Congressman Scott Tipton (R-CO) stressed the need for a permanent legislative solution to protect private water rights from federal takings and interference, following today's comments by U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that the agency is, for the time being, backing off of its controversial Groundwater Directive.
"While Chief Tidwell made a comment that the Forest Service is for now holding off on its overreaching Groundwater Directive, he offered no guarantees that the directive won't be back in the future, and in fact, stated that the agency still intends to move forward with it in some form after gathering more input. This provides no certainty for Western water users, who rely on privately-held water rights for their livelihoods, that the federal government won't continue to attempt to come after their rights," said Tipton. "Short of legislation to codify long-held state water law and priority-based systems, as my Water Rights Protection Act seeks to do, the federal government will continue to attempt to take private water rights or restrict water users from accessing them--we've seen it many times before. I will be reintroducing this commonsense bill in the 114th Congress and am currently working with stakeholders and community groups to finalize language to ensure protection for water users from these coordinated, backdoor attempts by the federal government to circumvent state law and trample private water rights."
The Forest Service's proposed rule would have expanded the agency's reach over groundwater, sought to establish new bureaucratic hurdles to interfere with private water users' ability to access their water, and even included a provision that would have essentially put into effect a ski area permit requirement that would have required the transfer of privately held water rights to the government without compensation.
In the 113th Congress, the U.S. House of Representatives passed, with bipartisan support, Congressman Scott Tipton's (R-CO) Water Rights Protection Act (H.R. 3189) to uphold state water law and protect private water rights from uncompensated federal takings. Tipton plans to reintroduce the bill soon for the 114th Congress and is finalizing language.