This is Floyd Wynne with THE VIEW FROM HERE 4-29-04

Let’s talk about several things today.

First, it was not planned, but my Tuesday editorial pretty much matched the op-ed piece of the Herald and News Monday edition by Bernie Agrons.

Bernie has served this county well not only as a former manager of Weyerhaeuser, but also as one of most able state legislators.

As did I, he spoke of the problems facing any future effort to annex the suburban area to the city, noting that consolidation was the only way.

We certainly agree that consolidation is the much preferred method of uniting the people of the area into one city. It is true that another way comes about when the city surrounds an area. They can then move to annex. That, however, would not only be difficult, but would certainly create an unfavorable climate for some time to come.

I think the last real effort at compiling the benefits and looking at the problems was in about 1982 when a large group spent many months on the project only to have it die on the shelf. I still have a copy.

Then the 2002 project laid out some groundwork for such possible unification, but it too has pretty much been shelved with only a few of the suggestions put into practice.

However, like Bernie....my feelings are that the future needs of the area will dictate the time that a move to consolidate the area will take place.

On another matter, we were glad to see the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals order that more of the water from the Trinity River be kept in the Klamath River.

The Trinity joins the Klamath River about 45 miles from the Pacific Ocean. Over the past decade much of the Trinity water has been siphoned off for irrigators in Northern California. The case of the death of thousands of salmon several years ago is a case in point.

The fishermen maintained that they should get more of the waters from Upper Klamath Lake...and blamed the fish kill on the Basin irrigators, even though no actual cause of the fish kill has yet been determined.

Now that there will be more water in that 45 mile stretch to the ocean....the fishermen will stop blaming the irrigators.

This should take the fishermen out of the water equation, and leave only the question of the sucker fish and the Klamath Indians.

In our book, the next action should be a scientific study of the needs of these fish....an accurate count to determine whether or not they are really threatened....and the effects of the Chiloquin Dam on their spawning practices.

As I’ve said before....the Basin irrigators have been using the waters of Upper Klamath Lake for all but one of the last 97 years, and it’s only in the last five that the other entities have arisen to claim they have first right to these waters.

The new head gates are fine...and hopefully do keep the suckers out of the canals....but the status of those fish is badly needed.

However, I can already see the next battle in the offing.....the claim now is that we must wipe out all the dams so the salmon can return to Upper Klamath Lake....if they were ever truly there.

This is Floyd Wynne and that’s THE VIEW FROM HERE.