the TroutTale - Fall/Winter 2007
Feature Story - Fall/Winter 2007
Wyoming Water:
Working Together to Develop On the Ground and Legislative Solutions
When it comes to Wyoming water issues, conservation interests and agricultural producers have more in common than differences. That statement may strike some as odd. After all, there have been heated – and seemingly continuous – legislative battles over stream flow protection both before andafter the passage of the 1986 Instream Flow Statute. Traditionally, there’s been little trust between usually polite combatants. Legislators have been faced with the usual array of conservation and environmental interests on one side of proposed legislation and agricultural interests on the other.
But that was then and now is now, as the old saying goes. A lot has changed in Wyoming over the last decade. Chief among those changes is that increasing numbers of sportsmen and conservationists acknowledge the open space and habitat values provided by working ranches. This recognition becomes even more imperative in light of increasing western urbanization and the current extraction boom. Melding ranch and farm operations with conservation activities and identifying creative strategies to protect open spaces for fish and wildlife will be critical to keeping Wyoming…Wyoming. There are abundant opportunities to benefit both agriculture and natural resources – including water and stream flow protections.
One thing continually lost in water debates is common ground – the issue is so automatically polarizing that the extremes tend to rule the day. That’s why it’s so important to emphasize what is already being accomplished under existing law to protect and restore stream flows, and the fact that such benefits can be expanded via minor additional flexibility to the state water code. We can allow the camel’s nose under the tent while still keeping the rest of the body where it belongs -- soaking up the sun.
Take the case of Jim and Gay Rogers, a multi-generational Wyoming ranch family working to protect long-term operations while benefiting fish and wildlife. Or Grade Creek, where a working ranch is partnering with TU and other partners develop a fish-friendly diversion structure, efficient water delivery system, and reconstructing an historic stream channel so native Bonneville cutthroat can access important spawning and rearing habitat. The result of these efforts will be economically more efficient and diverse ranching operation – not a bad thing when you consider the economic challenges facing agriculture on a daily basis.
Projects like these only scratch the surface in terms of the potential benefits to both agriculture and trout fisheries. There’s even more potential out there with modest additions to the state water code allowing water right holders the ability to use their private property right to use and manage water – absent injury to other water right holders – to restore stream flows.
Such a proposal can and should be developed not in the extreme, but to take advantage of moderate projects on smaller tributary stream systems that balance landowner operations with fishery needs. Think in terms of Grade Creek or some other small tributary stream, not mainstem habitats such as the North Platte or Big Horn. Most importantly, such projects can be designed and implemented to provide landowner and watershed-wide benefits while being neutral to the system in terms of water rights administration. This is not a regulatory approach – it puts control in individual irrigator and landowner hands while still protecting other water right holders from potential impacts.
Trout Unlimited has a history of working cooperatively with agricultural producers. We want to expand that work by increasing the tools available to help make that happen. But to do that we know we need agriculture’s support for any type of legislative proposal that adds value and flexibility to the water code. And we know that will only be accomplished if we gain the trust of the agricultural community.
This article is a shortened version of an opinion piece that appeared in the September 15, 2007, edition of the Wyoming Livestock Roundup.
