Interview Transcript
Dan Budd
Q: How did your family came to own this ranch?
A: When the war between the states was over, my great-grandfather was a guard at Abilene at the federal penitentiary. His brother died in Nevada, and he went out to round the cattle up and trail them back and sell them to the settle the estate. He took a partner by the name of McKay and they came in here in 1878. They had a money-panic, and that year was when money wasn't worth a continental. So they drifted up here in the winter and they never left. He sent for his wife and three children that were born -- Aunt Sadie, my grandfather and Uncle Jess were the three that came. They stayed in Green River and he homesteaded up here. They got this place from a family by the name of Griggs. He was a doctor from the Civil War who was basically an outlaw. He was selling other people's cattle to the mines down in Cumberland, and so they invited him to a hanging and he declined the invitation. He left and his wife sold the place to my great-grandfather and then he sold it to my grandfather.
Q: Have you lived here and ranched all your life?
A: Yes, my daughters are five generations in this area.
Q: What kind of ranching operation do you have?
A: We are a cow-calf operation and run yearlings also. We run them over to yearlings instead of just selling them as calves. We feed some cattle in the feed-lot, part of our cattle we carry them clear through the feed-lot.
Q: Do you have any cultivation or irrigating that you do here on the ranch?
A: This is all flood irrigation. Alfalfa is a pretty iffy crop here because of our growing season. We can have no frost-free days. A very good one is about a 30-day growing season, and that certainly isn't conducive to growing alfalfa. We have a little alfalfa but it certainly isn't [a lot]. Our major is wild crops -- like wild hay -- and we flood irrigate.
Q: What effect is the drought having on ranching operations?
A: This is a three-year drought and this dates back as bad as the 30's. The thirties drought as I remember was '31, '32, '33, and then '35 and '36 were the hardest winters that I could ever remember. This drought is very similar to that. In those days, in the thirties, we did not have government intervention. We tried to take care of it, to do what we could to provide and still protect the land, to protect your investment, to protect the corpus of your operation because that's where you had to make your living. And when the drought is over, this land will recover, mother nature is aware of drought and so she has made these plants so that they can recover in a very short period of time even though it looks like it's been totally destroyed. And with the proper moisture you recover from a drought very soon.
Q: What impact is this current drought having on your current operation? What is the financial impact in the Big Piney area?
A: Well, we've cut our herd over 250 cattle. In this South Piney drainage and Middle Piney and Fish Creek, and this all a drainage of the Green River, I suspect that the economic loss is about 3 million dollars just on this creek alone. Then you take 7 watersheds and multiply that, some of them more, some of them a little less than that. You can look in Big Piney and Allen Equipment, which is the equipment dealer for all of the ranchers here, he is on the verge of bankruptcy because of the drought.
Q: In your ideal world how would you address your need for water storage?
A: The ideal situation would be of course where the yield is, and the yield is on the Green River because that is the biggest yielder of water. So storage on the upper Green River, as high on the upper Green River [as possible] and then a supply canal coming around to supplement the streams with off-stream storage. That way, you would not be impacting the private lands. The storage would all be high on the federal lands and then you could supplement these streams through supply canals like the Green River supply canal. Then you can fill off-stream site storages which wouldn't impact the main channel and the environmental issues that were caused on mainstream storage, lower.
Q: Why do you object to Wyoming's instream flow law? Could you explain bank storage and return flow and how that supports fisheries?
A: I was involved in the legislature when the instream flow laws were proposed, and of course resisted them with all my ability. And of course, the instream flow law finally passed because they were afraid that if they weren't under the instream, it would become a law automatically. So it was finally passed over my objection. My objection to the instream flow is that under Wyoming water law, it ensures that there will be instream flow because of prior appropriation doctrine, but the return flow of the river, of the streams, returns back into the river to keep the river alive. In Wyoming when this country was settled, most of the old water rights were down on the lower and main tributaries because that was the easiest to settle. It was the first to settle and be taken up and that is where the old water rights, most of them, are. On the return flow -- on water rights and consumptive use -- only about half of the water is consumptively used. The other half goes back and is not used and it returns back into the stream and it also keeps the stream alive for a much longer period. My people tell me that before there was irrigation, some of these streams dried completely up because they didn't have the bank storage in order to keep the stream alive during the long period when you had short water years and during the winter when they didn't have the flow. But bank storage ensures that those streams will stay alive much longer and is much better environmentally for the wildlife and the fish.
Q: What is happening on the Colorado River downstream from Wyoming and how does Wyoming law play into that?
A: I have served since Cliff Hanson, as Alternate Commissioner on the Colorado River representing Wyoming. Then in 1971, I served when we negotiated the numeric standards on salinity, and I have served since then on the Salinity Control Council and Forum as a member of Wyoming's delegation. The Colorado River serves approximately at the present time about 23 million people. [Most of these people are] in the lower basin basically, and as growth is starting to expand in the upper basin, the need for this water becomes extremely apparent because all economics are based on water. You can't live without it more than 2 or 3 days so water is the economic driving force of the whole arid west. In fact that was the reason the Hoover Dam was built in the depths of the Depression, as you recall, the march on Washington and the [unemployed] soldiers because of the Depression. Well, they built Hoover Dam so that they could put all these people [to work]. They [created] veteran's rights, preference rights, so that the veterans could come back and have some hope of making a living. That was one of the driving forces behind the Colorado River Storage Act and the building of Hoover Dam. What instream flow has done and can do in this area is that, if linked up, it would deny Wyoming the development of its 14% of the Colorado River which would be a very severe economic loss to the State of Wyoming. I will give you an example. Water in the Green River is accountable for a fourth of the industrial tax-base in the state of Wyoming. That's based on Green River water. And that's in Rock Springs with the power plants, the chrona plants, the fertilizer plants, and that's a huge tax-base for the state. Wyoming has a declining population, and without that water, it will never be developed. Wyoming will never further develop without available storage. Also the Green River/Colorado River is the only stream that allows trans-basin diversion. When Wyoming settled the North Platt decree "they got the mine and we got the shaft." That is the only hope for the eastern part of the State, to be able to use some of the Green River water and the Colorado River water because it is the only compact that allows trans-basin diversion.
Q: What would you say to people who support instream flow legislation and say it is a response to society's demands?
A: Society's demands are based on economics. When your belly is empty, your views change. Without water, as we shift our agricultural focus to the third world nations -- if we think oil and gas is expensive today, wait till we have a food shortage.
Q: What about people who feel a recreation based economy is feasible?
A: You can't eat recreation and you can't eat scenery. They don't sell well other than to people who have more time and money. At some time, this land will be put back together. These ranches are being broken up now because of the economy and the lack of storage. Multi-millionaires are coming out and buying them for recreation or for whatever reason. Someday, if this economy collapses, these ranches will have to be put back together so that they become an economically feasible unit. That's how they all started out, because they were all taken up in 160s and 320s [acre allotments] and nobody could make a living. So they had to put them together to make an economic unit so that they could make a living on it. So if this economy collapses, and it will someday -- history repeats itself -- then you will see all these little recreational outfits all be put back together. They will have to be an economic unit so that you can pay the taxes.
Q: What about water that is dedicated to instream flow?
A: Laws can be changed. If the economics become severe enough, you will see people become hungry enough. It could be repealed.
Q: Any additional thoughts?
A: I think that pretty much covers the whole situation. It's purely an economic situation. You have to include in the economics -- part of it is recreation, part of it is wildlife, part of it is all of these things that ranchers have taken care of and contributed to because that is the only way that you can keep these ranches working. You can't destroy the ecology and make [a ranch] produce. So all of these things fit in. In fact the real ecologists, the real conservationists, were agriculturalists because they couldn't afford to be anything else.
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