State officials stall $44M Alkali Creek Dam request amid eminent domain worries

Legislators and state water development commissioners Thursday postponed a northern Wyoming water district’s $44 million request to complete the contested Alkali Creek Dam and reservoir.

State officials asked Nowood Watershed Improvement District and five area landowners to further negotiate over necessary easements and avoid the water district’s taking of private property. The Wyoming Legislature’s Select Water Committee and Wyoming Water Development Commission set a Dec. 17 deadline, when the issue will again be on a joint agenda for the two panels.

The joint boards paused the funding request by the Nowood district without dissent. The district through the Wyoming Water Development Office also sought a time extension to complete the project, which is now estimated to cost $103.4 million.

Lawmakers and state water commissioners heard emotional testimony from Michelle Hamilton regarding the stress her family has been under as the district has sought to condemn easements across her property near Hyattville. Condemnation is the formal government process for taking private land for public use. 

“The project has cost us financially, professionally, and personally,” she said. Condemnation: “That is not the Wyoming way.”

The prospect of the district taking private property to complete the project appeared to leave a sour taste in state officials mouths. “Our goal is not to tear communities apart,” one member of the water commission said.

The joint meeting in Casper followed a Nov. 3 election in Big Horn and Washakie counties that preserved the rural water board’s majority that favors condemnation of private property near Hyattville.

The election put incumbent directors Mitch Vigil and John Joyce on the board, according to an email from Ashley Coenen, district manager of the South Big Horn Conservation District in Greybull. Todd Jones, who is opposed to the district’s plans for eminent domain against five landowners, will replace Martin Mercer on the Nowood board.

Jones garnered the most votes with 182, according to Coenen’s email. Vigil received 180, Joyce 177.

Mercer, who sold the district the land on which the dam and reservoir would sit, received 158 votes and was unseated. Condemnation opponents Doug Hamilton and Tom Shirran, both of whom are targeted in the eminent domain effort, received 152 and 151 votes respectively

The district offered five landowners a total of $97,000 for right-of-way easements on 35 acres, to be adjusted according to appraisals. If the landowners did not accept the offers, condemnation would proceed, according to water district letters sent to the affected property owners.

Affected landowners, all of whom are upstream of the proposed reservoir, questioned the project’s benefits to them and the compensation for rights of way, among other things. Some of the property eyed for condemnation would be inundated by the reservoir. Other rights of way are necessary for the enlargement and maintenance of the Anita Ditch, which would feed the reservoir.

Among the criticisms of the project: The state doled out funds and the reservoir land was bought before the district obtained necessary easements to complete the project.

Conservation districts in Big Horn and Washakie counties in which the water district lies mailed a total of 453 ballots, district managers said. Each registered voter in the district was to receive one vote, and the owner of each taxable parcel in the district was to receive one vote per parcel.

The dam would be an earth embankment 100 feet high and half a mile long. The resulting reservoir would be 312 acres when full, providing late-season irrigation for some 33 families in eight out of 10 years. It would always have at least a 132-acre pool for recreation. Backers say the project would benefit fisheries in the rivers and creeks.

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