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11: Wyoming’s Interests
- University Press of Colorado
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127 Low-Hanging Mountain Fruit A federal agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), was on the prowl for 417,000 acre feet per year with which to fulfill its central Platte River target flow aspirations in Nebraska. Another federal agency, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR), held potentially available water in its string of Wyoming North Platte River reservoirs—Seminoe, Kortes, Pathfinder, Alcova, Glendo, and Guernsey. The obvious juxtaposition of water demand for a new federal environmental agenda and a potential federal supply for that agenda deeply worried state water providers. Furthermore, Wyoming water interests wished to pursue a modification of Pathfinder Dam that would restore storage capacity lost to years of sedimentation . The plan to raise the elevation at Pathfinder Dam promised to reclaim 54,000 acre feet of capacity, an amount permitted under the facility’s 1904 water right. Given that the Deer Creek option had been stifled, the Pathfinder modification was the most realistic and cost-effective course of action that could be devised to serve economic growth agendas in several North Platte River communities , especially in the Casper area. ConsuLtation Context The USBR began informal consultations with the USFWS regarding the Wyoming and Nebraska North Platte projects in 1989 (Record of Decision 2006). C h a p t e r 1 1 wyoming’s interests W y om in g ’s in t er est s 128 Beginning in 1994, when the three state governors and the Department of the Interior agreed to negotiate a comprehensive basin-wide habitat recovery plan, the focus of the informal USFWS-USBR consultations was on negotiating the terms and conditions of the voluntary Cooperative Agreement, the deal everyone was counting on to eventually produce the Platte River Habitat Recovery Program. However, if the negotiations collapsed or if any subsequent program increment fell apart, Wyoming’s North Platte federally funded water facilities would be reexamined in light of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The water users proceeded to appropriate their water from federal facilities under Wyoming’s appropriation law, but they operated from year to year within the shadow of the ESA hammer. In Wyoming, agricultural users put water to highly consumptive uses in a system with high elevations, comparatively short growing seasons, a small agricultural economy in the regional perspective, and large water storage projects . In the words of one well-informed observer, “We are indeed low-hanging fruit.” The implication was clear: Wyoming and western Nebraska irrigators who worked under USBR contracts had better get together and push for a cooperative basin-wide ESA listed species habitat recovery program. To do anything less was to invite much greater loss of yields from their precious federally constructed and managed water storage projects than the amount they could expect to lose under individual ESA Section 7 consultations. Some strategists in the environmental community, noting Wyoming’s potential squeeze, contemplated staying away from program negotiations with the thought that without a viable program, Wyoming’s reservoirs could be a source of much more water for environmental purposes than the amount any foreseeable voluntary recovery program would extract. However, any such prospects for major shifts in water use would be intensely and expensively conflictive and, in all probability, could not materialize for more than a lifetime, perhaps several lifetimes. Therefore, more pragmatic environmental leaders advocated working with Wyoming at the negotiating table. Wyoming’s situation under a viable proposed voluntary habitat recovery program could be expected to be a “good deal” compared with virtually anything that could be expected if no such program existed. Given these realities, Wyoming representatives proved to be the most steadfast among the state delegations in finding ways to solve problems that came up during years of difficult negotiations. A small group of senior leaders had put together a vision of what Wyoming could do; they knew well before 1997 the direction they needed to take with any cooperative basin-wide program; they worked with their constituencies in consistent ways, and they were relentless in their attempts to keep the negotiations moving forward at moments when the future of the talks was most in doubt. But they would have to surmount tribulations, especially a legal challenge from Nebraska. [54.211.203.45] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 00:55 GMT) W y om in g ’s in t er est s 129 Nebraska v. WyomiNg In 1986, in the context of the Deer Creek struggle, Nebraska authorities filed a lawsuit against Wyoming in the U...