Examine Cheney's role.

Byline: The Register-Guard

CORRECTION (ran 7/7/2007): A July 5 editorial incorrectly attributed a 2002 decision to cut irrigation deliveries to Klamath Basin farmers to the Bureau of Land Management. The decision on water allocation was made by the Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the canals and dams that provide the Klamath's irrigation water.

The House Natural Resources Committee should thoroughly investigate Vice President Dick Cheney's role in the 2002 die-off of more than 75,000 salmon in the Klamath Basin. And it should do so with the same pit-bull tenacity that Cheney has demonstrated time and again in undercutting environmental regulations to further his political and ideological agenda.

The committee announced this week that it will conduct hearings on Cheney's involvement in Klamath River water management decisions that many believe led to the massive fish kill four years ago. Three dozen House Democrats from Oregon and California, including Congressman Peter DeFazio, requested the hearings after The Washington Post reported details of Cheney's extensive intervention.

In a four-part series, the Post reported that Cheney personally contacted Sue Ellen Wooldridge - the 19th ranking official in the Interior Department and then Secretary Gale Norton's top adviser on the Klamath - about his concerns over the Bureau of Land Management's decision to cut irrigation deliveries to farm- ers.

The BLM cut the water flow to farmers to enforce a finding by federal biologists that the diversions posed an unacceptable risk to endangered salmon and suckerfish. At the request of former Oregon Republican Congressman Bob Smith, who was representing Klamath farmers, Cheney urged the Interior Department to obtain a second opinion from the National Academy of Sciences. According to Smith, Cheney even contacted the academy himself to communicate his concerns.

When the academy delivered a preliminary report finding "no substantial scientific foundation" to justify withholding irrigation diversions, the BLM promptly restored water deliveries to farmers - despite opposition by government biologists, environmentalists and commercial fishermen.

In September 2002, tens of thousands of dead chinook salmon - the cornerstone of commercial fishing in Oregon and Northern California - began washing up on the banks of the Klamath River near its confluence with the Trinity River in Northern California. Federal and state biologists concluded that the decision to restore water flows to Klamath farmers was partially responsible for the die-off. Many scientists also believe the decision played a key role in creating the conditions that prompted last summer's virtual shutdown of commercial fisheries off the West Coast.

Cheney's secretive meddling in the Klamath situation is just one example of how the vice president has attempted to impose his political and ideological will on the federal bureaucracy and environmental regulations. As The Washington Post series noted, Cheney has made "an indelible mark on the administration's approach to everything from air and water quality to the preservation of national parks and for- ests."

The House Natural Resources Committee should take a hard, unflinching look at Cheney's blatantly manipulative role in setting federal water policy for the Klamath Basin.