Farmers buy land, make camp by shut Klamath irrigation canal

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. (AP) — Two farmers with ties to anti-government activist Ammon Bundy have purchased land by a shut-off irrigation canal in the Klamath Basin that would normally deliver water to a massive federal irrigation project along the California-Oregon border.

The move comes after federal regulators shut off all water deliveries from the project’s main “A Canal” due to extreme drought and the need to balance the water demands of farmers with threatened and endangered fish species in the Upper Klamath Lake and Klamath River.

Jefferson Public Radio reports the site by the canal's head gates holds an information tent and a protest is planned for Thursday.

The last time water was shut to farmers, in 2001, demonstrators forced open the canal's head gates three times before federal marshals arrived and stayed all summer.

The two men who purchased the land near the canal, Dan Nielsen and Grant Knoll, have set up an information center at the site along with local members of the Oregon chapter of People’s Rights Network, a group founded by Bundy last year, the radio station reported.

The group first organized in Idaho in response to COVID-19 mask rules and other government-mandated safety regulations and has grown in its scope. Bundy, who was acquitted for his role in a 42-day armed standoff with the U.S. government in 2016 at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeast Oregon, is also running for Idaho governor in 2022.

Nielsen and Knoll are both landowners who receive irrigation water from the project. Knoll is also a member of the Klamath Irrigation District board of directors, which oversees a majority of Klamath Project land.

Nielsen told JPR he and Knoll decided to buy the property so they have a place to gather where they can’t be “run off” by the federal government.

Read more at: https://apnews.com/article/oregon-environment-and-nature-government-and-politics-2951d28552c0850bbad5a70296fbf753