State Water Board adopts order limiting Marble Mountain Ranch diversions, requires diversion control and compliance plan

The State Water Resources Control Board on Tuesday adopted a proposed order directing Marble Mountain Ranch to install a diversion control that limits water taken from Stan Shaw Creek to amounts reasonably needed for beneficial use and to return nonconsumptive flows to the creek above the anadromous reach.

The measure, adopted unanimously with a change sheet, responds to a years‑old enforcement proceeding that examined whether diversions and the ranch’s hydropower operations constituted waste and unreasonable use and harmed public trust resources, including habitat for endangered coho salmon.

Hearing officer Sam Bivens of the Administrative Hearings Office told the board the proceeding dated to a hearing in November 2017 and was later assigned to the AHO for a proposed order. Bivens said the hearing record did not resolve every technical question raised by parties but supported finding that the ranch’s consumptive domestic and irrigation uses were not shown to be unreasonable on the record while the hydropower operations were unreasonable in the way they were carried out.

Bivens described the system studied in the proceeding: the ranch claims a pre‑1914 right to divert up to about 3 cubic feet per second (cfs) and roughly 2,000 acre‑feet per year from Stan Shaw Creek, which flows into the Klamath River; the ranch’s point of diversion is a rock dam that is adjusted…