To the editor:

With the irrigation season upon us, I would like to put some information out there and respond to Rob Stevens’ multiple letters to the editor earlier this year. Mr. Stevens is very upset that he has to pay a $300 base charge to the Shoshone Irrigation District (SID) In his letter dated Feb. 18, 2025, Mr. Stevens states that small landowners on average pay $55.52 per acre and large landowners pay $2.93 per acre. This is only true if you own approximately 5 1/2 acres or 102 acres respectively.

Let’s look at it this way, the water is in the system for six months a year, mid-April through mid-October. Large and small landowners alike pay $50 a month for the base charge while water is in the system. Now then, in the words of the late great Paul Harvey, let’s look at the rest of the story. SID charges $30.10 per acre assessment for water. A landowner with 10 acres pays $301 for water and the $300 base charge equaling $601 or $100.17 per month for the six months water is in the system. A landowner with 100 acres pays $3,310.00 including the $300 base charge or $551.67 per month for the six months. I asked SID how many acres its largest landowners farm? I was told 1,000 acres, those landowners pay $30,400.00 including the base charge or $5,066.67 per month for their water. I don’t feel that Mr. Stevens by paying his $300 base fee is in anyway subsidizing the large landowners in SID.

In his letters Mr. Stevens calls for more transparency for how SID conducts business and in one letter asked several questions about said business, however no answers that he received were ever shared in subsequent letters. For anyone else out there who would like to know how every irrigation district in Wyoming does business, I urge you to go online and look up Wyoming State Statutes for Irrigation Districts. Almost everything an irrigation district in Wyoming does, from how the board of commissioners is formed to the rotating election of board members, that voting is per water righted acre not per landowner, how assessments are to be collected and how delinquent accounts are to be dealt with, all of the day-to-day business of an irrigation diststrict, is state law. Every year the manager and commissioners make a budget for the following year. That budget is presented to the court, a hearing is held, and a judge signs off on the budgets, it is then presented to the county commissioners, they also sign off on the budget. An independent CPA does an extensive audit of all business the district has conducted during the last year. Along with the state statutes all irrigation districts must also adhere to Wyoming Water Law through the State Engineers Office. In compliance with the open meetings act, all board meetings are open to the public.

The Shoshone Project of which SID is one of four divisions, is a federally funded project. Each division when construction was finished in the 1940s formed an individual contract with the federal goverment to be overseen by the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR). A BOR employee inspects the district every couple of years and presents a list of items that the BOR feels need to be fixed and to make sure the goverments project is being maintained to their standards. This is in addition to the regular maintenance and upgrades that the board and manager feel are necessary to keep an 80-plus year-old system functioning. With all these checks and balances in place I don’t feel that transparency is an issue. I feel it is an education issue.

The last item I would like to address is the $20,000 in earned agriculture related money each year needed for a landowner to be on the board. This has been a policy of SID for decades. Most imigation districts in the state have minimum standards to be a commissioner on their boards. For example Heart Mountain Irrigation District requires $10,000 in ag related money to be earned each year and a minimum of 30 water righted acres.

I hope that this information will help educate newcomers to the area or just people wondering how irrigation districts work. Thank you for your time.

Pat Nelson

Cody