Bushwhacked_ Life in George W. Bush's America Large Print - Molly Ivins [70]
Swartz is a striking man with Paul Newman–blue eyes and an aquiline nose. Dressed in a plaid Western shirt, jeans, and boots, he looked like a cowboy from central casting, but he’s the real deal. He wrests a living out of a ranch situated on coal-burnout land that requires forty acres to graze one cow—in wet years. “My grandpa homesteaded this place in nineteen-four,” Swartz said. “He came out here as a cattle foreman for one of those English barons who had enough money to take advantage of all this land being given away. When the Englishman gave up, Grandpa bought out his brand and cattle and took a homestead. Then my grandma took a homestead. Later, my dad and his two sisters took homesteads. My dad helped some World War I veterans set up a homestead. He proved them up and helped them build their cabins. When they left, he bought them out.”
Ranchers who homesteaded the rugged hills and breaks of northern Wyoming had large tracts of land but little water. Annual rainfall averages eleven inches. But it’s been a while since rainfall has been average. For five years the region has been in the grip of a drought that has ranchers caught between cloudless skies and the cattle market. All over the region, ranchers are selling off cattle in an effort to survive the drought. By the time Ed and his son, Tony, finished branding and castrating calves and “selling off dries” in May 2001, they had reduced their Black Angus herd of 360 to 220. The drought-ravaged land can’t provide for much more than that. “You’ve got to be a good manager,” Swartz said. “This isn’t farm country. This is grazing country. Look at those hills out there. The only thing those hills are good for is to graze ruminant animals.” To water his livestock, Swartz has built tanks he fills with well water. He’s buried miles of pipe below the freeze line and uses gravity to move the water from the tanks to his pastures. He didn’t ask the government to do it. “Instead of pissin’ and moanin’ about water, I did it myself. It’s my outfit. I want to have something for my son, and if I do it right, it’ll be here.”
But Swartz depends on natural irrigation of the rich alluvial creek beds on his ranch to provide grazing and hay for his cattle. He and his father built thirteen “spreader dikes”—staggered berms that extend two thirds of the way across the streams at right angles, reaching out like fingers from alternating sides of the bank. They force the snowmelt or rainwater to meander from bank to bank rather than flowing down the channel. By the time the creek dries up in summer, grasses in its bed are thoroughly watered. Two irrigation dams allow Swartz to flood hay meadows beyond the creek bed, then return the water to the stream. “For years, if there was a flood come down that crick, hell, we’d just kick it out onto the meadows. All these years, we’ve never killed any vegetation. My father never soured a meadow. I never soured a meadow. The cricks are the heart of this ranch. Kill the cricks, and we can’t make a living here.”
Coal-bed methane wells produce far more water than gas. To release the million cubic metric feet of gas produced when a handful of wells were drilled in 1991, three million barrels of water were pumped out of the ground. By 2001, the 250 million metric cubic feet of gas produced in Wyoming produced 513 million barrels of water. Hitting the coal-bed methane targets the Bush energy planners set for the Powder River Basin will require enough pumping to cover the state of Rhode Island with one foot of water.
Since 1999 some of that water has been flowing down Wildcat Creek and through Ed