April 5, 2008--Wyoming asks Supreme Court to toss Montana's water suit (Pueblo Chieftain)
Wyoming’s attorney general asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to dismiss a lawsuit alleging the state’s agriculture and energy industries are using too much water in violation of an interstate agreement. Montana sued its southern neighbor last year. It claimed farmers and other water users along the Powder and Tongue rivers were being harmed by Wyoming’s excessive water use. The dispute between the states stretches beyond this one issue. Scarce water resources coupled with extended drought have turned the states’ shared waterways into a recurrent political battleground. The Tongue and Powder rivers flow through arid regions of northern Wyoming and southern Montana before draining into the Yellowstone River. The Supreme Court suit centers on the Yellowstone River Compact, a 1950 agreement that allocated each state a share of water from the Yellowstone and its tributaries.
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