The long-running struggle to reach agreement has a new problem.
Klamath water pact said at risk
By David Whitney - Bee Washington Bureau
Published 12:00 am PDT Saturday, July 14, 2007
Some House Republicans are worried that a congressional hearing into Vice President Dick Cheney's intervention in the Klamath River basin crisis five years ago could upset negotiations to end years of battling over the water.
The Washington Post reported last month that Cheney secretly intervened in 2002 in an effort to make sure the Bureau of Reclamation didn't repeat the shutoff of irrigation water to farmers to protect endangered fish.
After the story appeared, 36 California and Oregon Democrats asked for a hearing on the issue, saying the vice president's political interference may have helped cause the die-off of 70,000 salmon, producing a fishery disaster from Portland, Ore., to Morro Bay on California's Central Coast.
The House Natural Resources Committee has scheduled the hearing for July 31 in Washington, D.C.
Republican Reps. Wally Herger of Marysville and John Doolittle of Roseville joined Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., in asking the committee to also schedule a field hearing in Yreka because they fear the Washington hearing will reignite old wounds as farmers, fishermen, Indian tribes and environmentalists are nearing a settlement of the long-simmering fight over management of the federal water project.
In an interview, Herger said the Washington hearing is destined to be "a witch hunt" because there is no evidence Cheney did anything improper.
"I would hope and pray that the vice president would have been involved," said Herger, whose district includes California agricultural areas irrigated by the Klamath project. "I hope the president was involved, because I was sure asking him to get involved."
