Klamath River Basin: Reclamation Met Its Water Bank Obligations, but Information Provided to Water Bank Stakeholders Could Be Improved Page: 29 of 60
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some Project irrigators and tribes, on basic topics such as the purpose of
the water bank. Reclamation placed some information about the water
bank application process on its Web site; however, Reclamation has not
made other water bank information-such as the year-to-date status-
available since that time, in part, because Reclamation has been reluctant
to release status information that will almost certainly require revision later
in the year.
Finally, Reclamation's use of river flow data generated by PacifiCorp to
estimate the water bank's river flow augmentation has reduced the
transparency of the water bank and limited the ability of stakeholders to
independently monitor the operation of the water bank. The PacifiCorp
data used by Reclamation to calculate actual Klamath River flows is not
available to the public. Therefore, interested stakeholders must use a
different source-the publicly available USGS data on actual Klamath River
flows-to calculate year-to-date water bank deliveries. The PacifiCorp and
USGS flow data differ because each uses a different formula to calculate
the average daily flow. Thus, Reclamation and stakeholders will arrive at
different augmented flow calculations, depending upon which data source
they use. For example, we found that, in 2003, augmented flows appeared
to be about 2,500 acre-feet greater when using USGS data than when using
PacifiCorp data. Furthermore, Reclamation, using PacifiCorp data, would
calculate that it had met its water bank obligation on a different date than a
stakeholder would using USGS data, creating the potential for stakeholder
confusion and doubt regarding the status of water bank deliveries.
Reclamation officials told us that as of October 2004 they began using the
publicly available USGS data to calculate and communicate the water
bank's status.The Water Bank
Appears to Have
Increased the
Availability of Water
for River Flows by
Reducing Irrigation
Use, but the Extent of
Its Impacts is UnclearReclamation's water bank appears to have increased the availability of
water to enhance river flows by reducing irrigation water use on the
Project, but there is uncertainty regarding the extent of its impacts on river
diversions and groundwater resources. In 2003, when the water bank
primarily relied on crop idling to obtain water, there was a significant
increase in the amount of land not using irrigation water compared with
recent years. While it was likely that a reduction in river and lake
diversions for Project irrigation resulted, a university study funded by
Reclamation found that the reduction attributable to the water bank alone
was highly uncertain due to the lack of effective flow measurement
equipment and monitoring data for the Project. Because Reclamation was
uncertain about how much water crop idling actually provided to the waterGAO-05-283 Klamath Project Water Bank
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United States. Government Accountability Office. Klamath River Basin: Reclamation Met Its Water Bank Obligations, but Information Provided to Water Bank Stakeholders Could Be Improved, report, March 28, 2005; Washington D.C.. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc296292/m1/29/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.