OPINION/COMMENTARY

MONTANA RANCHERS DEFEND WATER RIGHTS AGAINST FEDS

A Montana association that owns water rights in the Bitterroot National Forest today filed its post-hearing brief with the Montana Water Court in its defense of water rights challenged by the U.S. Forest Service. The Big Creek Lakes Reservoir Association (BCLRA) of Victor, Montana, argues that the Forest Service denied the association the ability to access the dams and reservoir it owns on federal lands and that, as a result, the BCLRA did not abandon the water rights that were created by those facilities. The brief follows a one-day hearing conducted in Missoula, Montana, on December 14, 2004. The BCLRA is also involved in a Quiet Title Act lawsuit in Montana federal district court claiming that it has an easement into the Bitterroot National Forest and the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness.“The question presented by this case is one on which the law is well established: an owner denied the right to access his water facilities on federal lands may not be considered to have abandoned his state water rights,” said William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation, which represents the BCLRA. “We believe the evidence at the hearing and our brief today demonstrate that the Association and its members were barred from accessing their water facilities and did not abandon their rights.”....

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