9377

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 9377
• Author: Colorado Water Workshop.
• Title: 16th Annual Colorado Water Workshop.
• USFW Year: 1991.
• USFW - Doc Type: Western State College.
• Copyright Material: NO

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told them.
Into this deeply polarized situation, a few people like Dick
Ormsbee began to drop seeds of a different way of doing things.
Ormsbee has insisted for years that what an irrigator wants is
just what a fish wants; a good supply of cool, clean water. It
may seem surprising that a farmer would care whether the water
was cool or not, but in fact, warm water nurtures weeds in
irrigation ditches, which means that less water gets to the
crops. Ormsbee has obviously thought about all this, and in a
voice as quiet and deep as one of those shady pools, he concludes
that, "It is well that the fish and the farmer want the same
things from the river.."
They don't, of course, want exactly the same things. The
farmers do need to put the water in different places than the
fish would like it to be. But Ormsbee's point is that the
differences are not as clear-cut as farmers and fishermen often
think they are. The challenge, not only on the Bitterroot but
throughout the Clark Fork basin (and in other basins too), is to
get the people who are involved with the river to understand that
what divides them is less important than what they have in
common. That is a tough challenge, but it is one which is being
met in creative ways throughout the basin.
Tom Ruffano, a rancher from the stevenville area, sits with
Ormsbee on the Conservation District Board of Supervisors.
Ruffano's family has ranched in the valley for several
generations, so be, although a young man himself understands
quite well the attitude of the old-timers. The core of their
attitude is deeply entrenched in western water law. It boils
down to a simple message from farmers to fishermen: "We were
here first." Not only are they old-timers, but they are also
survivors. They have persevered by knowing how to get the river
to yield them a living. Ruffano argues that these old-timers
"look down on the fishermen because they don't depend on the
water for a living."
Ormsbee doesn't directly depend upon the river for a living
either, but he can see how much of the valley does-and not just
through agriculture. He recognizes, for example, that the
Bitterroot has become a major retirement center- which it clearly
would not be without the attraction of the river. People who
just want to play on the river, or fish in it, or grow old next
to it may not depend upon the river for a living, but their
growing number mean that the valley's economy increasingly
depends upon the river. After observing the river and its
economy for over sixty years, Orsmbee reaches a simple
conclusion: "Since the river is the basis of the economic life
of the valley, we have to take care of it."
Orsmbee tried to do his part by serving on the Conservation
District Board. But he and other board members began to see that
the care of the river would have to include more parties.
Orsmbee tells how he and Tom Murphy showed up early for a board
meeting one warm summer evening several years ago. As they sat
in the shade of a tree outside the meeting hall, talking about
the river, the local fisheries manager for the Montana Department
of Fish, wildlife and Parks walked by. "We sat him down .between