Montana sues Wyoming in battle over water rights

BILLINGS – For rancher Art Hayes of Birney, Mont., adequate water is the lifeblood needed to turn barren ground into fertile fields for his cattle. After seven years of drought, that lifeblood is running short.

Yet as the nearby Tongue River dropped to a trickle in recent years, Hayes looked upstream, toward Wyoming, and saw that things were different – greener, he says – across the state line.

“They always seem to be irrigating there,” he said Thursday. “They’re holding that water up and that water should be coming to Montana.”

Responding to the complaints of Hayes and others, the state of Montana filed a suit against Wyoming over water rights on Thursday in the U.S. Supreme Court. The suit claims Wyoming’s excessive use of water from the Tongue and a second river, the Powder, is leaving downstream ranches and farms dry.

The dispute marks a sharp escalation in an acrimonious water fight between the two states.

The suit alleges that Wyoming has ignored Montana’s “senior” water rights by taking more water from the rivers – which flow from northeastern Wyoming into southeastern Montana – than allowed under the 1950 Yellowstone River Compact. That includes water diverted and stored for irrigation, and groundwater pumped during coal-bed methane production.

“We’re running out of water,” said Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer. “It’s getting worse every year as Wyoming is using more and more water … Our farmers and ranchers who depend on this water for irrigation are having difficulty raising their crops.”

Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal said he was disappointed with the lawsuit, but not surprised since Montana had been “agitating for a fight” over the rivers for several years.

“We will vigorously defend our water rights and our sovereign interests to control our own destiny,” he said.

Wyoming State Engineer Patrick Tyrell said both states are suffering because of drought.

In recent years, he said, only a “small fraction” of Wyoming’s water users in the Powder and Tongue river basins – possibly less than 10 percent – received the water they needed.

But Montana officials say their state is bearing the greater burden. The lawsuit asks the court to order Wyoming to deliver more water in the two rivers, and to award Montana unspecified damages.