Quote:
Originally Posted by TreeBeard
The controversy is, and with the Wilkes in particular, is that they are using their lands to deny others access to public lands. The Wilkes have also been accused of attempting to obtain water rights at the expense of others by litigation and string arm tactics. Does their ownership of these lands give them those rights? Can they deny you passage to public lands? That is what they are apparently doing.
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I'm and Idaho native and have lived here all my life.
It's no surprise that the Wilkes are seeking the water rights on their properties. Water rights will eventually become more valuable than land as the west continues to grow; everyone needs water to survive, after all.
Idaho is headwaters country. This is one of the places where the mountain snow pack feeds the rivers and the rivers here feed the other rivers that supply states like Nevada and California the water they need for their populations. Every state needs a reliable, secure water supply for it's citizens.
That security comes through water rights. Those who own the rights own first use of the water, and when it comes to securing the rights, headwaters are the most reliable and bountiful source in Idaho.Even in droughts, the snow will still fall on the mountains and turn to ice in the winters. This is nature's storage tank for every warmer place.
Those who own first rights get all the water they need, while those downstream always have to negotiate for the rest of the water. In the past, underground natural aquifers collected and stored mountain runoff in huge quantity, but many of these aquifers have been depleted, and for many cities, those deep wells that pump the water up are running dry.
So the only way to recharge them is to cut down on the usage and sent the water into them with injection wells or from natural drainage from a river. It takes many years to refill an aquifer, so the recharge is done yearly, sending some water down while allowing the use of other water from the same source. This means most of the irrigated farms in the west have to stay dry for weeks longer than before, or irrigate less.
It also makes water a vital cash crop. The county who can pay the most tends to get the most. The farmers who can pay the highest rates have the most water security. And the guy who owns the headwaters lands ends up with most of the money that's being paid.
The State gets in the middle of it as the manager/controller since all water is essentially connected underground. And the rivers are the main recharge source. So every spring, some river water is diverted to aquifer recharge all over the west.
Here in Idaho, there is a grandfather clause in the water rights. The oldest rights are the most secure. So the senior rights holder can more water than his next-door neighbor who secured his rights later. Each right has a maximum limit that's based on acreage owned.
So for someone like the Wilkes, owning 6,000 acres of mountainous land with secure water rights is like owning a reserve bank. All that ice and snow that makes water might not be needed now downstream, but it will be in the future, and if it's close to Boise, that will be a short future. When the guy owns the spigot, he can turn in on or turn it off.
When it comes to public roads, there's another wrinkle. If a person owns the land on either side of the road, who actually owns the road surface? Him or the state? And who owns the air space directly above the roadway?
If the claim is made that the state owns the surface, then there is nothing illegal when gateposts are erected on either side of it on private land and a suspended gate that does not touch the road spans between the posts.
So who owns the air? After all, that gate can be only an inch above the road's surface and still be within the legal rights of property ownership. No human or vehicle is an inch tall.
The other thing about the roads is many of them were constructed privately by logging companies or land owners.
After the area was logged in state land, the roads remained and became public use through consent only, and often with no consent at all because the owners either didn't need the road anymore and didn't care who used it enough to press their ownership.
In both state and federal forests, the state or forest service sometimes built the roads as a way of regulation, and then once logged, allowed public usage informally, with nothing written on paper as to who owns what.
Other times, private owners simply allowed the public to use them even more informally. So over time, these road's ownership could be questioned by either the owners or the public.
That kind of question is decided in court, and while the decision is in process, the legal owners can, and have, gated the roads and stopped public access. Sometimes those gates stay up, sometimes they come down.
So it's all very complicated, and I expect it to become even more complicated in the near future, as, has already been mentioned, we have an Administration that is intent on selling federal lands off or leasing them with 99-years leases. that means more roads are going to be closed all over the country.
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