Government committee to look into aquifer regulation

Do you also believe that those who do not trust thieves should take up bank robbery?

You need to raise your expectations. Israel sits in a dessert and makes it bloom, feeds the country, and provides export markets. Jordan has so little rain, they think WY is a rain forest. Yet both countries produce valuable nutritious crops.

folks like Geoff Lawton have transformed very dry situations, with less rainfall than WY, into food producing green forests by changing cultural practices (stop burning wood wastes), reusing water, slowing water with swales, composting, etc. http://http://www.geofflawton.com/fe/62176-desert-oasis

Every house could have a $1-2K filter system to clean the water to be used for irrigation.

The Israelis made it a priority and now they have fruit trees getting more than enough water to thrive, without hurting the aquifer.

LVS has gone to a system where treated waste water goes back up hill and gets dumped back in to the reservoir. It is treated yet again when the water is taken for LVS for drinking again.

If Israelis and Jordanians can work out ways to move waste water and drip it onto fruit trees and the like, then so can Wyoming's,

Those swales will capture moisture and nutrition without damning the water.

That is such great advice I don't know you don't follow it,

I do live in Wyoming. My husband and his parents were born in that County. That is over 100 years of history. My father in law lives there, family and friends. We are very aware of the people and the problems.

You should be upset but you should know the facts before you start blaming. Agriculture has been using the same water for hundreds of years. They are not the problem so stop blaming them. Get the facts right and you may be able to be part of the solution. A few days ago, you did not even know that you could only irrigate 1 acre of you 40 legally and none of that could be for an agricultural business.

What happens in your county will set precedent for all of Wyoming. That is why everyone who lives and works or operates a business in Wyoming has an interest in what happens in that committee.

__________________

Okay, I should have said, "green it all". We have a vibrant agricultural economy here in the desert. We do know our limits, just as they do. You can't green it all.

__________________

OPPS I guess I wasn't clear. I wasn't attacking her husband , I was defending him and others in government. In my experiance working with government I have found them all to be good hearted and except for two parts very competent .

Um. (Scratches head ) what would be the logic in that ?

If you are implying that all government employees are thieves you are insulting The United States of America AND each and everyone of us citizens of it.
You can be a employee of our government and not be a thief.
It is not possable to be a bank robber without being a thief. AND that sir is your construct.

Agriculture is a problem. It's an obvious problem. Do some research on that before you tell me I'm incorrect.

I do wonder how informed your family is though. Did they know Hasenauer tried to defraud a business, was served with a cease and desist letter for threatening county employees and loved to serve people with lawsuits? Did they vote for him? If so....yikes. Did they vote for the new DA here? Did they do that based on his sign placement or did they know that he quit his previous job as a DA in another area because he couldn't handle the stress, then came here and ran for this one? Do they know anything of Amber Ash's history of doing absolutely nothing but collecting a paycheck? She's like a prop to fill a chair. The mayor only does things if the money goes to his family or friends. Not ALL of them are worthless but let's face it, politics doesn't exactly lend itself to the upright amongst us.

Is agriculture really the problem or is it simply a inconvenience to new people that want to do new things. ?

To me a lot of what's going on out there seems unreasonable. People wanting to plant trees on high scrub grind instead of the bottoms where nature intends them to be. Restrictions that would keep you from making changes that would help keep rain on and in the land it fell on. Allowing industry to use lots of water in a land where it's already in short supply.
Honestly it all seems nuts.

I think it's pretty easy to look at commercial agricultural practices throughout time and throughout the world and see what they do to land, water, and such. People in many now desertified areas are trying to reverse the damage that was done by commercial agriculture. So yeah, how it is done right now is a problem. It could be done a lot better but we'd all rather deny that and believe in magic, where nothing ever has to change because relying on chemicals and genetic modification are obviously ideal when feeding humanity.

It's kind of ironic that the farmers historical and legal rights to the water are often cited when saying no one else can use the water when it is the farmers who are selling the water to the oil companies to begin with. So if the water table drops, they really can only blame themselves for that.

Now if you want to talk about agriculture that is successful and unchanged through 1000's of years we can discuss Asia, where hillsides are terraces thus preventing soil erosion and water loss.

The rapid increase in draw down, is domestic wells. I have done the research.

The problems with the government officials you don like or respect is not causing the future water shortages. It has to be handled. You can go off on all the little guy getting the shaft like you did in your first post. The problem is the little guy is part of the problem highlighted by the fact that you the little guy had no idea what the regulations on water used and rights were. yet you blame, blame blame, industry and agriculture.

That is a huge part of the problem. Agriculture has and continues to work towards increased conservation because it is vital to their future. They have know for years about the problem but it is obvious that the little guy has no clue. You illustrated that quite well.

__________________

I think you are entirely missing the point, on purpose. The problem is that those crappy officials are in charge of what happens now, not that they are personally draining the water supply.

I think we are on opposite sides here. You've been happy to put me down and that's your right, I opened myself up to it when I posted this. However, I don't have to continue. You can have your beliefs, I shall keep mine. Good luck to you in the future.

There is no logic in it and that is my point. Your statement had no logic. Just because you are unhappy with something does not mean you have to become part of the problem. I'll wager I have knowledge of the inner workings of a gov't bureaucracy than most. I worked for years within DOT, DOD, and DHS as a contractor. I had 70+ employees within DOT doing everything from answering phones to writing policy docs. I never met one corrupt official, but I met lots of lazy, ineffective, and/or useless gov't employees. The net effect of those gov't employees that would have been fired in the real world was not corruption, but wasteful spending and bad policy. I totally understand crazy's concerns.

I could give 100s of examples but the one that still drives me nuts to this day is a good man, a retired USAF Lt Col comes into DOT determined to make a positive difference. He hires me to fix a wasteful office, the one where all commercial truckers have to file proof of insurance each year. We reengineered the system with technology and better processes to cut the staff from 15 to 6 and the budget by over 70%. Among many problems, they had 3 people who were making over $50K / year doing nothing but opening and sorting mail into piles.

None of the improvements were implemented, because the manager of that office was a GS 13? 14? and someone at that level must supervise X number of people. To implement the fixes would have meant she lost her job as would several other folks. DOT management refused the fix and last I knew of him, the Lt Col was frustrated at every turn.

In another office I had a receptionist working for 3 gov't mgmt. types. She was terrible, attendance awful, always late, substandard work, and this was my employee, representing my company. The gov't mgr in that office refused to allow me to fire her because, as he said to me in a whisper, people on the floor might find out he was responsible for the firing. I put up with the nonsense for months until I came up with the idea to "promote" her into my company office and replace her in the gov't office. Then we documented her problems in my office and fired her within a few weeks.

Too much gov't is the problem. Becoming an employee of the gov't will not fix the problem anymore than becoming a bank robber will stop theft.

And before you take the easy way out and call me an anarchist, I'm not. I'm glad there is a DOT, the interstate highway system is a great asset to this country. But that doesn't mean that the bureaucracy did not become primarily self serving a long time ago.

The fact that Big Ag has been using the water for hundreds of years is not only wrong, but irrelevant to determining which party is doing the most damage to the aquifer. Big Ag didn't exist 100s of years ago. It is a post WW2 creation of technology and oil and cultural practices that did not exist prior to that time.

I don't have the specific data, but I'll bet the acreage cultivated and irrigated has increased significantly in the last 70 years.

To determine who is stressing the aquifer the most, you look at consumption, not how many years an industry can trace back historical usage. Historical usage may determine legal rights, but it does not prove sustainable practices.

I am learning more every day on this. Like how the water goes with the land here and to strip the historical water right would decrease the value of the land, etc. You aren't allowed to sell water rights separate from land in WY whereas you can in Colorado. And I get that. I get that it's a complicated legal issue with no easy answer.

I just think people should be able to separate the complexity of the issue of who owns and can use the water with who is actually doing the most harm to it. Am I, with my 36 trees planted on swales, doing more damage than a 100 acre corn field or one single fracking well? Of course not. I will never have that kind of impact on the aquifer. I understand that thousands of me could be an issue though. If we want to save the water than EVERYONE: oil, farmer and little ol' me, have to work on it. We all need it.

This committee, they'll regulate me because farmers and oil companies, they have a lot more pull, a lot more money, a lot more power. So the water is still going to disappear, perhaps a fraction less quickly, but I'll be regulated in the process. Plus my knowledge of the commissioners has me believing whatever regulation they come up with will be stupid anyway.

A change in how we practice agriculture and treat this land needs to happen before it’s too late. A very difficult thing to achieve but I have hope that it will happen. I have hope that I can lead the way for others. In the meantime I’m going to be upset about the coming onslaught of selfish and stupid that will change how I live my life.

Water rights , water rights, water rights. It needs to be said many more times. Crazyfarm is starting to get it now.

We have water rights here in Wyoming. That means my well is newer than my neighbors so I get to pump my limit before they get theirs. The farmer down the road has older rights than me and he gets his before I do.

That means that it does not matter how many trees on your property unless you own the surface water rights or irrigation rights you don't have the right to use the water or store it, if it is someone elses. It means that those farmers that invested in land with water rights and all the infrastructure that goes with it own have first dibs on their share of the water.

It does not mean they get to use more than they have a right to. Just as it does not mean the homeowner can have three acres of irrigated lawn. For two many years no one policed this but the person who's water rights were stomped on during a drought. That is about to change and it is going to hurt everyone but especially those that don't know their rights and are taking more than their legal share.

Now one branch of the government has told another branch to deal with it or we will all be out of water. That is a good thing, an important thing, and something that those who have historically relied on this water want to happen.

Don't like who gets to be in on the decision then get out there and be part of it. Just don't tell those that are trying that you think you know better. You did not have a clue last week what the problem even was or why. That irks me and alot of people that know the story and the facts and even know how much water we have a right to and how much we use. Blanket blame when you don't know the facts is just plain rude.

__________________

All I know is that I will never, ever live in Wyoming although the best time of my life was in Wyoming riding horses on a ranch. Too many regulations, too little water, and way too much government control of a resource that everyone wants and needs.

__________________
Be yourself - no one can tell you that you're doing it wrong!

Not really a problem for most of us in Wyoming. Less people in this entire state then the city I was born in. Wyominites like it that way. Those water regs are more than needed and important to our future. They do not take water for granted.

__________________

You contradict yourself. If the water regs are more than needed, then why is there a need for a committee to further regulate water?