U.S. Bureau of Land Management officials are asking Idaho ranchers who water livestock on BLM land to sign voluntary agreements stating that they are limited agents of the federal government.
Idaho Farm Bureau Federation officials are advising ranchers to think long and hard before signing the agreement, cautioning them that doing so would allow the BLM to maintain water rights in their name and would prohibit the rancher from filing for in-stream stock watering rights on federal land in the future.
IFBF leaders say the issue rehashes some of the main points of a landmark 2007 water rights ruling known as the Joyce Livestock Decision.
In that decision, the Idaho Supreme Court ruled in favor of two Owyhee County ranchers in their battle with the BLM over who owns in-stream stock watering rights on federally administered land. During the SRBA process, the water adjudication court ended up conveying 17,000 stock watering rights to the BLM prior to the Joyce ruling. However, since BLM cannot put the water to beneficial use, they are now in jeopardy of forfeiting these rights through non-use. In an effort to keep those water rights, BLM is now encouraging permittees to sign agreements stating that they are agents of the federal government and that their livestock are putting the water to beneficial use for the agency...
MORE
Demonstrates how the feds hunger after water, just like they do for land. This is, of course, a blatant attempt to subvert state water law and to retain the stock watering rights that were illegally conveyed to them.
1 comment:
This article is right on the money about the importance of property rights owned by each ranch. Laws and Court Decisions both say that privately owned property rights on federal lands are not only lawful but they change the legal character of the federal land.
Each of your water rights for the beneficial use by livestock are in fact property held in equity. Ranch water rights ownership, as established by your predecessors in interest, becomes the dominant estate on the land along with the easements and rights-of-way used by stock to make beneficial use of the water. BLM and FS are left holding the “servient estate” which effectively removes all of their jurisdiction powers that is held by federal agencies on lands where no private claims exist.
BLM and FS know this and for years have been forcing ranchers to abandon the very property rights that form the basis for their ranch. Most often the agency uses extortion in the form of you must give the U.S. your water rights if you want to be issued a grazing permit. If you don’t give up your rights you will have to appeal and sue to get your grazing permit. (I think the BLM and FS learned how to do this from the Mafia.)
At any rate reference to the dominant estate and servient estate issue is basic foundation for the Owyhee County ranchers argument for property rights. It looks like some of those folks got it right.
Post a Comment