Transcript

Johnson/Fassett: Water in the west has never been a win-win situation for anybody

Rick Johnson: Water in the west has never been a win-win situation for anybody. It seems as though in this increasingly urbanized West, one of the fastest growing parts of the nation, that we are heading for what seems to me, with the finite amount of water, a public policy train wreck. For the panel or for anyone else, what does the worst case scenario look like?

Jeff Fassett: Believe it or not Wyoming is a fairly urban state. Most people don't realize just what a high percentage of our small number of citizens actually live in communities. 2002 is one of the worst dry years on record and the third in a row for our communities. Indeed we are finding some gaps again in our laws where the communities really need some new tools in order to position themselves to deal with a severe drought as we are experiencing this year. But as we have said, our state, Wyoming, has long had the ability to change the use of water rights. And most of our growing communities have to go out onto the open market, they have to look for a willing seller. They can condemn but never do. They look for a willing seller, they can find willing sellers and they have to go through a change of use process often, in order to solve their long-term water supply situation, an internal reallocation within the state of Wyoming. It is very difficult to get new development-type projects built. They are very expensive, very difficult permitting processes, so we are beginning even in Wyoming to see a reallocation through a voluntary sale and transfer of senior water priority rights to communities to meet their growing demands.

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