State Omission Threatens Agricultural Water Rights; Non-Profit Files Lawsuit In Circuit Court To Temporarily Suspend Klamath Adjudication Process

SALEM, Ore. – After decades of slow, methodical movement forward, the Klamath Adjudication process is in jeopardy of derailing because the State of Oregon failed to provide adequate notice to all potentially affected parties.

    Water law in Oregon follows the Doctrine of Prior Appropriation, meaning the oldest water rights will always be satisfied before more recent water rights ("first in time, first in right"). But this law was not created until 1909, so that everyone using water prior to that year must go through a lengthy and complex state process to prove the original date of their water right. This process is known as adjudication.

    Since the 1970’s, the State of Oregon has been conducting an adjudication process to finally settle the contentious issue of who owns the most senior water rights in the Klamath Basin in southern Oregon. Parties claiming these most senior of water rights include the federal government and the Klamath area tribes.

    As part of this process, State officials are required to provide reasonable notice to every person in the Klamath Basin who owns any irrigation works. This notice is intended to protect farmers, ranchers, and anyone else who depends on irrigated water for their livelihood. Many of these water users hold "certified" deeds, whether by prior adjudication or post-1909 claim, to water rights that have been in their families for generations.

    "These non-agricultural pre-1909 claims are for extremely large amounts of water, and some of the priority dates go back to time immemorial – literally," said Brad Harper, Executive Director of Water for Life, Inc. "This means we have established farming families who will certainly be driven out of business because there will no longer be enough water to go around."

    Because the impact of the adjudication will be so sweeping, Water for Life, Inc. has been closely monitoring the process to provide maximum protection for its members. Most recently it was determined, to the stunned surprise of many of those who have been intimately involved with the adjudication, that many of the local water users had little or no notice that their water rights might be rendered valueless.

    Speaking at a Board of Directors meeting in Bend last week, Susan Hammond, President of Water for Life, Inc. and a rancher from Diamond, reported that many water users were either not notified, or received very short notice, that claims were being made against their water. "We have producers in the Klamath Basin who still have not been notified that they stand to lose their water rights if they don’t participate in the adjudication," said Hammond. "The State is ignoring the law by failing to give every water user due notice that their very existence is under threat."

    In a last ditch effort to solve the crisis, Water for Life, Inc. filed a lawsuit with the Klamath County Circuit Court demanding the State extend the notification period so all water users would have their full entitlement to inspect the claims made by others and determine whether they need to protect themselves as the law allows.

    "Due to the number of claims and the surprisingly short supply of water law attorneys, we actually have some members who have not had enough time to find legal representation, much less actually inspect the claim files to determine if their operations are at risk," said Harper. "After spending so many years trying to sort out these water rights, its outrageous to deny these people their due process rights just to speed things along by another few months."

    Klamath County Circuit Court Judge Cameron Wogan has scheduled a hearing on the request for preliminary injunction for Monday, May 1, 2000.

    Water for Life, Inc. is a private, non-profit organization dedicated to the protection of western agricultural water rights and committed to sound environmental management.