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[font "Poor Richard"][green][size 3][cool]A few years ago I was fishing a small river near Driggs, Idaho. All of a sudden I see a tanker truck backing up to the river just about where I was fishing. The driver sets up his equipment and starts drawing water out of the river. Needless to say I was upset not only about him distrubing my fly-fishing session but there were a lot of fry where he was sucking up water. I packed up and headed for town. There I went to a shop that sold fishing supplies etc, and mentioned what had happened down at the river to the owner of the shop. He was quite upset stating that the development company working near by didn't have authorization to draw water from the river. He thanked me and started phoning people about what I had reported. I could done nothing. Hey it wasn't even my home state. But for sure this is my country and someone has to take the bull by the horns when the matador is out to lunch. One person in this case made a difference and so can you![/size][/green][/font]
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[cool][#0000ff]Was that the Teton? Great trout stream. Fished it since I was a kid (with a stone fishing rod).[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]That kind of stuff always gets my hackles up. Most folks figure that "water is water" and they can use it however they want. [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]The year before I left Arizona, to move back to Utah, there was a story about a rancher in rural Arizona that had a runin with the forest service. The farmer had a stock tank into which he pumped water for his horses and cattle. Arizona was in the middle of a drought, and he paid dearly for the water he accessed from another farmer's well. [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]The conflict? There was a small grass fire a few miles from the farmer's ranch and a forest service helicopter kept dropping their bucket into the farmer's pond for water to drop on the fire...without authorization or a permit. They could have flown only a couple of minutes in another direction to get water from a big lake on government land.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]The helicopter pilots "flipped off" the farmer when he tried to wave them off, so he brought out his shotgun and peppered the helicopter with birdshot. It did no damage, but he was hauled into court and got a federal charge out of it...and no compensation for draining his high priced water from his stock tank.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]There are far too many stories of private companies and government agencies either appropriating water from vulnerable sources or dumping harmful agents into fragile environments. Seems like nobody cares and nobody will take responsibility for it.[/#0000ff]
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[font "Poor Richard"][green][size 3]Hi there TubeDude, Yes indeed it was the Teton. Nice little river. Hear that further north it carves its way through a pretty canyon where the fishing is really good.[/size][/green][/font]
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[cool][#0000ff]I've heard that too, but we always fished the flat stretches. Got plenty of fish so didn't need to go lookin'.[/#0000ff]
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