Some irrigators using reservoirs on National Forest land can’t afford special use permit fees required under federal laws, a Wyoming lawmaker said as he asked U.S. Forest Service officials to help.
Wyoming’s Speaker of the House Albert Sommers (R-Pinedale) told two Forest Service officials last year that irrigation districts “simply can’t afford to pass that [fee] through” to individual ranch owners. He focused his comments on his Sublette County district, where members of the New Fork Lake Irrigation District face a $30,187 annual permit fee for use of the lake’s reservoir on the Bridger-Teton National Forest.
Irrigators haven’t paid the permit fee since it was first required in 1976. One reason is that the U.S. Forest Service never billed the irrigators, according to an email from that agency.
Had the government collected fees over the last 48 years, it could have brought in more than $800,000, according to WyoFile calculations based on today’s proposed fee and inflation. A state proposal to provide irrigators with more water by rebuilding the New Fork Lake dam, dredging a narrow passage between two parts of the waterbody and draining the lake further prompted a federal review that uncovered the non-payment.
Irrigators constructed the 37-foot high, 250-foot long New Fork Lake Dam in 1925. It is considered a high-hazard dam where misoperation or failure would probably cost human lives. The irrigation district comprises 99 irrigators and covers 14,612 acres north of Pinedale along the western flank of the Wind River Range.
“I hope you guys are gonna crack that nut and figure out a way that we don’t break these little water districts.”
Albert Sommers
If federal bookkeepers slipped up, irrigators also missed a financial opportunity. For a brief period following passage of the Ditch Bill Act of 1986, they could have petitioned to have their system grandfathered. Had that happened, permit fees imposed under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 could have been waived.
Now irrigators are in a pinch, Sommers said at a meeting of the Legislature’s Select Water Committee last year when he questioned regional U.S. Forest Service officials.
The required permit fee “basically has become a new charge,” Sommers said. “Now, because … somebody didn’t get a filing done under the Ditch Act, they’re having to pay at times substantially more.
“I hope you guys are gonna crack that nut and figure out a way that we don’t break these little water districts because they simply can’t afford to pass that through,” Sommers said to Jacque Buchanan, then the deputy forester for the agency’s Rocky Mountain Region, and Chris Campbell, deputy forester for the Intermountain Region.
Unbearable burden?
Wyoming wants to increase storage at the reservoir, which currently holds 20,340 acre feet above the lake’s natural elevation. (One acre foot would flood most of a football field a foot deep.) It would do so by reconstructing the dam and lowering the outlet to enlarge storage by 8,000-9,400 acre feet, according to Forest Service and state documents.
Reconstruction, estimated at $12.7 million a decade ago, would involve dredging the lake’s “narrows” to drain the upper half of the water body by five feet more than is currently possible, Forest Service documents state. All told, the new reservoir would fluctuate by 22.6 feet, the federal agency states.
At the Select Water Committee hearing in Pinedale last year, Sommers urged the federal officials to “help the advancement of providing more storage rather than an impediment to storage.” Imposing the fees “could cause a ditch company to not be able to provide water, to not be able to utilize the resource,” he said.
“I hope you are looking at that broader issue,” he said. “It’s been a big issue here, and I really worry about any expansion of reservoirs or new reservoirs on Forest Service land.”
Enlargement of the reservoir would provide $496,000 per year in agriculture benefits, according to a state study. In 2017, a state water official said New Fork irrigators pay $1.50 an acre foot compared to some operations that are willing to pay as much as $25.
Forester Campbell said the fee issue is huge, “not just for the state of Wyoming but across the country.
“It’s my understanding that we are not currently enforcing those fees yet,” he said. “I understand that doesn’t calm your nerves when you see the bill come and you know that it’s hanging out there.”
“We are engaged nationally on this,” Campbell said. “We do understand the impacts that this will cause to those local water districts and to the folks in Wyoming.”
Bridger-Teton and regional officials talking with higher-ups in Washington, D.C. about the fees “as well as creating proposed changes to the regulations and directives to expand possible options for rental rate reductions when it is in the public’s interest to do so,” the Bridger-Teton said in an email to WyoFile.
Not delinquent
The annual fee is based on irrigators using 172.5 acres beyond the roughly 1,300 acre surface of the natural lake. The Forest Service uses a formula based on land values to calculate the fee.
Because the Bridger-Teton didn’t bill the irrigation district in the past, “the Forest does not consider them to be in delinquent in their debt,” agency officials wrote in an email.
A representative for the New Fork Lake Irrigation District declined to comment. The reservoir enlargement would supply late-season irrigation, a term that’s ubiquitous in large Wyoming water projects, along with ancillary benefits.
Although the state grants the right for irrigators and others to use water, which Wyoming claims as its property, it doesn’t guarantee a supply.
Wyoming proposed to enlarge the reservoir, eschewing simple reconstruction. It also dismissed a conservation alternative that would have provided more water to irrigators than the plan to lower the outlet and dredge the narrows.
The Bridger-Teton expects to address the request through an environmental assessment that’s underway.
The Wyoming Water Development Commission’s operating criteria allows it to waive its normal 75% grant limit if projects add more than 2,000 acre feet of storage, essentially covering most of the costs. Enlargement would make the project affordable for irrigators.
Water developers also have been spurred on by former Gov. Matt Mead’s 2015 initiative to develop 10 new storage projects in a decade. Wyoming has proposed and built several projects in the Colorado/Green River basin to fully use its share of the basin’s flows that are now under scrutiny due to climate change and new calculations of the region’s water yield.Under its latest proposal to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Wyoming and three other upper basin states that supply the bulk of the Colorado River flows would pass down less water when reservoirs are taxed. Among the initiatives to address the iconic but over-subscribed western waterway is a $400 million BOR program to promote upper-basin conservation. Wyoming would oppose that plan if the state cannot control distribution of its share of conservation grants.
The extractive industries are paying most of the cost of water development projects in Wyoming not me. Oil, natural gas, trona, coal and bentonite fund much of the State of Wyoming’s income – coupled with sales taxes. One of the reasons I live in Wyoming is the extremely low taxes and I pay very little to the State – certainly no state income tax. These water development projects heard by the Select Water Committee are almost always funded and given a priority by the legislature. There is very little validity to individuals saying they don’t want their taxes going to fund water development projects – its being paid for by the extractive industries. Virtually none of my minimal taxes -primarily sales taxes – go to funding water projects – I realize who is paying for these projects; and, we export much of our tax income to the consuming states that buy our oil, gas, coal, trona and bentonite.
If the irrigators’ cant afford a $300 bill each year for rent then their business model is truly not sustainable. $31000 divided by 99. Especially when they are only paying $1.50 per acre ft for the water. The price of hay in my part of WY is paying AG operations here quite nicely.
Here we go again with another “Wyoming Welfare Ranching” boondoggle water project costing tens of millions of dollars that the Wyoming ranchers and farmers want the state to pay for. It’s high time that the irrigators pay the full cost of these boondoggle water development projects instead paying for them of out of the state coffers. Ya, lets spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars so a handful of irrigators can grow some hay to winter their cows before turning them out on BLM allotments at $1.35 per animal unit month, while grazing the BLM and Forest Service allotments until they look like pool table. Brilliant!
It’s sheer hypocrisy by Sommers and his cohorts in the ag industry. They are always the first to say that the federal agencies shouldn’t have any involvement in their ranching operations but no doubt about it, they are the first in line to suck the teats of the state and federal cash cow! It’s pretty disingenuous on Sommers part to say he didn’t know about the required payment because he wasn’t invoiced. And now he thinks the government should forgive his debt for irrigation water that he’s received for decades knowing that he should be paying for it. It’s high time for Sommers to COWBOY UP, PAY UP, and quit whining!
WYOMING LAW REQUIRES BENEFICIAL USE OF APPROPRIATED WATER: Whenever you and I or an irrigator is granted an appropriated water right – whether we acquire it via surface water rights or ground water rights ( wells ) we are required to put the water to beneficial use. The justification for the expenditures related to dam construction and water development in Wyoming is based on beneficial uses – so what are the beneficial uses of the New Fork Lake Reservoir? They are:
1.) Flood control,
2.) Recreational use including trout fishing, kayaking, camping,
3.) Storage of irrigation water for seasonal use,
4.) Providing minimum in-stream flow for fish below the dam,
5.) Irrigation of over 14,000 acres of land in semi-arid region,
6.) Irrigation provides habitat and forage for several thousand deer, elk and antelope particularly during the winter,
7.) Sage grouse migrate into the irrigated alfalfa field during the brood rearing season and do so in very significant numbers,
8.) Alfalfa fed to cattle, horses, goats, sheep generates manure which is spread back onto the irrigated fields and increases the organic content of the soil from less than 1/2% upwards to 4-5%,
9.) Excess irrigation water which drains off of the fields is captured in irrigation water return ditches and returned to the stream which flows down stream for use by other irrigators, municipalities, Fontanelle Reservoir, and the Colorado River,
10.) The tax base of agricultural land is increased which benefits Sublette County and the State of Wyoming simply because scrub sage brush land has been upgraded to valuable highly productive farm land,
11.) Irrigation districts create thousands of acres of new wetlands where none existed before thus providing habitat for birds and many other species – even turtles and crustaceans – these wetlands are mapped and inventoried by the US Army Corp of Engineers and are available on-line and through your US Department of Agriculture field office – they are very extensive and under appreciated – non-profits like DU love the habitat they create,
12.) Wyoming must do a better job of utilizing our Colorado River water and irrigation districts are the most important user which puts our water to BENEFICIAL USE.
When one analyses the cumulative beneficial uses of the reservoirs and irrigation districts the expenditures are justified – the Corp calls these studies COST VS. BENEFIT studies when they analyze proposed projects. The benefits are numerous – its called economic development.
Wyoming wildlife did just fine without AG. By the way, many states are getting rid of reservoirs, they silt up and lose the “cost benefit”.
Lee – your BENEFICIAL use is my DETRIMENTAL misuse.The Stetsons ain’t paying their tab.
The best thing Wyoming could do towards the future of water development in the face of climate change is to immediately begin correcting maybe the second biggest mistake collectively made in the West during the 19th century***. We need to restore the Beaver population. Thousands of pairs of mated beavers and kits need to be stocked in every watershed in Wyoming that will have them. Beaver will rejuvenate the lost or damaged riparian areas.
Perhaps the Stockgrowers need to start raising a new animal in their own self-interest. Anyone for forming a co-op to start Riparian Rodent Ranching on the Upper Green ?
*** the biggest mistake was extincting the Bison and substituting Old World cows .
We’ve always believed in Wyoming that a handshake or an oral agreement just as binding as legal contracts, right ? So the welfare rancher irrigator cabal of the Upper Green think that because the Forest Service did not send them a bill on paper, the debt owed for using permit water just magically went away ? For the last 48 years ?
Since when did the Public’s water transmute into sweat equity ? It didn’t.
So the Forest Service sounds like its willing to discharge the debt because of their own laxity ( willful or otherwise). The ranchers are not offering to settle up after decades of whistling past the Cowboy honor system and Code of the West to square the deal. Who, us ? Two wrongs don’t make a right nor do they generate a 2-way Zero Sum game.
Meanwhile , one county over and dealing with another federal Cabinet department, Wyoming is demanding the Feds pay a minimum of $ 100 million for the undeveloped 640 acre Kelly Parcel , which is $ 40 million more than the appraised value of $ 63 million ( and the maximum amount the Feds would be legally required to pay , regardless. Never mind the Kelly Parcel was originally gifted to Wyoming part and parcel at statehood ). Sure , it’s apples and oranges , water and land, Peter at the Forest Service /Agriculture Department mugging Paul at the National Park Service / Interior Department … mangled metaphors aside, it seems public resource economics never really pencil out in Wyoming.
I was quite impressed by the size of the New Fork Lake Irrigation District – 14,612 acres served by this reservoir is a big deal – this irrigation district is an important part of the Wyoming economy. The parties should be able to work this out satisfactorily but its obviously taking time. Reservoirs like this are important for recreation; and, the irrigated bottom lands provide extremely important habitat and forage for deer, antelope, elk and sage grouse. And, we do need to use our share of the water appropriated to Wyoming by the Colorado River Compact. I fully support the irrigators and recognize the beneficial use of the water in Wyoming. Did you note the doggie getting a boat ride in the photo accompanying this article – thats what I’m talking about – recreational use of the reservoir. A wonderful project.
I get that irrigators constructed the dam 100 years ago. It sounds like its “use time” has about run its course. For those 100 years 99 families have gotten free water. Fees for using 172 acres surrounding the reservoir have been waived for some reason. Free use of land. Upgrading costs real money…
In my mind the fairest approach is to let the market have its way. If irrigators can’t pay for the infrastructure that they need, then it sounds like their businesses aren’t viable. I’m always a bit bemused when Americans bemoan loss of free stuff, citing tradition, generations of family inhabiting the land as reason for the rest of us to pay their way. The market is good enough for everyone else, but not “us.”
The irrigation district(s) resistance around change in how water is viewed and used, will fade away as larger social forces transform their fight from a championing of independent, Western lifestyle into the cries of welfare queens. It is not the role of the State to give away money to a few families as a buffer to change in the water market.
The actuality of the “frontier” where the land was there for the taking by the hearty and strong died in the middle of the 20th century. Marc Reisner’s 1986 book “Cadillac Desert” prophesized what we are experiencing now, and Thuermer’s piece here describes the last gasp of what is now “water social welfare.”
Ranchers have a need for more water because of drought and climate change. Let’s not do anything to stop that runaway train and elect public officials that deny climate change. Let’s build more dams for the ranchers using taxpayer money, but let’s not call it socialism. Let’s hoard as much water as we can so it can be used in the most inefficient way possible through flood irrigation.
I dont want to pay for the ranchers water.
More socialism?
Hilarious. I guarantee you these “folks” knew about the fees. This is the tale of two different systems-one for us and one for them. Pay attention because this is what is about to happen on these other proposed water projects. The public is going to be left holding the bag.
Reduce crop growth any way possible is WEF’s plan to stave off population or make us eat insects. You can thank John Kerry and crowd later.