TORRINGTON – The Goshen County Rendezvous Center hosted the 2024 Goshen Irrigation District (GID) Annual Meeting and Reports on Tuesday afternoon. 

President Shawn Booth called the meeting to order shortly after 4 p.m. After a short welcome statement, Booth called for a motion to accept last year’s meeting minutes as read. A motion was made, seconded, and the meeting minutes were approved. 

The district #5 nominating committee minutes were read from the past election in January. A motion was made to accept the minutes and approved. 

Randy Steben, secretary treasure presented the yearly treasurers report. A motion was made to accept the report as presented and the report was approved. 

“Thanks to everyone for coming out this afternoon. We have a pretty big agenda tonight. There’s a lot of updates about what’s been going on the past year here,” manager Kevin Strecker said in his welcoming address. “We’re just going to touch briefly on some of the things, some of the highlights in the past year.” 

Strecker proceeded to thank his employees for their hard work noting the length of employment of many seasoned employees. 

“We had a pretty good water year here. We brought water in for an early run and got five inches of rain, so we ended up doing a split run and went back on in June. We were able to run as long as we needed this year, there was an ample supply,” Strecker said. “Of course, you can never get as much water down the ditch as we all would like, we’re working to hopefully better that. We’ve done quite a few big projects over the last year.”

Ryan Allen, waster master and Tyson Gladson, foreman, presented their reports to the district. 

“Just to kind of give a short summary of what happened last year, for us water season started on May 8 last year. As you probably all remember due to excessive rainfall and lack of demand, we shut the canal off on the 15, so unfortunately the yearly run only lasted seven days,” Allen reported. “Water season resumed on May 12, and we ran through September 15. In total, GID ran 104 days last year.”

Gladson spoke on the project updates for GID.

“Going through some of the projects in July 1, 2020 through July 30, 2023, here’s the auto gate basics,” Gladson began. “We actually borrowed these forms from the county so any of the county’s auto gates are the same exact auto gate bases. The cool thing about these things was we were able to pour right there in the yard and then whenever we upgrade our auto gate structures, we go back in with sixteen (gates) as much as possible because let’s face, equipment got bigger over the years and eight-foot auto gate just aren’t working for us,” Gladson explained.

Now, because they can produce the auto gates in advance, the multiple-day project takes less time, according to Gladson. Gladson also stressed GID has taken many training courses on safety. 

After reports were given by both Allen and Gladson, the meeting progressed into a report from the Bureau of Reclamation, Wyoming area office, on snowpack. 

Ryan Altenburg, partner for Western Heritage Consulting and Engineering spoke next. 

“A little about us, Western Heritage, we are a Wyoming based engineering firm based out of Casper, Wyoming,” Peterson said. “We are a firm of people that understand irrigation systems so many of our staff either own farms or ranches and we pay irrigation dues ourselves. We understand what it takes to sit in your seat.”

“The biggest project to date has been our inventory,” Matt Peterson, project manager for Western Heritage Consulting and Engineering said. “Your system is a large system. We’ve looked at 1900 plus structures on site and stopped at every single one of them, assessed what they look like, what they needed, if they needed repairs, and that kind of stuff,” he continued. 

The group then broke for dinner which was served by the Bent Barrels Crooked Arrows 4-H Club followed by desserts by Barbra Smith. 

Water Strategies LLC editor-in-chief irrigation leader, Kris Polly spoke to the board.

“I want to leave you folks with is a hopeful message knowing that you have strong delegation and delegation to support you and your endeavors,” Polly said. “That sees the value of your projects on both sides of the state line and want it to continue.” 

The group moved on to the final guest speaker.

“Alright, as we move along our next speaker that we’re going have come before the landowners is Marcus Krall,” Booth told the group. “He’s a project engineer for HDR. We have been working closely with him now for several years. He has 15 years professional experience on a wide variety of water resource projects. Experience includes dam and reservoirs, tunnels from stations, and other various hydraulic structures.”

Krall spoke on working with contractors and the work done by HDR as project consultant along with Gevan McCoy, project executive and Jake Coibion project manager Atkinson Construction. After a short question and answer period with the landowners, the group moved on to closing the meeting.

In the closing, community members had the opportunity to voice concerns, ask questions and give praise before the election judges, water commissioner Fred Reichert and Steve Schmick gave their report on pervious election. 

Booth then announced the winner of the 50/50 raffle and door prizes before the meeting was officially adjourn.