Transcript

Meredith Taylor/Jeff Fassett: Are we favoring industry over instream flow and why is that?

Taylor: I appreciate your comments, Jeff, and one thing that comes to mind is that I think that Wyoming is testing the waters if you will and wants to see how this instream flow law is going to work. It's been very slow in terms of processing the instream flow applications that the Game and Fish Department has submitted. Yet through the recent coalbed methane development, there have been literally tens of thousands of applications that have been processed through the State Engineer's Office in a very expedited way. So I am wondering what are the differences in priorities here and are we favoring industry over instream flow and if so why is that?

Fassett: I am not sure it is a pure favoring. I think that most applications are processed in relation to when they come in. I think most of the ten thousand types of application that you are speaking about with the booming coalbed methane are primarily groundwater applications, which is a fairly simple two page form that has to be filled out by industry and that is the form they use and it is much easier process, there is no doubt about it. The instream flow process is much more difficult. It requires a detailed biological study by our state Game and Fish department. The law requires a very formalized, expensive hydrology study to be done by yet a second state agency. Then finally all that material comes to the State Engineer for an actual decision on the water right itself. So this process statutorily is clearly more cumbersome than simplified types of water right applications that do come in and go out fairly quickly. One of the things that I have noticed quite honestly that I think is an encumbrance, and I will be interested if others have reactions, is that in our state, which is very similar to other states, only the state can hold an instream flow water right. During my tenure as a State Engineer, we had lots of people who had very senior priority water rights that were philosophically and as a matter of policy interested in seeing that water right used to protect the stream, just as their local ranching industry might change to a different type of economic development. Yet they weren't very excited about having to either give or sell their water right to the State. They asked me when I was State Engineer very legitimately, "Why can't I do that -- why can't I change the use of my water right to a different use without having to first give it to the State?" I found lots of people in Wyoming who liked the instream flows that didn't necessarily like the Game and Fish Department.

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