Lowery Water Rights

At a recent gathering, Owyhee County cattlemen Tim Lowery and Paul Nettleton will be remembered in Idaho history as champions in the fight to protect state water law. Their story begins in 1987 when their stock water rights on public grazing allotments were challenged by the federal government. Rancher, Tim Lowery, who runs a 300 head cow/calf operation gets to the heart of the issue. "If you boil it down there are two things. Number one, the feds were after the state's water and to overturn Idaho water law and two, the state assisted them rather than fighting it. That put us in the position that we were." Over the next 10 years the two cowboys with attorneys from California fought the feds and the state who eventually sided with the federal government in court and in what is now known across the West as the Joyce decision, the Idaho Supreme Court ruled in favor of the cowboys. "Joyce decision, one of the things that ruled about the federal governments arguments was that it was a total misunderstanding of Western water law. So one has to wonder with the state going along with it, did the state misunderstand Idaho water law or did the state along with the feds, not believe that the Idaho water law was proper and needed to be surreptitiously changed.