Cattle ranchers face fight over right to pump water from wells
By
Richard Roesler
The Spokesman Review
January 30, 2009
Article in the Spokane Spokesman-Review
"Environmentalists and cattlemen clashed Thursday over a decades-old law that allows largely unlimited pumping from wells – with no permit – as long as the water is used for livestock.
To ranchers, that’s a common-sense exception that helps agriculture and dates back many decades.
To environmental groups and some Indian tribes, it’s a glaring loophole that’s being wrongly applied to industrial-scale feedlots..."
