WyoFile: Tribes blame BIA after water runs out a second year

For the second year in a row, the Washakie Reservoir on the Wind River Indian Reservation is empty long before the irrigation season ends for farmers and ranchers downstream.

After turning on the water two weeks late in mid-May and turning it off by August 1, about 60 days before the irrigation season normally ends, the Bureau of Indian Affairs cut the five-month irrigation season in half. Last year, the season ended early as well, according to James Pogue, a water technician who works for the tribal water engineer.

“There’s just not adequate water supply this year,” said Mitch Cottenoir, the tribal water engineer. “It’s been drought conditions.”

And while it is true that the reservoir is nearly empty, that the Wind River peaks behind it are bare of snow, and that temperatures reached the 90s for much of July, tribal leaders are also furious with the BIA for the management practices of Brent Allen, a BIA employee and the Irrigation Manager of the Wind River Irrigation Project.

In a letter to Ed Parisian, the regional director of the BIA in Billings, the Joint Business Council of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes called for the removal of Allen.