Newspaper should have went directly to the source for facts about reservoir project

Dear editor:
The Basin Republican Rustler has now published two negative, inaccurate and misleading stories about the Alkali Creek Reservoir project in the Hyattville area.
The article in last week’s paper was a reprint of an article in Wyofile.  Here are the key points I shared with Wyo-File and its reporter regarding their reporting:
• The ACR sponsor is the Nowood Watershed Improvement District. The district is a public district formed according to Wyoming statutes. The Wyoming Water Development Commission does not have the authority to have private irrigation companies sponsor projects.
• The reservoir will hold 8,900 acre feet of stored water, 2,900 acre feet of which will be used by the Wyoming Game and Fish for a flat water fishery and flows downstream of the reservoir to maintain fish populations in the lower Nowood river. The G&F has determined that the Nowood River is one of only three rivers in the state with a full complement of native fish species. In addition, there will be recreational opportunities for citizens of the state on a 300 surface acre reservoir with boat ramp and parking area. I’m sure that there would be some bird watching happening, but to only mention bird watching in your article I believe is misleading. To only say that the reservoir will store 6,000 acre feet for irrigators is not accurate.
• You reported that the reservoir would serve 33 irrigators. We presently have 35 shareholders but most of the shareholders are family farms and ranches that have multiple families involved with the operations. The number of irrigators benefitting from this project far exceeds your assertion in the article.
• Although you did not address the funding source in your article, I believe it is important. The funds that WWDC uses are mineral royalty proceeds. Many years ago, a foresighted legislature set up the WWDC funding mechanism so that future Wyoming citizens could benefit from the state’s extractive industries long after the direct income from those industries was gone. ACR is a prime example of how Wyoming citizens could have benefits for hundreds of years from an investment in water storage now.
I would like to express my real disappointment that our local newspaper cares so little about accurate reporting that they think it is OK to print articles without any verification of facts or expression of differing points of view.
This project is estimated to be an $80,000,000 project providing many jobs to the area during construction. After it is completed, it will provide a 300-acre reservoir for fishing and recreation as well as late-season irrigation water for farms and ranches in the Big Horn Basin.
The state is providing most of the money to build the reservoir and the irrigation water shareholders will be paying for all of the operation and maintenance costs going forward.
If the newspaper has decided they are against the project, they should state their reasons and be up front about it. I think it will benefit the communities in the area.
If they are worried it is a poor use of their tax money, I can assure them that their tax money will be spent somewhere else in the state for another reservoir that will benefit other communities. 
All of the Nowood Watershed Improvement District board members, as well as the project engineers at Tri Hydro Engineering and the Wyoming Water Development Office, have been available for interviews if accurate reporting would have been the goal.    
John Joyce, chairman
Nowood Watershed
Improvement District