Multimillion-dollar Sprague River Collaborative Restoration Project underway to improve river flow and repair ecosystem
Over the last 30 years, a water and economic crisis has emerged in the Sprague River Basin as available surface water and groundwater supplies for agriculture have become increasingly depleted. This has resulted from climate change, the enforcement of senior instream tribal water rights, and failing ecosystems. Ranchers, tribal allottees, and communities have struggled as less water is available. In response to the problem, the Upper Klamath Basin Ag Collaborative was established to form a collective response to address the problem.
The Ag Collaborative is initially focused on the Sprague River watershed, with other projects expected to restore other aquatic ecosystems to their natural conditions in the coming years. An 85-mile stretch of the Sprague River Collaborative Restoration Project is in Phase 1 of three phases. The joint project is a team effort partnering with the Klamath Tribes, non-profit, government, and private organizations. The project is also committed to farm and ranch families’ interests and rights and voluntary, incentive-based approaches to advance agricultural and environmental resiliency. Local organizations, including Trout Unlimited and Klamath Watershed Partnership, are working on restoring instream and riparian habitat through various initiatives. Raising water tables, cooling the river, reducing erosion and phosphorus loading, and improving the fisheries are benefits of a restored, healthy Sprague River.
Overcoming cultural and logistical barriers to restoring the aquatic ecosystem is a challenge, but one that is necessary to address the water crisis in the Basin. Larry Nicholson, a Klamath tribal member and Fort Klamath cattle and farming rancher, is the point man for the collaborative effort. “We’re trying to figure out how the tribes can work with landowners,” he said. “And you know, the different agreements, particularly the Upper Klamath Basin Comprehensive Agreement (UKBCA), were agreements at one time that we could share the water and have water for both agriculture and the fisheries. And it was signed by all the stakeholders.”
He said they tried to get funding for the UKBCA initiative, but it failed. But now funding is available, and the Ag Collaborative has access to millions of federal dollars. “It’s going to be very difficult to do in the future because the money is not going to always be here,” Nicholson said. “So, we put together the Upper Klamath Basin Ag Collaborative and started on the Sprague River because the Sprague River has some of the more unique problems.”
Nicholson said it’s a win-win for the ranchers to partner with them because improving the river provides a better water supply while improving the water system’s health. “Ultimately, it’s good for both parties, for all stakeholders, to do the restoration work,” he said. “It’s good for Agriculture; we want the groundwater table to rise to store more water within the system that actually flows later in the summer. We want to create a higher water table so grass can access it through the root system for a longer period of time. And also restore the Sprague for the fisheries at the same time. We want the river to be cooler and cleaner.”
He explained that the Sprague River had been changed by the Army Corp of Engineers during the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, making river channels that are straight for miles, changing the natural curves of the river so the water flow is “blasting” through regions where it once wound through at a slower pace. “You need to slow it down,” Nicholson said. “You need to spread it out. So those are the kinds of things that can be done. Obviously, it would cost a lot of money, but the money is there to do it. If we can get a consensus and landowner agreement on it, we will have $6 million to come up with the design and the agreements themselves. And more will be used for the actual restoration of the tributaries.”
Nicholson explained that the Sprague River has been impacted by water over-allocation, river damming, and a lack of understanding of consequences. The collaboration, he said, emphasizes the importance of conserving water, addressing phosphorus pollution, and taking a comprehensive approach to ecosystem restoration. He stressed the need for a holistic approach to restoring the ecosystem.
“I’ve been working on figuring out how to for myself, trying to get water to my ranch for decades,” he said. “So, nothing’s worked. It’s just been a really frustrating effort. And so, we have come to this point where nothing is being done at all, and as I said earlier, there’s a lot of money dedicated to the Upper Klamath Basin to find solutions. So, I decided to try to work with landowners, one-on-one, to come up with ways where we could get both ranch resiliency and the benefits of restoration, and so that’s why I worked with others to start the Upper Klamath Basin Ag Collaborative. We started working with landowners pretty quickly. You know, the opportunity for the BIL money, Bi-Partisan Infrastructure Legislation money, through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is given yearly in grants. So, we started creating a coalition.”
He said money is available from multiple agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Forest Service. He said droughts, water restrictions, and water resource stress, which cause strict water usage allocations, are a nationwide problem requiring billions of dollars to restore the systems feeding the water supplies. It’s been a combination of man-made changes to rivers as well as climate change, warmer summers, wildfires like the Bootleg fire, less snowpack, and runoff from agriculture into the rivers that have drastically changed the ecology of river systems as a whole – and there’s less water. “There’s less water today than 50 years ago, even 20 years ago,” Nicholson said.
On a tour of the Sprague River with this reporter, he pointed out the changes in the Sprague River near a ranch. He pointed out the issue of straightening and channeling the river, which caused it to run faster. “You can see here, it’s very blatant,” he said. “You see no willows. You see nothing shading the river. The sun is beating down on the river throughout the day. So, as you can imagine, it just warms the river.” In its original state, he added, during the spring, the river was allowed to flow out of its banks, but the diking of the river channelized it, so it no longer flows out. He said that even during the diking, the water would breach the bank in past decades, but that no longer happens due to water loss.
Also contributing to the river’s problems is a loss of riparian vegetation along its banks, which acted as sediment and phosphorus filtration for the system. Sedges, rushes, grass, and especially willows once naturally grew along the banks of the Sprague, providing shade, but they are no longer there, adding to the river’s warming. “The riparian area is that buffer between the uplands and the river itself,” he explained. “And what the riparian area does in the Ag world for restoration, you can have both Ag and restoration, but the riparian area filters out the phosphorus and stuff, and that’s why you need that particular area to prevent phosphorus pollutants from getting into the river itself.”
“There was no understanding of what the willows did and the benefit of them or any shading,” he continued. “So, you know, people unknowingly removed willows over the decades. During the Corps of Engineers diking project of the Sprague River, they removed willows. There was just no understanding of what happens when you destroy an ecosystem like that; there was no understanding of the impact there. So, you know now, as we’re understanding this better, and we’re trying to find that nexus between agriculture and restoration, so we can find benefits for everybody.”
With the current $6 million allocated for the Sprague River Collaborative Restoration Project, the goal is to restore the river and its tributaries through technical assistance, outreach, and collaboration with state and federal programs. Bill Lehman is the Executive Director of the Klamath Watershed Partnership, a role he has been in since 2014. He explained their work implementing restoration on four tributaries and emphasized the importance of incorporating traditional ecological knowledge into restoration efforts to address economic concerns. He offered some background on the organization. “The Klamath Watershed Partnership is the Watershed Council for the Upper Klamath Basin of Oregon. Every major river in Oregon has a watershed council, and we’re partially funded through the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board. The idea is to assist with watershed projects in our region, and has been in that role since 1997.”
He said Nicholson and Becky Hyde contacted him to organize a group to work on the restoration of the Sprague River, and in February of 2023, they began meeting to apply for money to fund the project. He said the Klamath Watershed Partnership has received $454,000 to conduct their current work. “There are four primary parts,” he explained. “We’re referring to the Sprague River Collaborative Restoration Project. One of the primary parts is implementing restoration on the Sprague River tributaries, sort of expediting that work. For example, over the years, the US Fish and Wildlife Service had restoration money, and we would occasionally apply for funds to help an individual landowner with a small restoration project. In my case, I think $334,000 is a portion of the money to work on four different tributaries of the Sprague River. Then, there is a design and monitoring portion.
“For example, we’ve hired an engineer who’s going to look at designs for what improvements all along that Sprague would look like, and a big part of the collaborative is to address some of the economic concerns. So, we’re meeting a lot to talk about different funding mechanisms, through the state, through the Feds, through donations or nonprofit organizations or some sort of legislation to support this work. How can we collectively as a group, help those individual landowners get access to that money and maintain their operations? In the last part, once we have a toolbox of different options available, we will do a lot of outreach and technical assistance to put that work on the ground.”
Of the $6 million allocated, Lehman said $2 million is being used for restoration. He said they’ve begun projects restoring tributaries, and Trout Unlimited and the Klamath Watershed Partnership are doing most of that restoration work, working on small creeks and streams adjacent to the Sprague River. And then there’s the design and monitoring of all the engineering associated with that design, and a lot of meetings are being held to determine the best way that they can help landowners, reaching out to the landowners, determining what the best funding mechanisms are, and then the time it takes to do the outreach and help people take advantage of the grant opportunities.
Four streams are currently being worked on by the Klamath Watershed Partnership, including Ish Tish Creek, Badger Creek, and Paradise Creeks, where riparian fencing is being built, and structures in the river are being placed to slow the water down and put the creeks back into their natural channels. “You know, at one time some of those streams and creeks were channelized, and there were levees put up, and we have the opportunity to actually put those back into their natural stream channels,” he said.
The Klamath Tribes, through the Ambodat Department, has been partnering with other entities on the Sprague River Collaborative Restoration Project. “This project is a high priority for improving the ecological health of the Sprague River, which is habitat for tribal trust species including the c’waam, koptu, redband trout, and potentially salmon in the near future,” said Mark Buettner, Ambodat Director. He added, “The Klamath Tribes have received $365,000 to monitor water quality in the project area to assess changes in water quality resulting from stream and riparian restoration work and other land use practices implemented as part of the Sprague River Collaborative Restoration Project.”
