For more than three years, ranch families near Hyattville, Wyoming have been negotiating with the Nowood Watershed Improvement District over land the district wants for the proposed Alkali Creek Dam. Now the district has sent at least two of those families a "final offer" — sign over easements across their property in 15 days, or face a lawsuit to take the land anyway.

The easements would let the district run the Anita Ditch across these ranches to feed the reservoir, and if families refuse, the district says it will simply build a bigger, open ditch instead of a buried pipeline — cutting even more into the crop land, pasture, and rangeland these ranches depend on.

One targeted landowner told WyoFile the offer changes nothing: "We support storage if it's sensible, pulling the community together rather than separating it. We will not sign that agreement." Even Wyoming Water Development Office Director Jason Mead has called condemning private land the "nuclear option" that "is not an option that anybody is interested in" — yet that's exactly the path the district is threatening.

A dam meant to help the region's ranchers store water shouldn't have to bulldoze other ranchers to get built. The Nowood Watershed Improvement District and its chairman, Martin Mercer, should withdraw the eminent domain threat and keep negotiating in good faith instead of forcing families off land their families have worked for generations.

Sign the petition to tell the Nowood Watershed Improvement District: stop threatening condemnation of Wyoming ranch land before the July 2027 deadline forces a rushed, unjust land grab.