9377 ‎(2)‎

• 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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they simply kept fighting everyone else by insisting that they
were there first and that was the end of the matter. He credits
Tom Murphy for sitting over kitchen tables with his irrigator
neighbors persuading them that times had changed, Ruffanno
believes that many of his neighbors came to see that "You can't
just fight--you have to get along if you're going to get anything
done in the valley"
Yet if the irrigators changed by expanding their thinking
beyond the simple assertion of "First in time, first in right,"
there was change, too, on the part of many newcomers, Ormsbee,
watching the transformation of the valley through his s-ikty-odd
years there, saes the growing political power of the "fish
people" sterns primarily from an influx of newcomers. Readily
recruited by organizations like Trout Unlimited, these people
"wanted to raise a lot of money and save the river,"" Ormsbee
says, "But,landowners tend to look with dark suspicion on people
who think they can know the river so quickly."
Tom Ruffanno tells a story about old=tuners and newcomers,
weeds are a problem in irrigation ditches, The modern solution
has been to overcome the weeds with an herbicide called xylene.
But xylene also damages fish. An anglers' organization one year
decided on what they thought was a constructive alternativet
they recruited a dozen or so of their members and showed up on
the ditchf ready to pull weeds. But the old_timers could
remember when that was how they controlled weeds, they reiftetbered
crews of over a hundred people working for two or three days on
the ditches, As Ruffanno says, the irrigators laughed this
little hand of anglers right off the farm. Their mistake was
thinking they could know the river too quickly:
Yet newcomers do learn from the river. Ormsbee tell of
retirees who come to the Bitterroot "to be by themselves, to
build a fence around a place, buy a rifle, and be frontiersmen,"
He says it usually takes them about ten years to come to
understand the valley and the river a little better, sitting on
the Conservation District board, he has more than a few of these
people come in with plans for fish ponds on their new places:
"But after a few years, they find it isn't as simple as just
digging a hole. They fight algae and weeds, Eventually, they
turn more to the river as a whole for their satisfaction, rather
than to their own private domain."
Given time, the river itself changes people, and brines them
subtly together. As newcomers gain a deeper appreciation for
their property and the river, they may also come to appreciate
farmer and ranchers in a new way. As Ormsbee says, "Farmers and
stockmen also like to fish. As they get older, they have more
time to do it, They have an appreciation for the aesthetic
values of the river, although they wouldn't call it that, They
like to have this recognized,"
From this perspective, the agreement about a location of
Bitterroot River water was more than a technical solution, it
was also an example of the civilizing influence of the river. As
people mature in their relationship to nature, some of them learn
to appreciate the integrity of a river itself, as opposed to
their own narrow rights to it. There is no point in