Letter to the Editor, Herald & News, January 25, 2007

As an irrigator my hope is that people who care about the Klamath Basin’s future will continue to work toward solutions that bring stability to our agricultural, tribal and business community and offer a healthy place to live for people who have recently retired here. I’m disappointed that an organization called the Basin Alliance would continue to spend energy trying to bring humiliation over a transfer of land out of the hands of the Klamath Tribes that happened over fifty years ago. (Called termination.) There is no “deal on the table” to return Federal lands to the tribes. I’m frustrated when the Basin Alliance tries to tie its banner onto basin agriculture. The Klamath Tribes hold the senior water right in this basin, and you can ask just about anyone who actually relies on irrigation water and is in the adjudication, why it would be important for agriculture to maintain respectful relations with the Klamath Tribes.

Becky Hyde
Beatty, Oregon

Klamath Basin Alliance Responds to Becky Hyde's Letter to the Editor

February 2, 2007

As a fifth generation irrigator in the great Klamath Basin I am infuriated and somewhat nauseated that there are other irrigators that lack the fortitude and intelligence to check out the subjects they write about in a letter to the editor. Becky Hyde knows nothing of the Klamath Basin Alliance, who we are, who we represent or even why we were formed. Until she does take the time to establish some knowledge of what we stand for she needs to keep her wicked, divisive pen to herself.

I am the son, of the daughter, of the father, of the daughter of, of the daughter of not one, but of two pioneer farm families. My ancestors were some of the very first farm families in this Basin. As my ancestors were “bustin’ sod” in the Klamath Country when it was part of Oregon Territory , I have the inherited right to “tie my banner onto basin agriculture”. One of my ancestors was employed at the Klamath Indian Agency as a farmer to teach the “Klamaths” how to till the soil and provide sustenance for their families. He is also said to have assisted in laying out the first wagon road between the Klamath Agency and the Yainax Agency. Given this, I have every right to “tie my banner onto basin agriculture.

My father, my brother, and I worked together daylight to dark farming several hundred acres of owned and leased farm land. We carried more hand line sprinkler pipes over grain and alfalfa fields than Becky Hyde has ever seen. My father bought one of the first wheel line systems sold in the basin by the first generation Jim Kerns, long before his sons started Kerns Irrigation. It was powered by manual force and a very large hand operated ratchet handle. By this history, I have every right to “tie my banner onto basin agriculture”.

My father was also a lifelong cattleman, and at the age of eighty succumbed to heart failure while loading cattle into his stock trailer. Because my father lived and died in agriculture, I have every right to “tie my banner onto basin agriculture”. After my fathers passing I have kept his treasured cattle herd blood line going. I continue to this day to have every right to “tie my banner onto basin agriculture”.

The Klamath Basin Alliance aggregately has a tremendous heritage tied into the Klamath Basin ’s agriculture. It is my hope that by this letter I have eliminated one venue for shallow narrow minded people to use to attack the Klamath Basin Alliance, Inc. The directors of the Klamath Basin Alliance, Inc, as well as the countless individual citizen supporters, private land owners within and adjacent to the National Forest boundaries, and all users of the Klamath Basin watershed, have a shared history that gives them the right to tie their “banner to agriculture”. It is unacceptable, in our view, for Ms. Hyde to minimize or denigrate these histories and these ties; In so doing, she can only serve to further drive a wedge amongst the citizens of the upper and lower Klamath Basin .

Glenn M. Howard

Chairman, Klamath Basin Alliance
5534 South Sixth Street Box 153
Klamath Falls , Oregon 97603