Green River Basin Advisory Group
Meeting
Record
BAG Meeting No. 2 Notes
Sublette County Library
Pinedale, WY
March 26, 2008
The meeting generally followed the format of the agenda distributed by the WWDO, although there were a couple of
changes.
1.Introductions
Earl Degroot, Facilitator on the Planning Team, introduced the team and presented several logistical details about
the meeting.
2. Description and purpose of meeting
Earl presented a power point slideshow outlining the purpose of the planning process, explaining the handouts at
the meeting, and the methods through which the State and Planning Team was collecting input. That presentation is available here.
3. Pat Tyrrell - SEO Update on Colorado River Basin Topics
Pat gave an update on several issues affecting water use in the Green River Basin.
4. Consultant update
Murray Schroeder presented information and exhibits’ showing the progress the consulting team has made making
population projections in the basin. That information is available at waterplan.state.wy.us. There were several
questions from the audience related to the methods used to make the projections.
5. Presentations
An important goal of the BAG Update process is to advance the BAG’s identification and discussion regarding
strategies for resolving basin water use issues. The previous 2001 plan identified many issues, but did not
address in depth how those issues might be resolved. With a goal of identifying strategies, this and future BAG
meetings are designed to have public presentations from a variety of BAG members. The presentations are intended
to present the BAG member’s ideas about what their specific challenges are and what some of the strategies might
be for addressing the challenges. By design, this public meeting setting is intended to foster an open discussion
about strategies.
To this end, this meeting had two presentations, each followed by a strategies discussion in which ideas were
recorded by the planning team. Those ideas were recorded on large paper flip charts (photos attached).
Presentations (both available at waterplan.state.wy.us ) were as follows:
1.Town of Pinedale - Gene Ninnie, Town Engineer,
Gene discussed the current water supply master plan that is being
performed in conjunction with the WWDC. Pinedale is faced with growth in areas and at rates that are taxing the
abilities of the existing water system infrastructure. Gene’s talk focused on the existing system deficiencies and
preparing capital improvement plans.
The audience discussion identified the following items as possible useful
strategies for Pinedale:
- Getting guidance on water rights protection
- Evaluating conservation strategies
- Examining drainage and recharge
- Examining agricultural return flows (of the Towns) and how to use
2.Trout Unlimited - Scott Yates, Director Trout Unlimited Wyoming Water Project.
Scotts’ presentation
discussed several fish passage and habitat projects in eastern Idaho. He focused on partnership opportunities for
stream flow restoration and fish passage on private lands. A goal of TU is to meet ranch operational needs and
reconnect important small tributary and main stem environments for native and wild trout.
The audience discussion identified the following items as possible useful
strategies for recreation water users like TU include:
- Develop landowner partnerships
- Focus on AG and conservation overlap
- Do legislative work
- Improve stream flow maintenance
- Improve riparian areas
In addition to collecting strategy ideas focused at the Municipal and Recreational users represented by the two
speakers above, the planning team also recorded basin wide strategies that might be used to address other issues,
and these included:
- Improve modeling
- Improve understanding of GW-SW interaction
- Provide more easy to use contemporaneous information and data for decision makers and public
- Provide a framework in the green Plan II too assist forward progress at issues resolution. (Seppie)
- Improve/Enhance agency involvement, eg USFS
- In reservoir siting exercises, consider efficiency and effectiveness of storage
- Evaluate glacier component of water supply
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