A special report by the Tri-City Herald

Kim Keefe, secretary-manager of the New Escalante Irrigation Co., stands at the edge of the nearly empty Wide Hollow Reservoir. Efforts to rebuild the reservoir - which is about half-filled with sediment - have been stymied by environmental challenges.

Water wars: Escalante ranchers square off against environmentalists

ESCALANTE, Utah - Curtis Koyle has never had so many cattle at his ranch during June.

But there's virtually nothing to eat on the range, what with the extraordinarily dry spring, so he brought in 900 head. Even worse, forage is getting scarce at a time when he should be putting up hay for the winter.

But Koyle, 34, manager of Flying V Bar Ranch, doesn't think he'll even have enough hay for his cattle to get through the fall. He'll have to buy feed and raise his cost of doing business. With already thin margins for ranching, that kind of increase promises to be too much for some of the Escalante's ranchers.

"We don't know if we are going to survive this," he said. "We are going to run out of water."

Scarcity of water always has defined the West, and it's no different in Southern Utah. Around the town of Escalante, water is doubly important these days as the New Escalante Irrigation Co. is struggling to build a new off-stream reservoir to serve existing water rights.

Its dam just outside town is on the state's high hazard list and the reservoir is half-filled with sediment.

But environmental groups are opposing the proposed Wide Hollow reservoir, in part because a new dam could damage the "visual resource," raise concerns for the endangered southwest willow flycatcher and have potential impacts on a river in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

"You've got the environmentalists who don't want to see reservoirs anywhere," said Marietta Eaton, an official with the Bureau of Land Management. "And you have the community who sees it as an issue of their livelihood."

So, the BLM is reviewing the reservoir permit, without which the people fear they will wither along with the farming life. An agency decision is expected this month but probably will be appealed.

When the 2,400-acre-foot Wide Hollow Reservoir was built outside Escalante in the 1950s, engineers didn't plan for all the silt that would drain into the small lake. An acre-foot is enough water to cover an acre of land 12 inches deep.

Today, after about 20 years of studies about the problem, almost half of the reservoir capacity has been lost to sand, causing severe water shortages. Shareholders still pay full price, even though they've been able to get only about half their allotted water in recent years.

"Our reservoir is full in October, and we watch our ... water run by us all winter," said Louise Liston, Garfield County commissioner. "And here we are, out of it" at the start of summer.

The reservoir's fate could foreshadow the fate of farmers in the region. An irrigation company letter to the BLM says the project is "essential to preserving the lifestyle which makes Escalante a desirable place to live."

Without a stable irrigation supply, farmers are more likely to sell their land to developers, accelerating the pace of change in a community that says it wants to stay the same.

But there are other impacts. About 20 percent of the reservoir water is used by residents for lawns and gardens. When the reservoir goes dry, they switch to the town's potable water system.

"This in turn stresses the culinary system and leads to the curtailing of use," according to a water company document. Already this year, the city has restricted outside watering to every other day.

The new reservoir would cost about $7 million and hold about 6,400 acre feet - a virtual pond compared with the Yakima Basin's reservoirs, the smallest of which holds five times as much as the proposed Wide Hollow Reservoir.

By most accounts, the BLM recognized the need to rebuild Wide Hollow and did a quick environmental assessment, which environmental groups challenged as inadequate on many fronts. That forced another agency attempt and what promises to be a drawn-out dispute.

Among the challenges offered by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance is that the proposed reservoir could harm a roughly 224-acre patch of ground that could someday become a congressionally formed wilderness area.

"Impounding a reservoir in these potential wilderness areas will definitely affect their naturalness," said the alliance, which is advocating the strict wilderness code be applied by Congress to millions of acres in Southern Utah.

That stance is supported by the Escalante Wilderness Project, which told BLM that a new reservoir would do too much damage, especially to the two creeks that drain into it, and by limiting flow in the scenic Escalante River.

But at least one environmentalist in the region says the alliance ought to pick better fights.

"It's gasoline on the fire," said Mark Austin of Boulder, Utah. "(Farmers) do need it, and the impact of the reservoir on the region is so insignificant that it's not worth a moment's ... lack of sleep."

Nonetheless, claims of environmental harm seem to carry more weight now that the BLM land is a monument.

"It kind of provided leverage for (the environmentalists) to battle other uses outside the monument," said Kim Keefe, irrigation company secretary-manager. "They have got a whole lot more leverage now."

If everything falls in the district's favor, it could have a new reservoir in three years. But the chances seem slim if environmental groups are determined.

"The company doesn't have the money to fight them," Keefe said.

"It might be one of those things where the people with the most money will win."

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