Farmers high and dry

Water wars were common in the Old West, with gangs of downstream water users gathering guns and marching on upstream users who were taking more than their share. Murder, mayhem and midnight raids were common.

In the arid West, water, then as now, was life.

"People fight for land but kill for water," said Ben Ferry, a Corinne farmer and rancher and Republican member of the state House of Representatives.

Ferry probably can relate to the frustrated water users of old — he's at the tail end of the Bear River irrigation system. If the upstream water users don't behave themselves, taking only what they're entitled to, Ferry and his neighbors in southern Box Elder County are in a world of hurt.

Luckily, a century or so of settlement has civilized things somewhat.

"We have controversies weekly" over water usage, said Bear River Canal Co. president Charles Holmgren. "Situations are pretty tense. But so far we haven't had to call the sheriff to maintain order."

(Yes, in the past, Holmgren has had to call the cops in a time or two.)

The 500-mile-long Bear River, the longest watercourse in the Western Hemisphere that doesn't empty into an ocean, is the lifeblood of northern Utah. Starting in the high Uintas, going north into Wyoming and Idaho and then back into Utah before emptying into the Great Salt Lake, the river irrigates 157,000 acres of farmland owned by many thousands of users — and that's just downstream of Bear Lake.

But five straight years of drought are taking their toll on the system.

Every year during the spring runoff season, water is diverted from the Bear River into Bear Lake, increasing the lake's depth up to an additional 22 feet. (The Bear River does not naturally flow into Bear Lake, though it did some thousands of years ago.) The water is pumped back into the river during the dry season for irrigation and hydroelectricity.

But over the past five years, the amount of water stored in Bear Lake has steadily decreased, to the point that this year the lake will yield only 181,000 acre-feet of irrigation water, 74 percent of normal. (An acre-foot is the amount of water required to cover an acre to a depth of one foot.) The water is projected to run out around Labor Day, two months earlier than normal.

That translates into farmers living on the edge.

"Onions and corn have to have water right to the first of September," said Corinnefarmer Newell Norman. "It would be devastating if it ran out early."