologist, who was on scene dealing with the issue firsthand, confirms no toxins. Unfortunately, the Forestry Department photographs of meth-labs along the river-banks just before the 2002 fish-kill can not be produced.

K.I.D. Executive Director Editorial Comment: And yet this story, and 100s more paid advertisements on this topic run counter to the facts presented in the 20 November 2025 Update - Linked Above. 

WHY? WHY DOES THE CDFW DATA CONFLICT WITH THESE STORIES? The $ being spent on this false narrative...and lack of public correction by the Departments and Agencies seems very odd.

DAM REMOVAL & NEW ANTHEM? - 'COPCO ROAD'

By: William E. Simpson II

My new song, "Copco Road", echoes the spirit of Bob Dylan's classic protest anthems like "Masters of War" or "Hurricane"—narrative-driven folk ballads that use vivid imagery, moral outrage, and rhythmic repetition to indict systemic failures and greed. With its verse-chorus structure, haunting refrains, and poetic lament for lost natural harmony, the song critiques the Klamath River dam removal project (including Copco 1 and 2 dams) as a "greedy lie" that promised ecological restoration but delivered devastation. It doesn't blanketly oppose all dam removals but stands as a pointed protest against recklessly executed ones, highlighting short-term harms like sediment pollution, wildlife deaths, habitat loss, and community disruption amid unfulfilled vows of salmon abundance and river revival.

As an anthem protesting reckless dam removal projects, "Copco Road" holds significant value in several ways:

*Emotional Resonance and Storytelling: Like Dylan's work, it personifies the landscape ("Copco Road, you twist and cry") and ghosts of the past, evoking nostalgia for pre-removal vitality—eagles soaring, fish running, children playing—while mourning the "dust and ruts" left behind. This narrative humanizes environmental policy failures, making abstract debates accessible and stirring empathy for affected wildlife (frogs, turtles, raccoons) and communities.

*Critique of Greed and False Promises: The lyrics target "plans in hand" and "cashed the claim," symbolizing corporate or bureaucratic opportunism in projects like the Klamath's $500 million effort, where initial water quality issues and sediment releases have sparked controversies despite long-term benefits for salmon and ecosystems. It warns of "nature bleeds where the rivers flow," positioning dam removal as potentially harmful when rushed without adequate mitigation, amplifying voices (including tribes and locals) concerned about energy loss, flooding risks, and incomplete restoration.

*Call to Awareness and Action: As part of Simpson's AI-assisted album The Last Mustang (releasing Nov. 24, 2025), the song blends personal advocacy—rooted in his wildfire experiences and wild horse conservation—with broader environmental activism. Its debut on the Bill Meyer Show Facebook page has garnered 6.6K views and 168 reactions in just a few days, with host Bill Meyer praising it as Simpson's "best song yet" and urging shares while criticizing the dam removal as a "farce." This traction suggests anthem potential, fostering dialogue on balancing restoration with precaution, much like Dylan's songs galvanized civil rights or anti-war movements.

While not yet a widespread "new anthem" (it's niche and recent), its raw authenticity and focus on unintended consequences give it strong value as a rallying cry for thoughtful environmental policy, urging scrutiny of "reckless" projects that prioritize show over sustainability. If it gains traction, it could inspire a new wave of eco-protest music.

Link to Bill Meyer Show's post and the song, take a listen for yourself and then decide: https://www.facebook.com/reel/1228332355982292