Irrigation districts ink cooperative pact
By Martin Reed
Staff Writer

In an agreement 91 years in the making, three irrigation districts in Fremont County have reached a pact on sharing water to benefit each other.
Board members of the Riverton Valley, LeClair and Midvale irrigation districts signed the agreement in May concerning their agreed upon interpretation of a 1917 document outlining water use and priorities for the districts under a particular permit.
The crux of the agreement is “we’ve got to communicate and do the best we can to get the best use of the water that’s available,” Midvale president Gordon Medow said during an interview May 30.
The agreement calls for irrigation officials to share vital information concerning snowpack and other data to determine expected water supplies for the upcoming irrigation seasons, district board members said during interviews last month.
Midvale manager Lee Arrington said the agreement’s effect is “maximizing the beneficial use of Permit 7300 water supply” for the three districts’ affected irrigated lands that total about 100,000 acres.
As important to the board members is the pact’s ability to end ongoing legal wrangling among the districts over water supplies.
“What we’ve done is put an end to future litigation through ongoing communication and cooperation,” Medow said.
The Wyoming State Engineer’s Office tried to settle disputes about the 1917 agreement by issuing a ruling in 2004. That ruling resulted in an appeal of the state engineer’s decision and a request for a judge to intervene to interpret the 1917 agreement.
Instead, the irrigation districts settled the matter on their own.
“I think after a lot of work and discussion we’ve come together to try to utilize the water,” LeClair secretary treasurer Mike McDonald said. “We all live in this valley. We need to get along and try to work together.”
LeClair vice president Terry Betts said the agreement represents “a unified commitment for the future of Fremont County for generations to come.”
The 1917 agreement with the State Board of Land Commissioners and LeClair and Riverton Valley assigned water priorities to the irrigation districts.
With the development of Midvale’s irrigated acreage in the mid-1900s, disagreements arose over the validity of the agreement and its legal authority.
“It really didn’t come to a real head until probably a third of the way through this eight-year drought,” Arrington said.
Board members of some irrigation districts felt they needed to resolve the dispute to benefit everyone involved.
“We felt that to agree upon anything we had to understand Wyoming water law to operate and cooperate under one permit,” Medow said.
District members began meeting with each other in earnest in early 2007 and underwent a court-ordered mediation last November.
During the first few months of 2008 district members hammered out an agreement they ultimately signed and received the approval of the state engineer’s office.
“It’s a good solution that they’ve come up with,” said Loren Smith, superintendent for the state engineer’s Water Division 3 region that includes the irrigation districts.
“It puts some hard numbers to the division of the water and will replace some gray areas and unknowns that we were having to try to project out into the future, how much water we were going to have available, and it replaces that,” Smith said in a phone interview on May 30.
“It also will work toward better cooperation on the river, or work to further cooperation on the river, and hopefully will last as long as the original tripartite agreement,” Smith said.
Teamwork among the irrigation districts seems to be a welcomed achievement of last month’s pact.
“There has been a strong competitive relationship” among the districts, Betts said. “Our ultimate goal was to get a strong cooperative relationship.”
Medow said the agreement helps the irrigation districts to work together.
“In short water years it can be said during the winter we differed on how the 7300 Permit should be operated under, and during the summer we disagreed,” Medow said.
“We were fortunate enough that the districts wanted it done, a vast majority of the board members wanted it done and through persistence ... we got it done,” Medow said.