http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003986669_klamathblast01m.html

Thursday, November 1, 2007 – Page updated at 02:02 AM

TODD E. SWENSON / AP

Explosives breached the Williamson River Delta Preserve levees to restore marshland for endangered fish, sacred to the Klamath Tribes, at Agency Lake near Chiloquin, Ore., on Tuesday.

Blasts clear dikes to restore Oregon marshland

By JEFF BARNARD
The Associated Press

CHILOQUIN, Ore. — Explosives sent clouds of dirt sky-high Tuesday, breaching dikes to restore marshland for endangered fish at the heart of a long, bitter battle over water in the Klamath Basin.

The charges of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil spaced 10 feet apart along two miles of earthen dike allowed water to start dribbling into 2,500 acres of the Williamson River Delta.

By spring, what used to be among the most productive farmland in the region is expected to be flooded.

It marked the culmination of 12 years of work to overcome animosities among farmers, Indians and conservation groups and to improve Upper Klamath Lake for Lost River suckers and shortnose suckers.

The fish are sacred to the Klamath Tribes. As endangered species, their water needs have twice forced shut-offs of irrigation to most of the 1,400 farms on the Klamath Reclamation Project, which covers 180,000 acres of high desert straddling the California-Oregon border east of the Cascade Range.

The most recent shut-off, in 2001, drew national attention again this year when The Washington Post reported that Vice President Dick Cheney took a hand in getting the water turned on for the benefit of farmers.