CHILOQUIN, Ore. — Explosives sent clouds of dirt sky high last week, breaching dikes to restore marshland for endangered fish at the heart of a long, bitter battle over water in the Klamath Basin.

 The charges of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil spaced 10 feet apart along two miles of earthen dike allowed water to start dribbling into 2,500 acres of the Williamson River Delta.

 By spring, what used to be among the most productive land farmland in the region is expected to be flooded.

 It marked the culmination of 12 years of work to overcome animosities among farmers, Indians, and conservation groups and to improve Upper Klamath Lake for Lost River suckers and shortnosed suckers.

 The fish are sacred to the Klamath Tribes. As endangered species, their water needs have twice forced shutoffs of irrigation to most of the 1,400 farms on the Klamath Reclamation Project, which covers 180,000 acres of high desert straddling the California-Oregon border east of the Cascade Range.

 The most recent shut-off, in 2001, drew national attention again this year when the Washington Post reported that Vice President Dick Cheney took a hand in getting the water turned on for the benefit of farmers.

 One of their leaders said that farmers hoped all sides would recognize sacrifices being made in the basin.

 "This particular site has been viewed by so many as so important (to the ecological restoration of the basin) that the agricultural community was able set aside those feelings that we are losing our foothold here," said John Crawford of Tule Lake, Calif.

 The Nature Conservancy bought the land, known as Tulana Farms, in 1996 for $5 million with money from corporations and the federal government.

 It is part of a series of marshland restoration projects on the northern end of Upper Klamath Lake that will ultimately approach 20,000 acres. The lake is the primary reservoir of the irrigation system.

 In the 1950s, when the suckers were still plentiful in the lake, farmers diked and pumped the water off the delta where the Williamson River flows into Upper Klamath Lake. They grew potatoes, wheat, barley and alfalfa. – Associated Press

Today's read: Direct (and sustainable) processing and marketing in Cordova

CODOVA – Dune Lankard wants to help reduce his and others' carbon footprint in the seafood industry.

 One of the ways he intends to do this is by making his business idea of the Cordova Community Cold Storage and Kitchen project from being plans on paper to a thriving, operational business.

 He has hopes of one day burning bio-diesel fuel made from fish offal in fishing boats and plant generators, and making environmentally sensitive wet-lock boxes that can be used 50-60 times, rather than used once and thrown into a landfill.

 Lankard won $40,000 from the Alaska Federation of Natives' Alaska Marketplace competition during the Fairbanks gathering the end of October. He plans on using his award as seed to develop the business.

 The purpose of the plan is to help Cordova establish a nonprofit community processing facility, certified by the Department of Environmental Conservation.

 The facility would add value to subsistence foods and incorporate a kitchen for research and development of specialized finished products.

 "During the last 10 years or so, I'd been talking to my sister, Pamela Smith, and David Grimes about building such a facility for Cordova. About five years ago David told me about Steve Smith's plans to build a community kitchen," Lankard said.

 Lankard met with Smith to share ideas, and the Eyak Preservation Council and Lankard himself donated startup fund.

 "When Steve began to have health ailments, I decided to do what I could to help see this collective dream become a reality for Cordova," said Lankard, an Athabascan Eyak and founder of the Eyak Preservation Council.

 Lankard also wants to build a certified for-profit processing and direct-marketing seafood plant for fishermen. He believes this type of a community facility will help further numerous viable and sustainable local cottage industries in Cordova.

 "One of my main goals in entering the Alaska Marketplace competition is to help local citizens improve the quality and handling of our subsistence and commercial seafood.

 At the same time we will be helping to create year-round local jobs and pass on our unique culture and traditions in our community," Lankard said.

 "Cordova is full of talented and entrepreneurial minded individuals; a state-of-the-art community processing plant will help showcase personal recipes and high-quality finished products and in the process increase the value of our seafood industry dollars."

 When Lankard was a boy, his father, Glen Lankard, would come in from fishing and take Dune with him to deliver salmon and other seafood the elder Lankard had caught, sharing his catch with people in the community.

 "I asked Dad why we always did this. He said, 'Because we can. Besides, they can't always go out and harvest these foods (themselves),'" Lankard said.

 "I also remember in the early 1970s when subsistence fishing would always open before the commercial fishery season and fishermen would bring in their kings and reds.

 "They would line them up on the docks, and then different families would come down and pick out a salmon or two for their family. I knew then that our subsistence way of life was really special and important to our community," Lankard said.

 If all goes as planned, groundbreaking could take place as soon as April. Lankard said right now, funding, locating, negotiating and securing a site are of the utmost importance.

 "Our overall business plan should be done before year's end. Then we plan to shop it around. We would love to break ground by April of next year. How soon it opens depends on how the city of Cordova works with us in securing a site and our potential Cordova community partners working together to make it all happen," Lankard said.

 In the meantime, there is much to do. Lankard said he is working with colleagues from the preservation council, the Ashoka Fellowship, and Alaska Marketplace consultants.

 Friends are involved with Lankard also: His sister, Smith, and peers Carol Hoover, David Titcomb and Katie Froning have all agreed to help with the kitchen and processing project.

 "We're hoping soon to work out a doable work plan with the Copper River Watershed Project, Cordova Community Kitchen Project and the Cordova Seafood Development Consortium in the near future. We will first start researching existing cold storage community facilities to analyze their successes and challenges.

 "We'll be working with consultants that can give us firm prices on all of the equipment we will need, we will also continue to negotiate securing a site that makes the most sense. We will need legal advice, architectural plans, building quotes and to research and price into our plans state-of-the-art energy-saving techniques," Lankard said.

 Lankard's friends at Ashoka, Bioneers, the Alaska Marketplace and longtime fishermen buddies have expressed an interest to help secure financing and support to move this important project forward, he said.

 "We also want to assist fishermen in increasing the quality of their seafood and secure a higher return on investment for their hard work, by selling their catches direct. Consumers would pay less, while fishermen get paid more, while creating a higher-quality end product," Lankard said.

 "There are a growing number of fishermen – including myself, who want to process and direct market our catches. This facility will provide a certified plant to work out of and store finished products while finding the best market for products.

 "It is my hope that fishermen who are direct-marketing their salmon will also work together to form a Copper River Direct-Marketers Association to set a bottom line base price for the sale of their value-added wild salmon. This will help prevent lower price competitions between direct-marketers and potential buyers. Higher quality should equate to higher prices being paid, not a bidding war between marketers and buyers," Lankard said.

 For more information on the cold storage and kitchen project, contact the Eyak Preservation Council at (907) 424-5890. – Cordova Times