CAPPing off the aquifer protection debate

City and county officials approved a joint Casper Aquifer Protection Plan last week, endorsing new boundaries and development restrictions for the fragile land above a vital water resource.

At long last, the community has a Casper Aquifer Protection Plan.

Both the Laramie City Council and the Albany County Commission agreed on a final version of the document during separate meetings last week. In doing so, they bring to a close a multi-year debate that’s pitted clean water advocates against landowners and their allies.

The plan seeks to protect Laramie’s main source of drinking water by limiting what can be built on the ground above and outlining requirements for further development or continued occupation. It pulls together several studies conducted through the years to redefine the protection area’s boundary and draw a more complete picture of the threats facing the underground body of water.

“We are blessed with an amazing, amazing resource, but it also is fragile in many places,” Commission Chair Pete Gosar said during the commission’s meeting Tuesday.

And it also means, for the first time, that the city and county will refer to the same, unified aquifer protection plan — each government having had their own individual plan for more than a decade.

“It is really hard to get two governments to work together and in the same direction,” Mayor Brian Harrington said during last week’s council meeting. “I think it's something that we're all going to leave this process quite proud of. (After) our time in office, we’ll be proud of this one.”

The plan enjoyed widespread support from government officials. It was endorsed by the city’s planning commission, the county’s planning and zoning commission and the joint environmental advisory committee. Landing before the Laramie City Council last week, the plan earned a unanimous vote from all nine councilors. The councilors even led a round of applause after the plan’s passage.

“It’s quite a document,” Councilor Erin O’Doherty said, praising the vast amount of data and the wide range of community input that informed the plan. “It’s like giving birth.”

The Albany County Commissioners were less united. They voted 2-1 along party lines, with Commissioner Terri Jones being the only elected government official at the city or county level to cast a vote against the plan.

Jones has been opposed to the idea of aquifer protection for years, viewing the plan’s restrictions as an unnecessary burden on landowners. She offered an impassioned rebuke of the plan during the commission’s meeting last week.

“One subject that the entire world will agree on is that all humans and animals have a right to clean and safe water,” Jones said. “However, overregulation of land above and around water, be it surface water or aquifers, without agreed upon science, is government overreach at its finest. The overregulation intentionally hurts — financially rapes — landowners of their ability to use their land for its highest and best use.”

Gosar objected to this characterization, pointing to the studies informing the protection plan that show contamination levels are higher than they would be in the absence of any development. He added that further contamination, of the sort likely to occur without some form of regulations, would not only threaten the health of the citizens the commissioners are tasked with protecting, but cost the county potentially tens of millions of dollars to rectify.

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” he said.

Jones also said she was disappointed that there was no discussion of compensating landowners for the profits they might have made in a less regulated environment. Jones suggested — as she has frequently on a variety of topics — that the end goal of this effort is not the effort’s stated goal, but a more generalized scheme to advance government power.

“If this was your land, you would be screaming bloody murder, but it's not your family members that are paying the price for this over regulation,” Jones said. “These additional regulations are not about protecting water, but giving county and city governments more power and control over people.”

Gosar countered that aquifer protection benefits some 80-90 percent of Albany County’s population given just how many county residents live in the city of Laramie. These concerns, he said, outweigh the financial interests of those who could contaminate the aquifer by developing the land above it.

“I don't know that anybody has lost anything,” Gosar said. “That land is exactly the way it was purchased. Now maybe they cannot do what they intended to do in the future. That's not what government is for. Government’s not to help the dreams of other people … I understand your point of view. We just disagree.”

Jones’ arguments highlight a reality of this process that no one mentioned Tuesday:

This plan would not have passed if Republicans were more successful during the 2022 elections.

In general, local Democrats won big in 2022. They retained most county-level positions, including control of the county commission. Following an expensive election season, Gosar ultimately kept his seat while Jones replaced another Republican, leaving the commission with a 2-1 split.

The vast majority of issues before the county do not fall along party lines, but the aquifer issue has reliably divided the parties. Democratic candidates have favored strengthening aquifer protections while Republicans have opposed it.

Developing the CAPP started well before the 2022 election and would have likely been defeated in an alternate universe where Republicans controlled the commission 2-1.

The CAPP was substantially finished last year, but various groups and government boards tinkered with it for several months before sending the plan up through the official approval process.

“It was an arduous process, but I think something like this really needs to be,” Gosar said.

The CAPP approval process was distinct from the simultaneous efforts to update aquifer protection-related regulations. The regulations are binding law whereas the CAPP is a guiding document.