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The water rights are the water rights.

I'm not arguing about the water rights.

The builder of the project is irrelevant.

Uh, sorry. The builder is QUITE relevant, because the brief raises the issue--it states that anything not permitted to the Federal government is forbidden to it. Therefore, by the farmers' own pleading, the project was constructed illegally. Any lands that are now under Klamath Lake needs to be returned to its rightful owners.

The farmers have the water rights, but the water rights and the water project are not one and the same.

If they're going to argue from a strict reading of the Constitution (as they do here), then they have no case, because the structures from the project should not be there in the first place.

You're trying to have both ends of this argument, and that just does not work.

You're trying to have both ends of this argument, and that just does not work.

But the federal government can? Then can anyone justify the Tennessee Valley Authority? A federal government builder of dams, locks, canals, hydro -electric generation plants, nuclear power generation plants, and coal fired power as well as gas turbine utilities? Plenty of once private land under those lakes. The owners forced to leave. All in the name of flood control which destroyed more land and property than it could ever possibly have saved.

But we don't sit back and let the federal government close off the water flow completely for extended times at their will either. It would cause a riot.

The first real test of the endangered species act was not done to protect a Snail Darter it was done to stop an out of control federal agency of tyrants and hold them accountable to the people again. This is yet another example of government's over reaching powers exceeding common sense. The feds don't care about any enviromental issues they impose it is used as a tool to rule by agency decree and nothing more. Now who's wanting it both ways?

Let me back up and try to expalain this to you another way. It is very important because it is happening thru-out the country.

Forest, Jeff Head, and many other supporters of the Klamath farmers always maintain that that there has been a violation of the farmer's constitutional rights. This is not true, they have no constitutional right to the water. They do have water rights, which have been violated. The basis of the water rights precede the constitution and were established by the Spaniards and later adopted by Oregon and the rest of the western states.

On the the other hand, the feds have no constitutional right to the water. In fact, the feds never made any claim to the waters anywhere in the country. They deferred to the states. In 1912 the Winters Doctrine was established, by a court decision, to provide water to an Indian Reservation for the purpose of farming. It was narrow, well defined and forgotton about for 50 years.

The activist court then expanded the Winters Doctrine aka Federal Reserved Water Rights for the Wilderness Act, ESA, and others. They now have in-stream flow rights, by-pass flow rights, and they like. The water does not have to be associated with a federal dam or project. They can claim water in a free flowing river, water behind a munincipal dam, or water in the ground. And the ownership of that water can have been established for 150 years.

The fact that the feds built the the Klamath Project has no bearing on the ownership of the water.

You're trying to have both ends of this argument, and that just does not work.

It does work. FDR accomplished much damage against the Constitution. This damage is fait accomplis now, 67 years later. There was no Constitutional provision for the water project's construction. There is no Constitutional provision for it's destruction. There is no Constitutional provision for the government's manipulation of the water now.

Two Constitutional wrongs do not make a right.