Ed Swartz

“I am a full-time rancher from Campbell County, Wyoming, the third generation doing that. My son is a full-time rancher. He is the fourth generation on the ranch. And that ranching is all we do for a living. And regarding this coalbed methane issue, I am downstream from where water is being dumped. And that water is coming down the creek, and it is loaded with salt. And it is pulling alkali out of my soil, which natural water never did. And it has destroyed all the vegetation in my creek bottom, and I don’t have any grazing there for the winter months. And when that salt gets out on my hay meadows, which it probably will with flood, I am going to wind up losing my hay meadows. And without the hay meadows, that ranch is not a viable economic outfit. It has been a good ranch for years and years, and treated a lot of generations of the Swartzes pretty fair. But it is being threatened by water being dumped. There is no production whatsoever of coalbed methane or water being dumped from my own ranch. It is coming from up the creek, and it is really, really damaging me. Last winter, the ice froze over the top of that coalbed methane water; it caused a lot of erosion in the creek channel as well as leaving the deposits of salt, which you will see on the first two pages of pictures in your handout there. And that creek used to be full of grass that I grazed all winter long. The natural water didn’t kill it; methane water does. The State of Wyoming refuses to stop that water from being dumped. They say I have to prove damages to my meadows.”