The Bighorn River below Yellowtail Dam has faced challenges in the past, but none were as serious as the good old-fashioned western water fight the river faces today. A decade long drought has reduced Bighorn Lake's levels, and upstream interests in Wyoming want to maintain the reservoir's level at the expense of flows downstream, in essence keeping Wyoming water in Wyoming.

     The story begins in the 1940s, when the dam was authorized by Congress for the purposes of flood control, hydropower, irrigation, sediment storage, recreation, and fish and wildlife. When construction was completed in the 1960s, the Bighorn Canyon was flooded to create the reservoir, and farms and ranches and their associated tax revenues were lost to the Lovell, Wyoming area. In addition, businesses that supported these farms and ranches were also lost. The federal government promised that dollars lost would be more than made up in tourism dollars when visitors flocked to the new Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area with their boats, campers, jet skis and fishing tackle.

     Benefits did come. Wyoming reports that over $60 million dollars in flood damage has been averted since the dam was built. Each year, Western Area Power Administration supplies millions of dollars of electrical power to the upper Missouri River basin. The Bighorn River below Yellowtail Dam was transformed from a muddy prairie stream to an internationally famous, Blue Ribbon trout fishery. While the projected one million visitors per year have not materialized, Bighorn Lake had become a popular vacation destination and a renowned warmwater fishery, important in both Montana and Wyoming.

     The planners didn't foresee two major hurdles that Mother Nature would throw at them, however. First, the area is currently in the midst of a decade long drought that has caused water levels on the lake to recede so far that boat ramps at the south end of the lake have become unusable. The severity of this drought is evident when looking at historic lake levels since Bighorn Lake was first filled in 1967. Between 1967 and 2006, there have only been 6 years when the lake did not reach at least 3635 feet in elevation (5 feet from full pool), and 4 of those years have occurred during the current ongoing drought. Second, 3,600 metric tons of sediment dump into the southern end of the lake every day, and most of it has deposited in the Wyoming end of the lake. The bottom end of the Horseshoe Bend boat ramp in Wyoming is at an elevation of 3590 ft allowing boats to be launched at a lake elevation of 3593 feet when the ramp was first built. It now requires a lake elevation of at least 3615 feet to launch at Horseshoe Bend due to an accumulation of over 22 feet of sediment in the upper end of the reservoir. Sediment continues to accumulate in Bighorn Lake at an accelerated rate due to highly erosive lands and poor irrigation practices in Wyoming, upstream of the reservoir, which exacerbates the drought's effects.

      During the summer of 2006, Lovell area officials and the office of Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal, began to try to change things. Garnering support from the state's senators and representatives, they invited local citizens to a series of meetings, where they began to pressure several government agencies to change the situation. Conspicuously, invitations were not issued to interested parties from upstream or downstream of Bighorn Lake. It was not until August that word of these meetings reached Montana. On August 30th, a small contingent from Montana's Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks and several anglers already concerned about dwindling releases from Yellowtail Dam attended a meeting in Lovell uninvited, and discovered that Montana interests were seriously under-represented. Outside the meeting hall in Lovell, a banner on a truck proudly declared "Keep Wyoming Water in Wyoming."

      Just days later, a representative from Lovell submitted a formal request to the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), the party responsible for maintaining releases from Yellowtail Dam, to decrease flows from 1,500 cubic feet per second (cfs) to 1,000cfs in an effort to fill the lake. From this point, a fight was on.

      The BOR, in conjunction with studies provided by the Montana FWP, have believed for years that minimum flows of 2,500cfs are necessary to sustain the Bighorn River fishery. Flows below 2,500cfs deplete side channel habitat, forcing both large and small fish into the main river channel, where smaller fish are preyed upon by larger fish. Side channels also provide prime spawning habitat. Lower flows thus result in decreased recruitment of smaller trout accompanied by a short term improvement in the size and condition of the remaining larger trout in the system. This change was seen when flows began to drop in 1999 and subsequent recruitment of younger fish plummeted. Where once there had been 11,000 fish per mile, by 2002 there were barely a thousand. Anglers, guides, outfitters, and the entire economy based on the river suffered, with angling pressure dropping over thirty percent, taking with it thirty percent of revenues.

      Wyoming officials complain that they simply want what was promised to them decades ago, and stubbornly cling to the notion that reducing flows from Yellowtail Dam is the best solution. Montana officials argue that the proposed reduction would result only in severely damaging the river fishery and provide no near-term benefits to Wyoming. Further, studies show that periodic drawdowns are important in reservoir systems in promoting shoreline vegetation growth and, in turn, forage fish production, which is a critical factor in maintaining the warmwater fishery in Bighorn Lake. Montanans recognize the lake level is only a part of Lovell's problems, including siltation, the invasion of salt cedar, the lack of a large population base in the area to support heavy recreational use at the south end of Bighorn Lake, and that realistic solutions to these problems are likely years away. The flow reduction proposal is politically expedient for Wyoming, but was put forth without consideration of tangible benefits when compared to the costs in resource damage to the lake and river, losses to the economy, and reduced power generation.

      So, where do we go from here? Long term, certainly, we must develop a basin-wide strategy that considers not only the needs and concerns of the lake and river, but upstream interests as well. Currently, upstream reservoirs are managed separately from Bighorn Lake. Coordinated strategies to maintain lake levels and flows from all these reservoirs must be given a closer look. Montana and Wyoming must work cooperatively, both legislatively and otherwise, to implement agreed-upon changes and to support viable projects required to accomplish the objectives of the Lovell area without jeopardizing other uses. Short term, we need better local and national exposure of this situation, and simply put, warm bodies and loud voices speaking in unison and exerting political pressure of our own.

      There are no easy, short term solutions other than a drastic change in the climate pattern to the problems in the Bighorn Drainage. The simplistic approach of just choking down river releases is really no solution at all, it just feeds conflict and avoids the hard work of analyzing the complete picture.

      For now, the flows below Yellowtail Dam remain at 1,500cfs, still well below the optimal minimum flows. The BOR's latest preferred plan of operation is to keep the flows at 1,500 cfs until March, then re-evaluate and make adjustments based on snowpack at the time. This current operating plan calls for further reductions below 1,500 cfs if the snowpack fails to materialize, and at the time of this writing, January 4, 2007, the snowpack has NOT materialized. The Wyoming effort continues to be funded by the Governor's office, using those funds to hire a consulting firm, and even send a small contingent of Lovell folks to Washington to meet with lawmakers and agency officials. Senator Max Baucus, Governor Brian Schweitzer and several environmental organizations have publicly opposed flow reductions, but Wyoming continues to outgun Montana's efforts.