AFBF Supporting Water Rights Protection Act

The Water Rights Protection Act which is currently supported by the American Farm Bureau Federation and reintroduced in the House this week would bar federal agencies from taking the water rights of ranchers on public range lands.  The bill would stop federal agencies from taking the water rights of land-use permit holders when the users are renewing their use permit.  Those water rights, according to AFBF’s Ryan Yates, are a property right, and should be protected by the Constitution.

“We were seeing new language inserted to these permit renewals that would require a permittee, be it a rancher or another Federal land permittee to transfer over water rights to the Federal government as a condition of that permit renewal.”

Yates says no doubt such requirements would have detrimental impact on ranchers and the western economy as a whole.  The legislation, HR 2939, passed the House in a previous session and also addresses future attempts to take water rights from western ranchers.  Yates says this is an important issue for the current Administration.

“The Trump administration has also weighed in on this issue and in an executive order acouple of months ago directed federal land management agencies to cease in these types of of actions that would require the transfer of the water rights as a condition of permit.”

Yates says farmers and ranchers need to support the bill by reaching out to their elected officials.

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