Klamath Basin Case Study

“River of Renewal” is a documentary that discusses a long-fought battle between American Indians, pitted farmers, and commercial fisherman over 10 million-acre Klamath River Basin, which spreads into the Oregon-California border. The documentary began by displaying graphics and videos of the American Indians’ side of the story. The Native Americans came from a humble background. They just trying to catch enough salmon from the regional water bend. Unfortunately, the amount of water was not enough to sustain the fish population, so the fish population declined and the Native Americans lost a source of food as well as a part of their ceremonial culture. Then, the documentary discusses the farmers’ side of the story. Their side of the story is

This paper takes a look at the historical context of the Chef Menteur landfill to better understand the major stakeholders including the Vietnamese-American community, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality and the Louisiana Environmental Action Network. It also sets forth perform a stakeholder analysis to coordinate each stakeholder to develop a monitoring and reporting plan for the Chef Menteur landfill. Using Colin Eden and Fran Ackerman’s stakeholder analysis to inform stakeholder coordination, and Archon Fung’s concept of minipublics, the Department of Sanitation will work with stakeholders to ensure that the concerns of the community and the environment are addressed in the monitoring and reporting plan.

Environmental justice issues are not solely about disparate health or economic effects; it also applies when the cultural and historical resources of protected groups are potentially affected by a federally funded transportation project. Native American Tribes are different than other minority groups affected by the environmental impacts of transportation projects. Interactions among tribes, the FHWA, and State DOTs should be structured as a government-to-government relationship. Consultation with tribes is therefore different from traditional public involvement outreach. Reaching out to tribes is still crucial if Federal and State agencies want to be sure that environmental justice concerns are understood and addressed.

Cole and Foster (2002) describes how many of the Native environmental justice struggles were focused around land and environmental exploitation (p. 26), both of which can be seen with the case of clear cutting in the Grassy Narrows community (Keewatin v Minister of Natural Resources, 2011), as well as with the issues surrounding the case of mercury pollution (Grassy Narrows and Islington Indian Bands Mercury Pollution Claims Settlement, 1986). This is an environmental justice issue because the Grassy Narrows people continually have to deal with environmental racism. Both of the examples mentioned above, along with the fact that they are still battling out in court their right to clean water and harvesting rights that sustains their livelihood (Keewatin v. Ontario Natural Resources, 2013) show how indigenous communities are still facing environmental racism in Canada.

The “players” in our region consist of many people ranging from federal agencies to church organizations. Some of them would include Appalachian Volunteers (AV), President’s Appalachian Regional Commission (PARC), Council of the Southern Mountains (CSM), Appalachian Group to Save the Land and People (AGLSP), Appalachian Leadership and Community Outreach (ALCOR), Area Redevelopment Administration (ARA), Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), Appalachian Regional Development Act (ARDA), Black Lung Association (BLA), Community Action Agency (CAA), Christian Appalachian Project (CAP), and many more dedicated organizations and individuals contributing and fighting for rights and benefits in our region.

It seemed that most of the controversy in the water crisis was either about water rights issues or about the current water levels compared to the fish population, which in turn had effects on the endangered species of this area. Very rarely did anyone speak about the Native American’s wants or needs concerning the Klamath River water crisis. The Natives feel that they should have some say about what decisions are going to be made concerning the area since they have been in the Klamath are longer than any other group.

This case study highlights that the Nevada Four were spiritually and had long term personal connections to do something good for the Wetlands. Upon being neglecting, these four bureaucrats took action and got involved with going behind their superior back to see fit to their beliefs and passion for the Wetlands. The Wetlands future was in the hands of the Department of Interior, in which the Nevada four felt wasn’t making any progression and decided to take action and attack from the outside. These four guerilla were natural scientists, who became experts in public relations. The Nevada four seen an opportunity to publicize their concern and get their agenda on the table when 7.5 million tui chub fish were found DEAD. Their mentioned that the cause of death was unknown and there could be a possibility that the Bureau of Reclamation could have something to do with this crisis. The “decisive trigger” was the angle the Nevada Four was looking to take, they understood that things had to get bad or at least seem bad, before anyone would do anything. They were denied once again for funding, so they took action and contacted owner of the inactive water to donate their water rights. This change the game, and was considered thinking outside the box, which their felt the Department of Interior would have never approved. The Nevada Four looked to give credit for success to other, because they were dedicated to a goal, and not to personal aggrandizement.

In 2012 and 2013 Klamath County on the Southern Oregon border declared a drought in April, after a string of fortunate years of heavy rain and snow. In 2014, a drought emergency was declared in February, two months earlier than in 2013, and in 2015 drought was again declared for the county in April( United State Geological Survey 2015). These successive drought declarations are not surprising to anyone who was following the Western water crisis during those years, where the governor of California declared a state of emergency and urban Californians were mandated to find ways to cut their water consumption drastically . In 2012, 10,000 avian mortalities were reported in the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuges because of the shut off of water facilities that support wetland habitat for migratory species (Learn 2012.) During those dry years, an article titled Birds are Dying As Drought Ravages Avian Highways ran in National Geographic, featuring Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge and putting the struggle of its bird species in a regional context, as long distance flyers found fewer and fewer refuges with the water resources to maintain them( Kay 2015). It was these shocking statistics that first attracted me, as a birder, to the basin as an area of study. However, as I began to wade into the history of the basin and its complicated local politics, I soon realized that I could not disentangle the issues experienced by wildlife and wildlife managers in the

The author, Anton Treuer, grew up in and around the Leech Lake Reservation in Minnesota. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from Princeton in 1991, and his Master’s and PhD in 1996 from the University of Minnesota. Today, he holds a position as a Professor of Ojibwe in his hometown of Bemidji. In his introduction, he states, “… I want this work to provide a place for people to get answers, it offers a

One of the many connections between the physical geography and human geography is found in the river. Due to the physical geography, the river is able to form and flow through the dam generating electricity, which is an essential part of nearby human settlements such as Winnipeg or Whitemouth. The river is also an important part of the local geography by shaping the land, providing a water source to nearby animals and vegetation. Through these connections, the river brings the physical and human geography together.

This could apply to Enbridge through their choice to engage with Native American advocates but weakening the arguments by maintaining control over the medium and format of that engagement. While this isn’t an equitable strategy, nor one that would solve the controversy, it elucidates the problem for Enbridge on both sides. By refusing to engage with dissent, Enbridge weakens their own argument for the pipeline while strengthening the unity and potency of the opposition’s arguments. Finally, Phaedra Pezzulo examines how Native American advocates and environmental justice advocates alike subvert existing power structures to assert their arguments. In reference to the emergence of the Environmental Justice Movement within Warren County, NC, Pezzulo cites the theory of critical interruptions. Essentially, through the case study of corporations discarding toxic waste in a low-income mostly black community, this article observes the importance of narratives within environmental discourse. Pezzulo identifies the importance of narratives constructed by either the Environmental Justice movement as a whole or of the state

In the Netla Edwards reading “Radiation, Tobacco, and Illness in Point Hope, Alaska”, the author uses the case study of Project Chariot and its implications on the local Inupiat people. Edwards ties the case study to broader questions regarding science, language, its involvement in the justification of choosing its subject. This ties in nicely with Kyle Whyte’s piece on The Climate and Traditional Knowledges Workgroup (CTKW) and their guidelines for ethical conduct. Project Chariot regarded the area of Point Hope, Alaska as remote and used this to justify their radiation experiment. For me, this demonstrates the issues that arise from the social construction of wilderness and nature as remote from human influence. The construction of wilderness

For example, increased population density has become a recent problem due to its economic and environmental externalities. Nativist environmentalism blames immigrant women “for producing children who then become the public burden, the cultural containment, and the driving force of ecological decline” (135). This ideology is prevalent in many environmental organizations, such as the infamous Sierra Club. The Slums of Aspen highlights the connection between nativism and environmental movements; both focus on the preservation of something with a large impact on society: nativists with their cultural traditions and environmentalist with their ecological

Willy-willy occurrences across farmland and rural communities within the Surat Basin in South-West Queensland are on the rise. Increased surface temperatures and cleared farmland provides perfect conditions for these ‘dust-devils’ to not only form, but to self-sustain for longer periods of time. These tornado-like funnels of wind strip precious topsoil and transport across potentially hundreds of kilometres. The striped land become barren and is open to further erosion from wind and rain. However, a recent boom in the mining industry across the Surat Basin has seen companies, such as the Queensland Gas Company (QGC), purchase thousands of hectares of land. According to their website, QGC, under strict Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Economic relations and resource management, 2. Ideology and culture including the way people think about the environment and water rights, 3.political agents like the state, transnational actors and organizations involved in water disputes and trade 4.the transnational social movements which endorse and resist water privatization, and 5.the power relations which engender unequal access to safe water (Bywater, 2008).