Getting the water right

When people think about water, most turn on a tap at their kitchen sink and think nothing of it.

For the people who live in Wyoming, it is much more complicated.

Water is a valuable commodity and it takes a group of people like the Upper North Platte Water Users Association (Water Users) and the Upper North Platte Valley Water Conservation Association to keep landowners and water users apprised of what is happening with their water and water rights.

Jeb Steward, who is considered by many to be an expert, has been studying the call for administration on Pathfinder and the Kendrick Ownership.

Most recently, Steward has developed a chart of water storage in both reservoirs to illustrate how dangerously close the reservoirs have come, and could come, to not having enough storage to meet the needs of the irrigators with water rights preceding to 1904 who benefit from that stored water.

The issue is complex at best and difficult for a person who is not familiar with water rights to understand.

Steward gave his report at the Water Users meeting and sat down with the Saratoga Sun afterwards to give a little insight into the battle over water. Steward provided the group a summary of the history of the evolution of the methodology for determining shortages that lead to an allocation year.

In February 1989 the Wyoming State Engineer honored a call for regulation for the benefit of Pathfinder Reservoir storage. This was the first time in history this had been done.

Most of the water that fills Pathfinder does so after May 1 and with the call in 1989, landowners had serious concerns that the call could extend past May 1, which would affect irrigators in the Platte Valley.

Since that first call, Steward explained, “We now have some clearly defined parameters to determine if there should be a call to the benefit of Pathfinder Reservoir.”

In 2001, the Supreme Court approved a Modified Decree Settlement which provided the initial methodology for determining forecasted supply to determine an allocation year.

In 2003, the Bureau of Reclamation provided a study that simulated operations of Reclamation’s facilities to model and compare the appearance of additional allocation years based on the construction of the Pathfinder Modification Project.

In 2005 an amendment was attached to the Pathfinder Modification Project (PMP) to limit these additional allocation years.

The amendment was later taken out and according to Steward, it was beginning to be understood that there could be a way to reduce additional allocation years within calculations for the forecasted supply.

In October 2007 the North Platte Decree Committee adopted an amendment to correct the error in methodology for calculations in forecasted supply.

The guarantee to the Platte Valley irrigators was that the construction of the PMP would not affect their water rights.

The decree stated “The recaptured storage space would store water under the existing 1904 storage right for Pathfinder Reservoir and would enjoy the same entitlements as other uses in the reservoir with the exception that the recapture storage space could not place regulatory calls on existing water rights upstream of the Pathfinder Reservoir other than the rights pertaining to Seminoe Reservoir.”

Unfortunately, the modified decree did not address all of the scenarios for obtaining protection from injury in the implementation of PMP and allocation years were still a concern to the Water Users.

The Water Users were preparing to challenge a change of use petition for the 54,000 acre feet associated with PMP at that time.

“That water for the new use has to come from somewhere,” Steward said.

With the 2008 amendments, the Bureau of Reclamation offered new language for calculations that would ultimately be adopted in a Stipulated Settlement Agreement in October 2008.

With these changes from 2008, two sets of books are kept to show Pathfinder and Kendrick Ownership “with” PMP and “without” PMP.

Only, the higher of the two can be used in calculations used to determine priority administration of water rights upstream of Seminoe Reservoir.

Steward has been tracking the ownership since January 2012 when the PMP was deemed to be completed.

Steward said historic documents used by the proponents of PMP described how the new water used to fill the demand for the new uses in the Wyoming and Environmental Accounts associated with PMP would come from the Kendrick Account. Historic language in the modified decree allowed water to be taken from the Upper Basin.

Tracking the behavior of the with and without accounts validates the success in the Water Users efforts to ensure the water does not come from the Upper Basin, however, so it had to be changed.

The gap has grown today to 97,354 acre feet between the Kendrick with and without in just three water seasons and two of those seasons were good water years, Steward said.