Backers of the proposed Alkali Creek Dam near Hyattville expect they will condemn ranch property if landowners don’t agree to sell easements necessary for construction and operation of the troubled project, letters shared with WyoFile show.
The Nowood Watershed Improvement District told the owners of at least two ranches in recent, undated letters, that they have 15 days from receipt to respond to a “final offer” to sell the easements.
The letters outline plans to purchase easements across the properties for a total of $19,255, subject to an updated appraisal.
The easements would include a permanent right of way to operate the Anita Ditch as a pipeline that would feed the reservoir from nearby Paint Rock and Medicine Lodge creeks on the western slope of the Bighorn Mountains. The offers seek temporary construction easements too. The letters say the easements would apply to 7 acres.
“As you are aware, the [Nowood Watershed Improvement District] has been negotiating and discussing acquisition of the easements in particular since September 21, 2021,” the letters state. “It is expected that the district, if the agreement is declined, will reluctantly initiate eminent domain proceedings.”
If the district has to condemn the property, the letters state, water developers will enlarge the Anita Ditch and operate it as an open ditch instead of a buried pipeline. Operating the reservoir’s feed as a larger, open ditch instead of a buried pipeline would reduce the ground available to the ranches for irrigated crop land, irrigated pasture and rangeland.
Condemnation is the “nuclear option,” Wyoming Water Development Office Director Jason Mead told lawmakers last year. Exercising eminent domain “is not an option that anybody is interested in,” he said.
“[I]f the agreement is declined, [the district] will reluctantly initiate eminent domain proceedings.”
Martin Mercer
WyoFile obtained the letters from dam critic and neighbor Tim Gardiner on the condition it would not use the names, ranches and addresses of those properties targeted for condemnation. WyoFile has requested copies of the letters from the district.
One of the targeted landowners told WyoFile the final offer doesn’t change the family’s opposition to the Alkali Dam, from which the ranch would not benefit.
“We support storage if it’s sensible, pulling the community together rather than separating it,” the landowner said. “We will not sign that agreement.”
Condemnation debate
The proposed dam would impound 9,000 acre-feet, 6,000 of which would be available for late-season irrigation in eight out of 10 years. The earthen dam would be 100 feet high, about a half mile long and could cost up to $113 million, according to estimates.
The reservoir would cover 312 acres when full and always have an area of at least 135 acres for recreation. When originally contemplated, the dam was projected to cost as little as $20 million.
The benefits justify some of the latest cost estimates, the Wyoming Water Development Office claims. Nowood officials have said 35 family ranches are shareholders in the district.
Shareholders have agreed to pay $2.1 million of the cost, the rest of which would be provided by the Wyoming Water Development Office and Commission from state funds and potentially other sources. The Nowood Watershed Improvement District has spent at least $1.6 million in state funds for property and easements at the Martin Mercer ranch where the dam and reservoir would be located.
The Wyoming Legislature this year set a July 1, 2027, deadline for securing the easements. If that target is not met, what remains of $59 million lawmakers have appropriated would lapse.
The deadline extension — the project’s third — passed only after considerable debate and a fight over condemnation.
State senators sought to prevent the use of condemnation to acquire the easements, but property rights advocates in the upper chamber failed in that bid in a 17-12 vote.
Martin Mercer, who signed the final offer letters as chairman of the Nowood district, declined to comment on the condemnation plan.
“It’s a good time for these folks [who received the letters] to ponder their decision and for the rest of us not to say much,” he told WyoFile.
