The Bates Hole water basin southwest of Casper features solid examples of neighborly cooperation, stream rehabilitation and sustainable water development.

That was the message during Thursday night's "Common Waters" lecture series at Casper College, which focused on the Bates Hole area as a working ranch creek.

"Bates Hole is managed as a common resource for the common good," said lecture series co-director Anne MacKinnon. As a result, water flows are available for longer periods of time to more people, who carefully put every drop of water to good use - for themselves, their neighbors, and for fish and wildlife.

Local ranchers Dan and Charlie Scott have a 1886 water right in the Bates Hole basin - the most senior in the area. Their neighbors, like Jim Nall, credit them with using their water rights to benefit not only the Scott ranching operations, but their neighbors as well. Fields throughout the basin are irrigated to encourage "return flow" - irrigation water that finds its way back to streams and can be used again by downstream irrigators.

"We try and be fair," Dan Scott said.

Stream rehabilitation

Lawn Creek, one of the many tributaries in the basin, is an example of how a heavily-grazed, badly eroding stream can be rehabilitated. Joe Meyer, a physical scientist with the Bureau of Land Management, talked about the cooperative rehabilitation project.

"If you don't get the local landowner involved, you won't get anywhere," Meyer said.

Fortunately, Meyer and BLM rangeland specialist Charley Fifield obtained the enthusiastic cooperation of rancher Pete Garrett. Working with Garrett, Wyoming Game and Fish's Travis Cundy and the Bureau of Reclamation, the BLM launched a Lawn Creek project that included:

- Blading steep headwall erosion cuts down and back so willows and other plants could be planted to reduce bank erosion.

- Driving in pilings and importing large boulders to secure streambeds from further erosion.

- Placement of boulders to slow down stream flow and resultant erosion, creating deeper pools and fish habitat.

- Fencing off the downstream reaches of Lawn Creek from cattle grazing and planting stream bank vegetation.

- Developing natural springs into alternative sources of water, via drilling, pumps, tanks and solar panels to run the pumps. The springs were in the higher elevations and allowed cattle to graze on forage that would normally be unused because it was too far away from a water source.

- Instituting rotational grazing patterns.

- Using prescribed burns in a mosaic pattern that improved forage conditions for cattle and habitat for wildlife.

The results have been impressive, Meyer said. He showed a series of before and after photographs of Lawn Creek. Featuring lush vegetation on stream banks, with erosion dramatically curbed, the stream has vibrant riparian vegetation, cattle are grazing the high country and the prescribed burns have improved forage and habitat.

Before the BLM rehab project, said Chuck Harnish, a Department of Environmental Quality hydrologist, "Ten percent of the area was taking 80 percent of the grazing impact." By fencing off the stream and developing high country water sources, he said, cattle grazing was well dispersed and forage was better utilized.

"It was definitely worth it," said Garrett, who continues rehab projects on a smaller scale.

Smart engineering

Like many ranchers in the arid West, Garrett has had the experience of having flash floods wipe out his irrigation infrastructure every decade or so. After he lost his second dam, he decided to do something different - he built an irrigation diversion structure that worked with, rather than against, a stream.

"You have to think like a stream," said Harnish, echoing Aldo Leopold's famous dictum to "think like a mountain."

Rather than build a diversion dam far downstream from a headgate and higher than surrounding banks, Garrett used carefully placed boulders to create a pool for his headgate, yet allow excess water to spill back into the middle of the stream, rather than chew away at the banks. The result was a diversion structure that could easily shrug off a flash flood, rather than be destroyed.

The next presentation of the "Common Waters" series is 7 p.m. Oct. 16, and focuses on urban growth along a mountain creek - Garden Creek. Star Lane Center students who have studied the creek for several years, Garden Creek residents and scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey and Environmental Protection Agency will be on hand.