Five years of drought, low snowpacks and low inflow has left Pathfinder Reservoir only 19 percent full, a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation official told the Casper Rotary Club on Monday.

And if the next two winters and springs yield poor snowpacks in the mountains that feed the North Platte River, Pathfinder may be almost totally dry by the time 2006 rolls around, said John Lawson, the Bureau of Reclamation's Wyoming area manager.

The potential persistence of dry conditions and the lack of water in the reservoirs on the North Platte could spell tough times for the farmers of southeastern Wyoming and western Nebraska, said John Barnes, the surface water administrator at the State Engineer's Office.

Right now, there are only 190,000 acre-feet of water in Pathfinder, a reservoir that can hold 1.1 million acre-feet, Lawson told Casper's Rotarians. An acre-foot is the amount of water it takes to cover an acre with a foot of water.

Upriver at Seminoe Reservoir, things are not much better, he added.

Seminoe can hold about 1 million acre-feet but it currently is only holding 298,000 acre-feet, 29 percent of capacity, Lawson said.

If recent low-snowpack trends continue - 2002 saw the least amount of water coming into Seminoe in 100 years and 2004 had the sixth-lowest amount - BuRec will be left facing some "difficult decisions," Lawson said.

These difficult decisions could even include bringing waters down in one of the two reservoirs to near-empty levels, Lawson said after his presentation.

Because the Game and Fish department needs a flow in the North Platte between the two reservoirs, it is likely Seminoe would keep the bulk of what water would be left between the two, and Pathfinder would see its levels lowered to between 50,000 and 90,000 acre-feet, or between 4.5 and 8.1 percent of capacity, he added.

Seminoe and Pathfinder are by far the largest storage reservoirs BuRec has on the North Platte in Wyoming, Lawson said.

The total storage capacity of all of BuRec's North Platte reservoirs in Wyoming is 2.8 million acre-feet. Seminoe and Pathfinder contribute 2.1 million acre-feet, or 75 percent, to this total, he added.

Pathfinder having low water levels is bad news for the western Nebraska and southeastern Wyoming farmers who live in the irrigation districts that depend upon the reservoir's water, said Barnes in a telephone interview.

For the past few years, these farmers have seen their water supplies cut off around the middle of August, to the detriment of such late-season crops as sugar beets and alfalfa, Barnes said. A dry Pathfinder would mean these growers would see their water cut off even earlier in the year, he added.

According to John Naquin, the Central Wyoming Regional Water District's manager of operations, low levels of water in Pathfinder and Seminoe could only really impact Casper during the month of April.

For the past few years, the district has had to buy water from BuRec during April because of calls placed on the North Platte during that month, Naquin said in a telephone interview. If BuRec has less water to buy, it could become a problem for the district if it needs to buy water from the bureau in the future, Naquin added.

Hopefully, Lawson said, this winter and spring will bring a large snowpack that will allow Pathfinder, Seminoe and other North Platte Reservoirs to begin recovering.

Such a snowy season is not unprecedented, he added. Back in 1992, levels in Pathfinder were even lower than they are today. But the wet winter and spring of 1993 brought huge inflows into the two reservoirs and helped things immensely, Lawson said.

"I don't want it to sound like the sky is falling," he said following his presentation. There are some indications that things are getting better, he added.

Recent rains have helped the reservoirs by moisturizing soils so that the ground won't suck up as much of this spring's melt, Lawson said. And long-term forecasts predict that precipitation levels in the mountains that feed the North Platte could go either way this spring - higher or lower than average, he said.

Staff writer Brendan Burke can be reached at (307) 266-0589 or Brendan.Burke@casperstartribune.net.