Reclamation forecast the 2026 Project water supply from Upper Klamath Lake and the Klamath River at 221,000 acre-feet — well below the Project's full irrigation demand. That shortfall is why deliveries are managed the way they are this year.

What the basin produced this water year. The shortage begins in the mountains. Peak snowpack reached only 4% of median, water-year precipitation 78% of median, and the water that actually arrived in Upper Klamath Lake — 770,202 acre-feet of net inflow — came in at 78% of the period-of-record median. Two independent measures of the watershed, the same answer. Rain on the valley floor ran closer to normal, but valley rain is not what fills the lake; mountain snow and runoff are.

The state recognized the same conditions. On May 12, 2026, Governor Kotek declared a drought emergency in Klamath County (Executive Order 26-08), citing basin snow water equivalent at 4% of normal.

The Klamath River Basin went from almost no drought to half the basin in drought in a single water year. The U.S. Drought Monitor tracks the basin as its own unit. On September 30, 2025 — the first day of this water year — 54% of the basin was drought-free and only 0.32% was in drought at all. As of August 18, 2026: no part of the basin is drought-free, 50.5% is in drought (D1–D4), and 15% is in severe or extreme drought (D2–D3) — extreme drought having more than doubled in the past week alone. Klamath County as a whole is 88.4% in drought, affecting 58,657 people, with its 16th-driest January through July in 132 years, about 5.17 inches below normal.

Sources: U.S. Drought Monitor, Klamath River Basin (released August 20, valid August 18) and NIDIS Klamath County conditions. NOAA's seasonal outlook has drought persisting through November.

Where that water went. These are water-year figures from K.I.D.'s daily tracking file and the federal gages, current to September 16. The water year runs October 1 to September 30 — a different clock than the irrigation season.

Read those last two together. Of the water that reached Upper Klamath Lake this water year, about 73% has passed over Keno Dam and gone down the Klamath River, and about 23% has been delivered to Project farms. Put another way, more than three acre-feet went down the river for every one delivered to a farm — 590,068 against 186,930. And 47,430 acre-feet of what went down the river was Project return flow: water the districts moved and sent back to help meet the Keno flow targets.

Net inflow and storage are Reclamation's measured record; Keno outflow is U.S. Geological Survey gage 11509500. Deferred Project Supply is Reclamation's accounting of Lost River Diversion Channel and F/FF pumping returns, as of August 13. The District's Water Dashboard carries these figures live, with the full daily record and the long-term context behind them.

The Klamath Reclamation Project is operated by several irrigation and drainage districts, and each district distributes and manages its own share of Project water under its own authorities. K.I.D. cannot control every basin-wide program or every diversion in the Project. What K.I.D. can do is manage its own operations, reduce avoidable demand, account for every drop put to beneficial use, and enforce its Water Delivery Policy against waste.

Operating within the supply figure Reclamation announced is not an endorsement of it. Under its 1954 Operations Contract, K.I.D. is a distribution agent: the contract contains no clause authorizing K.I.D. to apportion or ration Project water, and none authorizing Reclamation to assign K.I.D. a per-acre or volumetric share. K.I.D. is operating within the constraints placed on the 2026 supply while continuing to press — through its contract and the proper channels — for the water its patrons are owed. For the contract and water-right background, see K.I.D.'s Warren Act of 1911 page.

Beyond managing wait lists, K.I.D. is using every Board-authorized tool to reduce demand and prevent waste, consistent with the District's Water Delivery Policy and the constraints on 2026 Project operations:

• Self-regulating K.I.D.'s daily diversion from Upper Klamath Lake, and managing the A Canal headworks and Miller Hill diversions to a K.I.D.-specific average rate — coordinating with the other diversion districts on a shared approach.
• Lowering the A Canal operating level by about 6 inches, where feasible, to reduce seepage losses through the canal banks.
• Transfers between accounts capped at 0.5 acre-feet per acre, per month; K.I.D. is also evaluating whether future transfers should be ineligible for DRA validation.
• Running every recirculation pump upgraded by KBID (KBID invested nearly $1 million; the pumps target 0.75 AF/acre).
• Incorporating equitable, periodic Return Flow adjustments to Diversion Works volumes, as applicable, throughout the season.

In short, three things at once: cut the demand K.I.D. must divert, get more value from every acre-foot, and eliminate waste.

Surface Water Abatement Program (SWAP) — 1,022 acres idled (enrollment closed July 1)

SWAP is K.I.D.'s own idling program. It paid patrons who could take enrolled acres completely off K.I.D. surface water for the rest of 2026 using an alternate source they control — freeing up wet water, not paper water, so the District can keep irrigating later into the season. Enrollment closed July 1, 2026 with 1,022 acres signed up, and those acres stay off surface water for the season. Patrons already enrolled can contact the District office with any questions.

Regardless of how the year unfolded, the districts are now working together toward a single shared vision:

• Keep water moving as long as we can. We will make every effort, and use every available resource, to keep water deliveries going for as long as the supply lasts. With September rains, demand fell faster than the supply did, and deliveries are carrying past September — K.I.D. now expects to run to on or about October 15, with the available supply committed in full.
• Stay within the announced supply. The Project will operate within the 221,000 acre-feet Reclamation made available for 2026.
• Use every tool we have. With the idling enrollment windows now closed, how far the supply carries turns on disciplined daily diversion management and the acres already idled.
• We are stretching every drop. The math does not work on paper. But we are using every resource we have to squeeze that math toward a better result for the Project — and that work is showing in the numbers.

Two things came together on the refuges this summer: an avian botulism outbreak at Tule Lake that worsened sharply with the heat, and the largest waterbird hatch the basin has seen in over a decade at both Lower Klamath and Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuges. Water was the primary tool in both situations — for controlling disease and for keeping young birds alive to fledging. The water that moved through the districts in August did both.

Tule Lake Refuge — botulism outbreak, responding to water

Water remains the primary tool for both botulism management and wildlife survival, and this summer demonstrated it: moving water through the wetlands raised sump levels and cut daily mortality within days. A flow-through arrangement is a concept, not a finished plan. K.I.D. proposed such an approach in 2023, as the Section 7(a)(3) Applicant for the 2024 Proposed Action, and it was not adopted by the agencies. It would need engineering, accounting, and agreement among the districts, Reclamation and the wildlife agencies before it could be operated — work that has not been done. In the meantime the refuges depend on what the irrigation system returns to them.

Lower Klamath and Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuges — the largest hatch in a decade

Both refuges hosted the largest waterbird hatch our basin has witnessed in over ten years, and thousands of young birds were on the water when the sumps were at their lowest. Unit 2 reached its required elevation in time. Refuge crews banded more than 3,000 juvenile and flightless adult birds over two nights — birds that would very likely have been lost without water under them. At Lower Klamath, Unit 3 went nearly dry earlier in the season and habitat there was lost; return flows are now being moved to Unit 3 through the D plant to raise its elevation ahead of winter. The immediate priority on the refuge is securing and keeping enough water on the ground to sustain these nesting areas and ensure this historic generation of birds can successfully fledge.

Fall migration has begun, and early migrants are arriving and feeding in Klamath Drainage District and on leased fields. Unit 3 is being topped off with deep-plant water from Tulelake Irrigation District, and Unit 2 is holding steady. Sump 1A and 1B elevations have leveled off, with deep-plant pumping continuing.

Lower Klamath is open for waterfowl hunting — made possible by the water held in Unit 2 — and the California youth waterfowl season this weekend is bringing significant recreation to the basin. Return flows from District operations continue to move to Unit 3 through the D plant to raise its elevation ahead of winter — again, ordinary operation of the system rather than a special delivery. Unit 2 levels are declining again, because evapotranspiration is drawing more off the unit than the water now reaching it.

The deficit is the whole story: the Thomas Transfer's 12 cfs delivers roughly 24 acre-feet a day, while evapotranspiration is estimated to take about 30 acre-feet a day off Unit 2 alone. The transfer is a helpful tool, but at that rate it does little more than hold a single unit even — it leaves nothing to raise water levels, nothing for Unit 3, and nothing for the rest of the refuge. The 30 acre-feet per day figure is a conservative estimate; actual losses across the refuge are likely higher, which widens the gap further. That gap is the urgent case for more robust water solutions on the refuges. K.I.D. continues to work with its partners toward solutions that maintain a healthy ecosystem.

What worked in 2025 — and why it matters now

Last season showed what proactive water management can do. After the 2024 botulism outbreak, refuge staff used new elevation data to identify which wetland areas were most at risk at which water depths, and alerted Tulelake Irrigation District and Reclamation early. Operations were adjusted, and daily mortality at Tule Lake fell from 100–200 birds a day to one or two. It is the same principle K.I.D. has pressed for here: move water through the wetlands before the disease takes hold, rather than after. Ducks Unlimited documented that effort in Engineering a Comeback: How Science and Collaboration Offer Hope for Klamath Basin.

Questions?

Questions about your account, your water, your wait-list status, or an existing idling enrollment?

District Office: (541) 882-6661 · Office hours 8:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Drought Response Agency: (541) 630-0752 · info@klamathwaterbank.com · klamathwaterbank.com

Two different diseases hit two different life stages of Klamath salmon in 2026 — juveniles in the spring, returning adults in late summer. Both track the same variable: water temperature.

Spring — Ceratonova shasta in the juveniles

C. shasta is a natural parasite of the mainstem that tracks water temperature. It was first detected on April 2, and the infection rate in weekly samples climbed to roughly 90–100% by late April as the river warmed. By then most of the wild run had gone: of about 580,000 natural-origin young Chinook counted this season, an estimated 80% left before that first detection, while the water was still cold.

The early-June die-off that drew coverage fell almost entirely on hatchery fish — part of the 675,000 smolts released May 14 from the Fall Creek Hatchery, about 200 river miles from the sea. Roughly 2,170 of 3,500 juveniles caught at the Iron Gate and I-5 traps June 2–5 were dead or dying, nearly all of them hatchery-origin. Spore densities in the upper corridor were already above the 10 spores per liter the monitoring program ties to a 40% juvenile mortality threshold when those fish went in.

Coho salmon — the listed species the spring flow rules exist to protect — were essentially absent from the mainstem traps all season. They are a cool-tributary fish, not a warm summer mainstem fish. Spore levels dropped off at every index site by early August. K.I.D. has set out the full monitoring record, the temperature data and the sources behind this on its 2026 C. shasta and Klamath water temperatures page.

Late summer — Ich in the returning adults

Adult salmon returning from the ocean held in the lower Klamath in increasing numbers through August, and conditions turned against them. Reclamation reported water temperature at the Klamath-near-Klamath gage at 23.2°C with flows near 2,220 cfs, and every fish sampled was infected with Ich — mild in most, severe in some — with signs of columnaris as well. Ich is the parasite behind the 2002 fish kill; it spreads when large numbers of fish crowd together in warm, low water.

On August 27 Reclamation approved a Flow Augmentation Release under the Long Term Plan. Flows below Lewiston Dam on the Trinity River rose from about 450 cfs to as much as 1,200 cfs from August 28 through September 21, using approximately 35,000 acre-feet from Trinity Reservoir — a reservoir sitting at 109% of its historical average for the date.

Reclamation stated that this release does not affect water supply to agriculture, communities, or other environmental obligations. That statement applies to the Trinity release. It does not describe the Klamath side of the system: flows past Keno Dam are supplied from Upper Klamath Lake, including released stored water, from the same lake that supplies the Project.

The scale is worth noting. The 35,000 acre-feet released from Trinity for fish health is slightly more than the 34,070 acre-feet remaining for every farm in the entire Klamath Project — and Trinity sits at 109% of average while the Project runs at roughly a quarter of its contract entitlement.

The fall run came in — and the quota filled

Against the disease picture, the fishery itself did well. Anglers met the Lower Klamath adult fall-run Chinook quota below the Highway 96 Bridge at Weitchpec on September 13, which under California's rules closes the adult Chinook fishery from that bridge to the mouth. The mouth itself closed September 2 and stays closed for the rest of the year.

Below Highway 96 the river remains open for jack Chinook — two-year-olds of 23 inches or less — with all adults released. Adult fishing continues above Weitchpec and on the whole Trinity River. Quota status is on the California Department of Fish and Wildlife hotline, (800) 564-6479.

A quota filled is a run that arrived. It does not undo what the warm water did to the fish holding below Weitchpec in August, but it is worth recording alongside it: the 2026 fall run supported its full recreational allocation on the lower river.

Cyanotoxins — low in the river, high in the sump

Blue-green algae toxins are often raised alongside fish health on the Klamath, so it is worth recording what the monitoring actually showed through August. Tribal programs sampled the lower river and the Environmental Protection Agency's Region 8 Laboratory ran the analyses.

The river ran low. The sump ran high. Across twenty-five river samples in August, most were below the reporting limit and the highest was 1.36 micrograms per litre — a small fraction of any advisory threshold. At the same time Tule Lake Sump 1A measured 8.84, carrying a California WARNING advisory that has been posted since May.

That contrast is the lesson, and it is the same one the botulism taught. The toxin problem was not in the moving water; it was in the warm, shallow, stagnant sump — the same conditions, in the same place, that produced the botulism outbreak. Water that moves does not grow these problems. Water that sits does.

For the fish themselves, the finding stands: the harm to salmon holding in the lower river came from warm water, low flow and the parasites that thrive in those conditions, not from cyanotoxins in the river.

Cyanotoxin results: U.S. EPA Region 8 Laboratory for the R9 Tribal HAB 2026 program (Yurok, Karuk, Hoopa Valley and Pulikla monitoring), and refuge and Gerber sampling reported to the Klamath blue-green algae listserv. Other sources: Reclamation news release and Lower Klamath River Flow Augmentation Release technical recommendation, August 27, 2026; Oregon State University water-column spore monitoring; USFWS Arcata outmigrant monitoring; Karuk Tribe temperature record, used with permission. Figures are provisional.