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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.

Since those water rights were attached to the irrigated land as an appurtenance, to the land that the farmers own, and since there must be, by the constitution, a reckoning for any taking of property ... their rights have indeed been violated IMHO.

In addition, the Government has defaulted on a contract with these people as respects the ownership and title of the distribution system for the water.

Both cases require the government, if it wishes to maintain any legitimacy regarding this situation, to fulfill its obligations constitutionally and contractually.

Finally, the means by which the government has gone about violating the rights of these people and not fulfilling their obligations (via the Endangered Species Act and via admittedly flawed scientific findings as evidence) are themselves unconstitutinal IMHO.

To date, even though water is again flowing (and I thank God and the brave people who stood against this for that), none of the critical issues have been addressed or resolved.