By Patrick Filbin and Jonathan Gallardo
Gillette News Record
Via Wyoming News Exchange
GILLETTE — A state senator’s amendment to a water bill that has delayed the progress of the Regional Water Supply Project was used to punish the city of Gillette for not doing what he wanted it to.
The amendment also could potentially benefit the senator’s family members.
Gillette Mayor Louise Carter-King and City Administrator Patrick Davidson said that Sen. Ogden Driskill, R- Devils Tower, in a meeting with city employees and elected officials, told them that his motive for implementing the amendment was “punitive.”
Carter-King and Davidson said Driskill used the word punitive three times during the meeting.
“I was shocked that he said it,” Carter-King said. “Even though the amendment seemed punitive, but for him to admit it clarified that for us.”
“It removed any doubt,” Davidson said.
On Friday, Driskill told the News Record that his intention “absolutely” was punitive. He brought the amendment because the city wasn’t willing to provide water to Crook County residents, he said, and he felt that he’d come to the end of the line.
“They haven’t had a single proposal that involves providing water to Crook County,” said the senator, who represents Crook and Weston counties as well as the eastern part of Campbell County. He wanted to make a statement.
It got the city’s attention, but “it hasn’t done what I was hoping would happen,” he said.
The last-minute amendment to the water bill during the last legislative session would do a number of things, but none more concerning to the city than the permission to allow some Crook County residents to use the water for livestock and other uses.
Andrea Wood, Driskill’s daughter, and Matthew Wood, Driskill’s son-in-law, own land in the area and were part of a group of landowners who were supposedly affected by drilling in the area for water by the city of Gillette.
Driskill said he does not believe this is a conflict of interest because he doesn’t own any part of the ranch. He added that he doesn’t represent the Woods anymore than he represents a resident of Crook, Weston or Campbell counties.
When the Woods started having problems with their wells, they went to him, but wanting to stay out of it, he told them to speak instead with Rep. Tyler Lindholm, R-Sundance.
He said he doesn’t know if the Woods had planned to take the advantage of the amendment.
Sen. Michael Von Flatern, R-Gillette, wouldn’t say whether he thinks it was a conflict of interest, but he said he does not believe Driskill introduced the amendment with the intent of personal gain.
Several attempts to contact Matthew and Andrea Wood in the last week by phone and email were unsuccessful.
The amendment would allow up to 200 homes in Crook County to tap into the Madison water pipeline that’s been under construction for several years.
Those 200 users would be allowed to use more water than Campbell County users and pay less than they do.
The average customer in Gillette uses 5,000 gallons a month in the winter and 20,000 gallons a month during the summer, according to the city. The amendment would allow Crook County residents to use up to 1 million gallons per year and for livestock.
Gillette water users pay $3.95 per thousand gallons. Driskill’s amendment said the Crook County users get the same water for 95 cents for the same amount.
Because of the amendment, the city decided not to accept $4.5 million in state money to continue the Regional Water System projects it had planned for the next few years.
It is the city’s stance that if the money was accepted with the amendment in place, it would be in violation of state statute, decades-old water laws and the original Madison Pipeline agreement.
Driskill disagrees.
“If the state of Wyoming agrees they’re going to do something and they sign off on it, it is no longer illegal,” he said.
The city is the only agency that has a problem with the amendment, he added. The amendment was “very workable for the state engineers and the (Wyoming) Water Development Commission, it was workable for the governor or he would’ve vetoed it.”
In August, the DEQ was notified about quantity and quality issues of two existing and two deeper, private domestic wells 18 miles northeast of Moorcroft.
According to the city, several individuals from Crook County contacted the DEQ and enlisted the help from Sen. Driskill “to sponsor a baseless claim that the acid fracking of wells 11 and 12 was the cause of the diminished water quality in several private wells in Crook County.”
The new Madison pipeline project includes five water wells that are all in Crook County. Wells 11 and 12 were scheduled to be online this summer and wells 13, 14 and 15 were optimistically scheduled for next year.
In November, several individuals from Crook County sent a letter to the DEQ, the Wyoming State Engineer’s Office, the Wyoming Water Development Commission and the Wyoming State Land and Investment Board requesting the Madison project be shut down.
Specifically, the landowners didn’t want any more water being dumped on their property, referring to water discharge after acidizing cleanup, pump testing and other discharge activities.
On Dec. 1, the DEQ granted the request and halted the project, meaning that the progress on wells 11 and 12 that would have given the city an additional 4 million gallons per day this summer was stopped indefinitely.
That’s when the contractor for the project, Layne Christensen Company, terminated its contract with the city.
Two months later, the DEQ met with the city of Gillette and found that nearly half of the 55 wells tested by the DEQ tested positive for either low or high pH levels.
The DEQ said the original complaint came from a resident near Carlile who said his water “had become acidic.”
When that water became acidic is a question the DEQ, city of Gillette or anyone at the SEO might never answer.
Gillette Utilities Director Mike Cole said the city has since been able to retain Layne Christensen Co., but the company is “proceeding with caution.”
Meanwhile in Cheyenne
As the results for the well tests were still coming in, state legislators were meeting in Cheyenne for the bi-annual budget session.
The omnibus water bill is a piece of legislation that is passed annually and authorizes design, construction, funding and other parts of water development projects throughout the state.
Every year since the Madison Pipeline project started, the city has applied for different grants from the state that already have been approved and also applies to use money collected by the capital facilities tax that pays for Gillette’s portion of the project.
Basically, money is already set aside for the Madison Pipeline and the extension project to other Campbell County subdivisions, and as a formality, the city asks the state for a certain amount of that money every year to keep the projects moving.
Sen. Michael Von Flatern said Driskill introduced an amendment to the omnibus water bill on the day of the bill’s final reading.
The amendment, although just 16 lines, would upend years of Wyoming state statute, according to the city. It has argued that it violates several stipulations in the original Gillette Regional Water Supply System Joint Powers Agreement.
“He did tell me the day before. I just thought I had an understanding” of the amendment, Von Flatern said. He thought the $4.5 million grant was for the pipeline project, instead of the regional extensions. It wasn’t until after the bill had passed that he learned more about the amendment.
The bill was discussed in a conference committee, which happens whenever the House and the Senate’s versions of a bill have differences that need to be reconciled. Driskill said the city “could’ve had somebody there, saying we have a problem with this. The city sent no one (and) it passed.”
“I didn’t know they were meeting, and I should’ve,” Von Flatern said. “I probably had a committee meeting at that time, and I already knew the conference would agree.”
Von Flatern said most conference committees don’t accept testimony, and even if this one did, and the city had representatives there, it didn’t stand a chance.
“They would agree with whatever Ogden said,” he said of the committee. “There’s that group of people really committed to the ‘rancher’s always right’ kind of attitude.”
And the DEQ’s testing had not yet been completed, so the city didn’t have any results to present to the committee.
While the DEQ didn’t respond to requests for information, Von Flatern said the department has told him that Gillette’s wells aren’t the problem.
“We’ve been found to be innocent,” Von Flatern said of the DEQ’s study.
As of Wednesday, the department found “no communication issues with the Madison wells at all” in the first 2,000 feet, Von Flatern said.
That means there is no leak from the city’s wells, he said, adding that the DEQ would finish testing by the end of July.
If Driskill tries to “pull the same stunt” in next year’s legislative session, Von Flatern said he’ll be more informed and better prepared to “try to kill his amendment.”
Driskill said it shouldn’t matter whether the city is innocent or guilty, “I just ask that they be a good neighbor.”
Carter-King said Gillette could still possibly help Crook County with its water needs. It’s speculative at this point, she said, but right now there is no water to give.
Gillette itself is near capacity in the summer and with the most recent delays, there is no definitive timeline for when wells 11 and 12 will be ready to go.
If the city were to provide water to Crook County residents tomorrow, it would be stretched thin, said city utilities director Mike Cole.
The city’s current maximum capacity is 14 million gallons per day, but Cole said “realistically, 12 million is our comfort level,” adding that he gets nervous when it goes above that mark.
In 2016, the peak was 11.8 million gallons in one day, and last year, it was 11.9 million.
When the five new wells are completed and hooked up, the city’s capacity will increase by 10 million gallons per day. Then, it would be able to handle the extra customers in Crook County, Cole said.
The ultimate goal is to provide 35 million gallons per day, which Cole said should supply a community of 57,000 people. The pipeline is sized for that, it’s all a matter of adding wells as the demand rises.
Seven years after the city broke ground on the pipeline project, it is 95 percent complete, Cole said. All the city is waiting for is the DEQ to finish its testing.
“The wells are drilled and in place, it’s a matter of confirming the size of motors and pumps we need,” he said, adding that the DEQ will give him direction on this once it finishes the testing.
The regional extension project is about 25 percent finished, Cole said.
Extensions for the American Road, Freedom Hills and Meadow Springs subdivisions will cost $4 million, and it will cost $2.7 million for the Fox Ridge, Rozet Ranchettes and Buckskin subdivisions to hook onto the Madison. The omnibus water bill would have earmarked $4.5 million for the city to use.
Layne Christensen Co. had asked to terminate its contract with the city because of the project being delayed for months. Cole said it should have been done six months ago.
Driskill said the city is running a smear campaign against him. He said that after he posted about the issue on Facebook, City Administrator Pat Davidson asked him to refrain from making any comments on social media or talking to media outlets.
He backed off, and watched the city tell its side of the story. He said he called the city offices three times last week and left messages for Davidson, but as of Friday afternoon, the city administrator had yet to call him back.
“I won’t let the city run loose and run me over,” he said. “What I hate is a government that will misrepresent the facts in order to not be a good neighbor, and the city has absolutely done that.”
“What they’ve done is taken an issue that should’ve been dealt with quietly and turned it into a smear campaign,” he added.
According to maps provided by the city of Gillette, there are eight to 10 landowners in the DEQ’s study area.
Attempts to contact several of the landowners were made in the last week but with little success.
Joey Kanode, one of the landowners, declined to comment.
Minnie Williams, another landowner, said she has had at least two water wells that were affected in the last few years and is concerned about the Madison activity but didn’t want to say much more until the final results of testing came in.
Driskill said the landowners are afraid of speaking out against the city.
“They don’t want the bad publicity,” he said. “They don’t want their names drug through the mud.”
City Attorney Tony Reyes said that when the amendment passed, his office received several calls from Crook County residents and area landowners about how they could apply for city water under the new rules.
Because there is no application process on the books at the city and because they city had no intention on allowing Crook County to use the water (at least at this time), Reyes could not help them.
He also said he kept no official record of who called and when they did. Most of the people, about a handful, called about the time the amendment was passed, which was in March.
Driskill said he’s unhappy that the situation remains unresolved.
“I challenge (the city) to come with any proposal other than ‘No,’” he said.
Driskill said he recently proposed a solution that would allow up to 195 taps in Crook County that could use up to 480,000 gallons per year for domestic purposes, and there also would be six taps for livestock use that would get up to a million gallons per year. Each customer would be charged the same rate as a Gillette resident.
“I have no clue what (the city’s) doing with that because they never got back to me,” he said.
It’s not the first time he’s put forth a solution, he said. Last fall, when the problem was still in its early stages, he proposed that the city provide four temporary emergency taps for homes and livestock in Crook County. It was approved by the state and wouldn’t have set a precedent, he said.
“We’ll have to see and look at this on a case-by-case basis,” she said.
Driskill said he doesn’t have any anger toward the city, just “great sadness,” and believes Crook County and the city can come to a solution if they work together.
But if things continue the way they’ve gone so far, he said, “There’s only one way to go, and it’s for it to get worse.”