Director's Message

by Dan Heilig

Wyoming’s conservation districts have a long and proud history of working with ranchers, landowners, farmers, agencies and the general public to clean up and restore watersheds degraded by decades of abuse and neglect. The fact that 31 of the 34 conservation districts in the state are supported by funding collected through local mill levies attests to both the popularity and success of their programs. Unfortunately, actions taken by the conservation districts over the past several months to obstruct clean water initiatives in the state threaten to undermine continued public support for the districts’ programs.

Earlier this summer, the state’s conservation districts joined in a lawsuit brought by the Wyoming Association of Conservation Districts (WACD) and others to block the Administration’s Clean Water Action Plan (CWAP). The CWAP sets out a comprehensive strategy to clean up the nation’s surface waters, and allocates more than $2 billion to get the job done. The CWAP enjoys broad-based support from the American public.

At the urging of the WACD and others, the state refused to identify and map impaired watersheds according to the schedule and process set out in the CWAP. By failing to participate, Wyoming forfeited more than $800,000 in supplemental federal clean water grants earmarked for the most severely degraded watersheds in the state — those damaged by overgrazing, erosion and polluted runoff of chemicals and pesticides.

Why did the conservation districts — whose mission, after all, is to conserve Wyoming’s land and water resources — work so hard to make Wyoming the only state in the nation to refuse to identify impaired watersheds? Out of fear that admitting to water quality problems could ultimately lead to land-use controls or regulatory measures, such as mandatory "best management practices," to combat pollution. Controls that many in the state’s timber, mining, farming and ranching industries vehemently oppose.

More recently, the WACD has charted a legal and legislative strategy to scuttle rules that protect the state’s most outstanding surface waters — our so-called Class 1 waters. All lakes and streams in Wyoming’s wilderness areas and national parks are protected by this designation, as are about 15 additional water bodies in other parts of the state. (The WACD fought successfully a year ago to eliminate special protection for tributaries of Class 1 waters.)

These rules — which have been on the books for more than two decades — allow citizens to petition the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to request special protection for lakes, rivers and streams with exceptional water quality, ecological, cultural or aesthetic values. If a river or lake is designated Class 1, new pollution discharges are forbidden in order to protect existing water quality.

In a recent memo, the WACD rails against the public’s right to petition DEQ for special protections for lakes and streams; abhors the fact that the Environmental Quality Council (a state board comprised of citizens) can consider subjective values in the designation process, such as the water body’s scenic beauty or ecological importance; and opposes designations for streams with low or seasonal flows.

If WACD’s dirty water campaign is successful, the public’s voice will be muted for good: only the rancher  and industry-dominated Wyoming Legislature will have the authority to designate Class 1 waters. The designation will only be available for waters having exceptional water quality and year-round flows, and only if proven by costly scientific studies requiring chemical, physical and biological monitoring data.

The efforts of the state’s conservation districts to overturn the Clean Water Action Plan and to delay or altogether prevent the designation of new Class 1 waters raise important questions. Are public funds being used to finance the districts’ campaign to block important federal and state clean water initiatives? Is the districts’ effort to strip from citizens one of the most effective tools in the struggle for clean water an action that benefits the greater public good?

Unfortunately, I think the answers have already been provided.