•Mountain View and Lyman prepare residents for cuts while holding out hope for spring snow.

 

By Dustin Bleizeffer, WyoFile.com

Water officials in southwest Wyoming are warning the towns of Mountain View and Lyman of worrisome storage levels that could threaten municipal water supplies later this year.

The “irrigation storage” level at the Stateline Reservoir is sitting at 20% of normal due to low snowpack this winter, according to the Bridger Valley Joint Powers Board, which serves some 2,200 residents in the two towns. This time last year, the reservoir, which also stores water for agricultural operations with senior water rights, was about 60%. By August, it was drawn down to 6%.

“It’s not looking great,” Bridger Valley Joint Powers Board System Manager Troy Andersen told WyoFile on Monday. “We’re kind of in limbo, waiting for the next month-and-a-half to see what the weather is going to do.”

The board issued a notice in March warning residents that it “anticipates placing a full restriction on all outdoor watering” and that the restriction could come “as soon as May.

“These restrictions will apply to all outdoor watering, including lawns, gardens and landscaping. Because of the limited water supply, we strongly recommend postponing any new planting or landscaping projects.”

The last time Mountain View and Lyman faced such a dire water situation might have been 2003, Andersen said, noting that the towns mostly rely on snowmelt in the Uinta Mountains to feed the Stateline Reservoir just across the border in Utah. He suggested that current snowpack measurements indicating 70% of the median are misleading, because the region’s median gets continually dialed downward.

“It’s not 70% of a median that happened three years ago when we used to get a crap-ton of snow,” Andersen said. “That [average snowpack benchmark] has been depleted.”

The region is tied to the Colorado River Basin, where a severe drought is complicating years-long, arduous negotiations over how to cut water use among some seven states, 30 tribes and Mexico.

Andersen and other local officials noted that the irrigation storage in the Stateline Reservoir — sitting at 20% — includes ag operations, and many of those ranchers are similarly looking at much less water this year. Mountain View and Lyman hold rights to additional storage in the reservoir, but they rely on ag irrigators, via the Bridger Valley Water Conservation District, to help move all of the water to the municipalities’ water treatment intake.

“We’re still highly dependent on agriculture,” Mountain View Mayor Bryan Ayres said of the local economy, noting that the towns have an agreeable relationship with the ag irrigators on water transportation. “We want to do everything we can to help everybody out. You know, we want everyone to have a drink of water, and cows included.”

What the state can do to help, if anything, is unclear, according to Ayres and Andersen. For now, they’ve alerted the State Engineer’s Office to the situation, and they’re holding out hope for a big spring snow dump.

“I haven’t completely given up,” Ayres said. “April and May, historically, have been some of the wetter years in this region.”

WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.

The above story may be used ONLY by members of the Wyoming News Exchange or with the express consent of the newspaper of its origin.