![West Fork Dam size in flux as feds reconsider Wyoming plan | Keynote USA West Fork Dam size in flux as feds reconsider Wyoming plan | Keynote USA](https://i0.wp.com/local.keynoteusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Little-Snake-River-ag-lands-1024x544-1.webp.webp?resize=1024%2C544&ssl=1)
By Angus M. Thuermer Jr.
The size of Wyoming‘s proposed and controversial West Fork Dam in the Medicine Bow National Forest in Carbon County is changing as federal environmental analysts juggle economics and conservation in a review of the planned concrete structure of 264 feet tall, key analysts say.
As now planned, the structure would flood 130 acres and retain 10,000 acre-feet of water in a headwater tributary of the Colorado River Basin, where drought and climate change impact a river system that supports 40 million people. The dam’s reservoir would contain enough water to supply 20,000 homes for a year, but would be used primarily to benefit a few dozen irrigators, federal and state documents show.
Emissions from the proposed reservoir would flow down Battle Creek to irrigators in the Little Snake River Valley in Wyoming and Colorado. But Wyoming’s plan has generated public scrutiny and controversy over its purported benefits and impacts.
Studies and analyzes reveal that some parts of the plan are not economical, U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service officials said last week. That is leading the agency to consider reducing the cost and scope of the project, cutting the amount of water that will be impounded and also employing irrigation conservation measures, federal analysts said.
Even as reviewers develop several ways to supply irrigators with delayed water, along with some public benefits and habitat improvements, Wyoming’s design remains “one of the leading alternatives,” said Shawn Follum, an engineer with the federal conservation service.
As planned by the Savery-Little Snake Water Conservancy District, the Colorado Pothook Water Conservancy and the Wyoming Office of Water Development, the 700-foot-long dam near the confluence of Battle and Haggarty creeks would span a gorge and would accumulate water for almost two miles. .
Project backers estimated in 2017 that the entire project would cost $80 million, most of which would be funded by the state of Wyoming.
Some alternatives considered in the environmental impact statement “are simply not economically viable,” Follum said. “There is no net benefit to the government.
“There is an opportunity to change the scope of that dam a little bit as we look at some economics to try to reduce some costs,” he said.
“We have not yet identified a modified West Fork (dam) that is practical,” Follum said. “But we are looking at whether we can reduce the need for impounded water with some conservation measures, such as lining a ditch to reduce seepage.”
Ongoing studies could propose a smaller project: “That’s what we hope,” he said. But analysts haven’t solved that size problem, said Alyssa Ludeke, a public affairs specialist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service.
“We just don’t have the final answer on that yet,” he said.
A draft environmental impact statement likely won’t be completed and released for public comment until December, the two officials said in a phone interview. The federal conservation service began reviewing the project in December 2022, in coordination with other federal and state agencies, including the Wyoming Office of Water Development, the Medicine Bow National Forest and the Wyoming Office of State Lands and Investments.
The state land office proposed exchanging Wyoming properties located within Medicine Bow for federal property at the dam site, a swap that officials said would expedite environmental reviews. Wyoming sought 1,762 acres of federal land in exchange for equal value of state property, until last month.
That’s when Jenifer Scoggin, director of the land office, reduced Wyoming’s proposal by 272 acres, or about 16%.
The Wyoming Office of State Lands and Investments proposed that this 1,490-acre Forest Service parcel be transferred to Wyoming to allow for construction of the West Fork Dam. the package is 16% smaller than the original Wyoming order. (OSLI via Medicine Bow National Forest)
The amendment to request only 1,490 acres was “based on discussions with the U.S. Forest Service,” Scoggin wrote to Jason Armbruster, Bush Creek/Hayden District Forester with Medicine Bow. The change “addresses resource issues” identified by field studies, he wrote.
Some of the parcels the state sought required Wyoming to overcome “bigger hurdles than we could overcome,” said Jason Crowder, deputy director of the state land office.
“We’ve been working for the last year trying to find a land package that could easily move through the federal exchange system,” he said in an interview. “It just made sense to change the composition of the parcels involved (to follow an) easier path.”
Medicine Bow will use Wyoming’s updated proposal as the basis for a “feasibility analysis,” forestry spokesman Aaron Voos wrote in an email. That conclusion (if the exchange is possible) is the first of two steps.
If the exchange is feasible, Medicine Bow would determine if it is in the public interest.
Alternatively, the environmental review could suggest that the state build and operate a reservoir under a federal permit rather than acquire the land under and around the dam and reservoir. Wyoming has not favored that path.
The Natural Resources Conservation Service and the U.S. Forest Service are continuing their independent reviews.
“I think the land swap will probably be slower than the EIS itself,” Follum said. “But that won’t affect us (in the conservation service) because we’re going to move forward with a kind of dual assumption; “It will be a land exchange or a permit.”
The conservation service identified six alternatives when it announced its environmental review, including a no-action alternative. Three other alternatives consider building the dam as proposed under a Forest Service permit or through a land exchange. A fifth option calls for locating a reservoir elsewhere, and the sixth calls for water conservation and habitat improvement projects.
This article was originally published by WyoFile and is republished here with permission. WyoFile is an independent, nonprofit news organization focused on the people, places and policies of Wyoming.
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