By Bryan Smith - The Rotarian

The water, steel gray, muscled with hidden current, surges by in a steady itinerant push, making a sound like bacon lightly frying, or faint applause. Blue-black against the afternoon sky, the snowy peaks of the Cascades overlook the river’s basin. To stand on the cool, muddy banks, it’s hard to imagine the tears of heartache, bitterness, hostility, and despair that have been shed over this vital artery of the American West.

The 263-mile Klamath River, which stretches from Oregon to a remote corner of California, has been the object of a custody battle as ugly as any parental fight for a child. Indian tribes. Farmers. Ranchers. Fishermen. Neighbors. Environmental activists. Politicians. All have been locked in a stalemate so fraught that it has an unofficial title: the Klamath Water Wars.