Atmosphere Mountainworks designs, cuts and sews backpacks and other outdoor gear in Laramie. Visitors headed to the national parks occasionally stop in to buy packs, but it’s not enough volume to sustain the business. 

“That does happen,” owner Lindsay Olson said, but added “you don’t need a backpack all the time, you don’t need to repurchase those items.” 

Despite rising labor costs and other challenges facing the small Laramie-based company, the constant influx of new people that comes with having a university in town makes a difference, she said.

“I’m grateful that we have that level of tourism because it’s a little bit harder to bank on getting people off the interstate, you know, that are visiting Yellowstone,” said Olson, who has owned Atmosphere Mountainworks since 2018 when she took it over from the previous owner. 

Over 100 outdoor business owners like Olson were surveyed across 18 counties in the new Outdoor Business Needs Assessment and Opportunities 2026 report. In the report, the first comprehensive study of Wyoming’s outdoor recreation economy, researchers looked at data from across the state and identified challenges facing businesses. 

The study shows a significant outdoor recreation economy. The university’s Jay Kemmerer Wyoming Outdoor Recreation Tourism and Hospitality (WORTH) Institute funded the study. Founded Outdoors, a program that supports entrepreneurs in the outdoor sector, performed the survey.

Before this, there was little data on how Wyoming’s outdoor recreation industry was doing, or what challenges these businesses faced. The study found that many in the outdoor industry are unaware of resources designed to support their businesses and their work. 

“Sometimes I think about moving the business to Utah or Colorado where there are more outdoor companies, more industry infrastructure and potentially support,” wrote one business owner who responded to the survey. “Wyoming has a good tax structure, but I’m not seeing enough practical support for businesses like mine.” 

Outdoor recreation accounts for 5.5% of the total wages and salary of Wyoming’s GDP, said Dan McCoy, director of the WORTH Institute. Currently, this sector employs 16,545 people, or about 2.8% of all Wyoming residents.

Researchers also found that 73% of firms surveyed have been around for 10 or more years, which can indicate the existence of barriers to new business owners.

Among Wyoming’s well-established outdoor businesses, North Fork Anglers has been around since 1984. Blair Van Antwerp, who owns the Cody fly shop and guide service, has experienced hiring and permitting challenges that are cropping up around Wyoming.

“As long as, you know, certain things in the Mountain West kind of stay the way they are with public land and access and everything, you know there’s always going to be a desire for people who want to go further into the backcountry and utilize the public land as much as they can.”

Anthony Natale

307 Llama Company is a newer business, having started four years ago when Anthony Natale and his then-partner got tired of carrying their gear for backcountry excursions. Neither of them rode horses, and they wanted something easier to care for, so they tried llamas. 

Though 307 Llama Company hasn’t experienced many challenges, Natale said his business depends on maintaining access to public lands.

Based in Encampment, the company rents trained pack llamas for everything from hunting trips to multiday treks to family backpacking trips.

“As long as, you know, certain things in the Mountain West kind of stay the way they are with public land and access and everything,” Natale said, “there’s always going to be a desire for people who want to go further into the backcountry and utilize the public land as much as they can.” 

Solutions

In addition to identifying challenges, the study also focused on finding solutions and resources to help outdoor recreation businesses. These solutions focused on larger changes to be made to support workforce hiring; seasonality, weather and climate; marketing; permitting and regulations; insurance and risk management; burnout; market uncertainty and financing. 

The report highlights resources like the Wyoming Small Business Development Center. 

“There’s a lot of groups that could potentially really benefit from understanding the challenges that these [businesses] face,” McCoy, of the WORTH Institute, said. “So our plan is to share this with those organizations and make sure that they’re aware of the challenges that these businesses face.” 

Then, he said, those organizations could come up with ways to provide support for those businesses.

The post Outdoor recreation study highlights economic challenges for Wyoming businesses appeared first on WyoFile .

Dug into the ground, with views as far away as the Continental Divide, rests a fiberglass tub that just may save lives. Not necessarily humans, but everything else, from buzzing bees to flitting songbirds to herds of Rocky Mountain elk.

In a good year, this tub would fill with about 500 gallons of rain and snowmelt, offering the landscape’s creatures relief during dry, summer months. But this wasn’t a normal year, and this particular tank needed some help. So a group of 10 or so volunteers led by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department gathered on a Friday in mid-June for some old-fashioned repair work. At the end, they filled it with water, and the Woods Landing Volunteer Fire Department will check back later this summer to fill it up again. 

The guzzler, as the water reservoir is called, is one of a few hundred scattered around the state offering water for wildlife during hot summer months. And while some in the wildlife management community question their utility, Jerry Cowles, a Wyoming Game and Fish Department habitat biologist, said wildlife will need every bit of help they can get as they head into a hot, dry summer after the hottest, driest winter in recorded history. 

“These are critical,” Cowles said. “If they don’t have water up here, animals have to go the next nearest spot, which are springs a couple miles that way and more than a mile down to the Laramie River. Guzzlers connect wildlife to the landscape, making it so they don’t have to move as far when it’s hot.”

Water for wildlife

Harsh winters can kill many big game species like pronghorn and deer. They struggle to locate food through thick, crusted snow or to find a place to rest their weary bodies. 

But drought can also prove fatal to Wyoming’s ungulates. Like all of us, they need water to survive. So federal agencies like the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service, state agencies like Game and Fish, and plenty of nonprofit groups like the Lander-based Water for Wildlife, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation build these strategically placed puddles in particularly dry regions. 

“Even in winter, free water is a big deal,” said Rich Guenzel, a retired Game and Fish biologist who volunteered to help with the guzzler repairs. “Some places, they have springs or creeks. This is on a southern exposure and gets a lot of wind, so [it] would be a little drier but because there’s less snow, so critters want to be here.”

While elk or mule deer could wander down a couple of miles from this section to drink from the Laramie River, many are reluctant. They want to avoid traffic and insects like disease-bearing mosquitoes associated with river corridors. Guzzlers are particularly popular in the southwest portion of the state, like the Red Desert, where water is even more precious, Cowley said. 

Animals can smell water from miles away, and trail cameras positioned at guzzlers prove their utility. Pictures from some Wyoming guzzlers show everything from moose to mountain lions to blue grouse coming in for a drink. 

Manmade relief

Volunteers moved and propped up posts while a Game and Fish technician pounded them into the ground on that day in mid-June. This particular guzzler was built in the ‘90s by the Bureau of Land Management and Game and Fish as a way to provide relief for the region’s pronghorn, mule deer and other wildlife, Cowles said. 

But after decades of use, the posts holding up barbed wire intended to keep the cows away from the guzzler had begun rotting. Much of the barbed wire had fallen down, and the guzzler was filling with dirt, muck and silt. 

While building the new fence, volunteers created a bigger perimeter around the guzzler with continuous metal fencing firmly attached to the posts. Volunteers made sure the fence sat at least 18 inches off the ground, high enough for pronghorn and other smaller-bodied creatures to shimmy underneath but low enough that cows and horses could not get through. Elk and adult mule deer could jump over. 

The rest of the volunteers scraped muck from the bottom of the tank and built a rain-and-snowmelt funnel using old barn roofing to collect and send water into PVC pipes to then dump into the guzzler. The tank also has a partial roof to limit evaporation and a set of stairs on the other side so wildlife can walk down and reach water as levels decrease. 

By the beginning of last summer, the tank was full; this year, it was empty. 

The drought is “a bad situation that’s hard on people and animals,” said Guy Litt, a volunteer and board member of the Wyoming chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. “It’s clear this one needs work, and this is the time to be doing it.”

How much, exactly, guzzlers help targeted wildlife species is still up for debate. Litt had a ewe bighorn sheep tag in a nearby area, and while he saw several guzzlers built for sheep, he only saw elk and pronghorn using them. Daryl Lutz, a Game and Fish wildlife biologist in the Lander region, worries guzzlers can artificially concentrate wildlife in certain areas on a landscape. The West’s wildlife evolved to survive extreme weather like drought, he added. But if research shows populations are becoming limited by water, then perhaps they could help. 

As Cowles opened the spigot and began dumping hundreds of gallons of water into the tank, it was easy to see how wildlife, including the songbirds sitting on the newly built fence, could flock to this spot in the parched summer months.

The post Water guzzlers may provide critical relief for wildlife during drought appeared first on WyoFile .

In celebration of America’s 250th anniversary, WyoFile will be examining Wyoming’s history as the Equality State. We’re planning a series of stories and columns by WyoFile staffers and contributors from around the state, but we also wanted to get you, the reader, involved.

Specifically, we want to capture the experience of real Wyomingites through original photography. We’re seeking images from readers that explore what equality means to you and to what degree Wyoming embodies its moniker as the Equality State. We’ll pick the best submissions to run on WyoFile’s Instagram page and in a photo feature that will publish on WyoFile.com this summer. 

Please send no more than five photo submissions to editor@wyofile.com by June 30. Captions for each photo should include the location, a brief description of the scene, the names of anyone pictured and the name of the photographer.

We want this project to reflect the experiences of real Wyomingites, and we need your help. Please don’t be shy! We’d like to see your photos.

The post America at 250: Examining equality through photos appeared first on WyoFile .

JACKSON—Visitors to Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks left more than 500 comments in response to a Department of the Interior call for feedback on signage that disparages American history.

None of those comments, collected between May 2025 and January 2026, expressed concern about history being represented in a biased way.

“What I saw in the comments that were specifically on Grand Teton were overwhelming support for the history exhibits, and even additional information,” said Allison Michalski, the National Parks Conservation Association’s senior program manager for Grand Teton.

The comments left at Grand Teton and Yellowstone were a small portion of 35,000 comments released in late May through a lawsuit brought against the Interior Department by the Sierra Club. The goal was to gain access to the comments via a public records request.

The saga that led to the collection of comments began more than a year earlier.

In March 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” The order sought to remove materials that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living” and to instead “focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people.”

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum released a follow-up secretarial order in May 2025, ordering that parks post signs with QR codes for visitors to use to report negative information and history and establishing a process for reviewing materials. In Yellowstone and Grand Teton, comments began rolling in around mid-June.

Burgum’s order also instructed park staff to flag any materials that may be misaligned with the department’s priorities for interpretive materials. The National Park Service subsequently removed materials at several parks, including a sign in Grand Teton that included details of how an explorer depicted in the Craig Thomas Discovery and Visitor Center participated in, and bragged about, a massacre of Native Americans. That sign was removed sometime before Jan. 28.

Yellowstone did not have any interpretive materials removed, said Michelle Uberuaga, the National Park Conservation Association’s Yellowstone senior program manager.

The issue of interpretive materials in the parks has reemerged in recent weeks, as litigation filed in response to the federal government’s actions to remove historical materials winds through the legal system.

On Friday, about two weeks after the comments left at parks were released via lawsuit, a federal judge in Massachusetts ordered the National Park Service to restore and reinstall any materials that have been removed since May 20, 2025. The order also prohibited the removal of any other interpretive materials while litigation is pending.

That order came as part of a lawsuit filed by the National Parks Conservation Association and other organizations against the Interior Department in February.

The Interior Department will have to report to the court the steps it has taken to comply with the order. The department also will be required to provide the court weekly status reports on compliance with the order thereafter.

Judge Angel Kelley of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts cited the comments collected via a QR code in her order.

“Tens of thousands of public comments submitted through QR codes at park sites have criticized the Defendants’ actions, demonstrating that these materials instead promote the public’s ability to form stronger connections with park resources,” she wrote.

The department does not plan to back down.

“The ruling is from a Biden appointed judge,” an Interior spokesperson wrote in an email. “The department is looking at our appeal options.”

Colorful comments

The signs posted at national parks solicited feedback on areas that need repair and services that need improvement. They also ask for intel on “signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans” or that “fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur and abundance of landscapes and other natural features.”

Commenters were taken to a page that allowed them to categorize their comments into those three categories, or about “something else.” 

Commenters were given a generous 10,000 characters with which to express their thoughts.

Yellowstone netted 324 comments and visitors in Grand Teton left about 202, a small percentage of the millions of visitors who visited in the eight-month period.

Most expressed frustration with the administration’s public lands policies, including the attempt to revise signage and other interpretive materials, staffing cuts and proposed budget cuts. The comment period coincided with last summer’s proposed public lands sale in the U.S. Senate. Though the proposal would not have impacted national parks, many comments included concerns about that as well.

Some used colorful language, including profanity, to express their grievances.

Parks advocates were not surprised to see unanimous support for the national parks and their staffs.

“Yellowstone has done different use surveys in the past and it is overwhelming that people are having very positive experiences,” Uberuaga said. “I think putting QR codes out just gave people the opportunity to say that.”

Commenters, specifically at Grand Teton, reported positive interactions with staff, in conversations, Junior Ranger programs, on ranger-led hikes and at ranger talks. At least 11 comments referenced positive experiences at educational programming, on topics including wolves, bears, geology, astronomy and anthropology.

“For the public, those rangers are not only critical protectors of those resources, but they’re also keepers of the stories,” Michalski said.

The comments included a small number of critical comments about other aspects of park operations. Two comments left at Grand Teton criticized bathrooms, including those at the Colter Bay Campground and vault toilets generally. Another comment, however, specifically shouted out the park’s “very clean” bathrooms.

Two comments left at Grand Teton also expressed concern about traffic in the park and suggested using buses to relieve congestion.

“Traffic jams are taking away the pleasure and serenity of park visits,” one commenter wrote. “Some interventions must be put into place.”

A few other comments complained about not seeing moose and bears where they were supposed to be, though it’s unclear whether they were tongue-in-cheek.

Some Yellowstone commenters believed the impacts of last year’s layoffs are noticeable.

“There are less rangers to control things and it feels chaotic in the park,” one commenter wrote.

Another wrote that, of all the parks, Yellowstone “feels like it needs double the staff.”

Uberuaga does not think that impacts to park staffing have impacted the visitor experience.

“I really would expect visitors to get to have a positive experience that is fairly normal,” she said. “It’s all the behind the scenes stuff that I think is where people are hurting.”

Ongoing suit

The lawsuit over the removal of materials in the park is still in its early stages.

Kelley, the federal judge assigned to the National Parks Conservation Association’s lawsuit, ordered the reinstatement of the materials on the belief that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed in court. Their arguments opposing the department’s actions include that they were arbitrary, against the law and an overreach of its authority.

The judge found that the department’s explanation that it could not disregard the president’s executive order did not constitute rational decision-making.

Kelley also found that the actions, if not halted while litigation is pending, would cause “irreparable harm.”

The Trump administration argued that the harm was not irreparable, as evidenced by the fact that the plaintiffs took several months to seek a temporary suspension of the policy. That policy had been in place since May 2025, and the plaintiffs did not request the suspension until March 2026.

Kelley found that the plaintiffs’ actions were not unduly delayed, given that the department did not ramp up its efforts at removing exhibits until early 2026. She ultimately favored the plaintiffs.

The order degrades “the public’s trust in the government, as the Executive Order ignores congressional directives and carelessly razes decades of efforts in the pursuit of its unilateral agenda,” she wrote. “These harms are, in all senses of the word, irreparable.”

The Interior Department, for its part, maintains that the order was not intended to whitewash or erase history.

The order directed a review of material “to ensure parks tell the full and accurate story of American history, including subjects that were minimized or omitted under the Biden administration,” a department spokesperson wrote in an email.

That includes slavery and the treatment of Native Americans, the spokesperson said.

The point of the order was to identify materials and signage that might “warrant clarification,” according to the spokesperson.

The post Grand Teton, Yellowstone visitors find no ideological bias in signage appeared first on WyoFile .

A Wyoming judge struck down three abortion laws on Friday, the latest instance of the courts here rejecting attempts by state lawmakers to curtail the procedure in the Equality State.

Retired District Judge Thomas T. C. Campbell ruled the laws violated a 2012 amendment to the Wyoming Constitution that protects individuals’ rights to make their own healthcare decisions. The Wyoming Supreme Court in January cited the same provision when it struck down two statewide abortion bans, and a different judge noted the amendment in April when he blocked enforcement of the state’s new “heartbeat” bill. 

Friday’s ruling concerned three laws passed by lawmakers in 2025. One created a mandatory ultrasound requirement and a 48-hour waiting period for patients seeking abortions. The second enacted a set of new and more stringent regulations that critics said were intended to make operating an abortion clinic in Wyoming unfeasible. A third involved abortion restrictions within a larger law governing the prescription of off-label medications.

Campbell temporarily blocked enforcement of all three laws last year after the plaintiffs in the case — which included abortion providers and abortion rights advocates — filed suit in state court. But his final determination that the laws are unconstitutional did not come until Friday.

‘No competent evidence’

In his 34-page decision, Campbell wrote repeatedly that the state, which had defended the laws in court, failed to provide evidence backing its claims. He noted the state alleged that the ultrasound law serves as a way to protect women from the consequences of undiagnosed ectopic pregnancies. But the judge found that the state “offers no competent evidence that such instances are occurring with any measure of regularity.” Additionally, he wrote, the state “offered no cogent evidence illustrating that a waiting period is necessary for any purpose.” 

Meanwhile, the plaintiffs showed that the ultrasound rule would not significantly lessen the risk for ectopic pregnancy complications and that waiting periods have no medical utility, the judge wrote. They also offered “ample evidence” that the ultrasound requirement lacked a compelling government interest, according to Campbell’s ruling.

“The Plaintiffs provide concise evidence undermining the medical necessity of an ultrasound prior to undergoing a chemical abortion,” he wrote. “The Plaintiffs request for relief is underscored by their evidence that abortion is inherently safe. They provide Wyoming Department of Health data indicating zero complications or deaths resulting from abortion in Wyoming. They also specifically cite clinical guidance explicitly proclaiming that ultrasounds are not medically necessary for women seeking chemical abortions.”

Campbell also took issue with what he termed a lack of evidence by state lawyers defending the law that required abortion clinics be regulated as “ambulatory surgical centers,” which come with more stringent, and costly, regulations. The state contended the law constituted a compelling interest because it closed a legal loophole, but did not provide evidence showing that “consistency of laws forms a compelling government interest,” he wrote. 

He also rejected the state’s arguments that the law helped to ensure women’s health.

“Of course, it is conceivable that preserving women’s health could independently invoke a compelling interest,” he wrote. “However, outside of sweeping generalizations, the State again provides no evidence or a causal link of how a surgical abortion facility, operating outside the regulatory framework of an [ambulatory surgical center], negatively impacts women’s health and welfare.”

As for the off-label medication law, which abortion advocates fear would discourage doctors from prescribing common abortion medications, the judge agreed with the plaintiffs, who maintained it was a solution in need of a problem.

Abortion opponents stymied by constitutional amendment

State lawmakers have made several attempts to limit or ban abortion in Wyoming since 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the landmark ruling Roe v. Wade. Since then, the same group of plaintiffs has repeatedly succeeded in convincing the courts that the laws violated a 2012 amendment to the Wyoming Constitution. Voters enacted the amendment after a push by conservatives who feared Obamacare would lead to government infringement on healthcare autonomy. 

The amendment protects adults’ rights to make their own healthcare decisions. The Wyoming Supreme Court in January concluded that “a woman has a fundamental right to make her own health care decisions, including the decision to have an abortion.”

In the aftermath of that ruling, Gov. Mark Gordon called on the Wyoming Legislature to pursue a constitutional amendment that would settle the matter. But lawmakers instead chose to pass a law that made abortion illegal once fetal cardiac activity is detected, which can occur by the sixth week. That law is also tied up in the courts while a legal challenge proceeds.

Still, anti-abortion advocates in the Legislature promised to continue their attempts to end the practice here. 

“We will not quit, we will not give up and we will not stop the fight to protect innocent life,” Speaker of the House Chip Neiman said in a video posted to the Wyoming Freedom Caucus’ Facebook page. “It’s really too bad. It’s quite a testimony, quite a statement about our judiciary that, I think once again, they’ve acted to thwart and to ignore the will of the Legislature and have complete disregard for innocent life in Wyoming.”

Neiman, a Republican who is now running for the state senate, said he expected Wyoming Attorney General Keith Kautz, who advocated against abortion after he retired from the Wyoming Supreme Court, to fight Friday’s ruling, presumably by appealing to the high court.

Meanwhile, the president of Wyoming’s only abortion clinic, Casper’s Wellspring Health Access, hailed Friday’s decision, while also alluding to the likelihood of more legal battles ahead. 

“These politically motivated laws, which unfairly target abortion providers, harm the people we serve by creating unnecessary barriers to essential health care,” Julie Burkhart said in a statement. While we know the fight against these laws is far from over, this outcome strengthens our determination to continue providing comprehensive reproductive health care, including abortion, to the people of Wyoming.”

The University of Wyoming has conducted repeated polls on abortion in Wyoming. The latest, which was released in November 2024, showed that about 10% of Wyomingites backed a total ban on abortion, with another 31% favoring abortion restrictions with exceptions for rape, incest or when a woman’s life is in danger. Another 20% preferred those exemptions and others once the need for an abortion had been clearly established. About 39% said abortion should remain a personal choice.

The post Wyoming judge strikes down ultrasound requirement, two other abortion laws appeared first on WyoFile .

HOT SPRINGS COUNTY—As Derek Trauntvein traveled around the Bighorn Basin for his job with the new U.S. Wildland Fire Service this spring, the landscape looked so desiccated and browned out that it resembled late summer conditions.

“In a normal year, this would be lush green right now,” Trauntvein told a gathering of journalists last week in the 195-square-mile scar of 2025’s Red Canyon Fire. “June is the best time to visit the Bighorn Basin, because it’s green and beautiful.” 

Not so in 2026. 

On the heels of the warmest winter ever, which coincided with the sparsest spring snowpack on record, the normal green-up is absent, he said. 

“Green-up is delayed, and in some places not even happening,” Trauntvein said. 

Measured moisture levels in the basin’s vegetation are at a July-like level, an indication that fire season’s probably going to come early.

“We may not grow anything to burn,” Trauntvein said, “but we still have a lot of residual [vegetation] from last year, and that’s definitely going to be problematic for this coming summer.” 

The Bighorn Mountains foothills “look like August right now” and the cheatgrass he’s spotted is already drying out and especially concerning. When a cheatgrass-infested area burns and the nonnative grass dominates the fire scar, it’s then more prone to burn again, creating a feedback loop of more fire and more cheatgrass. 

Those conditions are why Alicia Hummel called this spring’s persistent drought a “worst case scenario” for a landscape that’s still recovering from the Red Canyon Fire. Blueish perennial grasses that sprouted near the Bureau of Land Management rangeland manager’s feet were dominated by much-taller cheatgrass, an invasive annual grass that’s slowly overtaking Wyoming and the Bighorn Basin. 

“Those should be outgrowing the cheatgrass right now,” Hummel said. “It’s just so stunted. We shouldn’t have the cheatgrass exceeding our [native] perennials.” 

Native perennial grasses at only “a half or even a third” of their typical height and volume is a bad formula for the future of cheatgrass, which thrives in disturbed areas and especially burned landscapes. Native grasses can gain a toehold and help keep cheatgrass at bay, but that’s a less likely outcome when they’re being so clearly outcompeted. 

The federal wildfire and land managers were gathered alongside state, county and University of Wyoming officials to teach roughly a dozen journalists, most from out of state, about the elaborate process of restoring rangeland after wildfire in a landscape where invasive grasses are already widespread. The outing was organized by Intermountain West Joint Venture, a Missoula-based partnership group that focuses on “people-centric” approaches to conserving western habitat. 

More fire coming soon? 

As the caravan of reporters, land and weed managers and scientists toured the burned swath of Hot Springs County, state officials were gearing up for what’s expected to be a “tough year” for wildfire.

“If you look at the drought monitor, you will see dark red,” Gov. Mark Gordon said on May 28 at an annual interagency wildfire briefing. “[That] means there’s a fire danger that is far higher than it’s been in a long time.” 

Two weeks later, the entirety of Hot Springs County remains in “severe” drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Other areas in Wyoming have it worse: 15 of the state’s 23 counties included at least some areas where drought is considered “extreme.” Some blasts of spring snow and rainfall helped somewhat, but were not enough to pull areas out of drought, according to Wyoming State Forestry Division spokeswoman Melissa DeFrantis.

And so the wildfire season has already arrived, even in the western mountains. When roughly 250 acres burned near Sagebrush Flat west of Togwotee Pass last month, the Bridger-Teton National Forest experienced its largest May wildfire in history. 

The grim outlook comes in the wake of two consecutive big Wyoming wildfire years. In 2024, the state confronted the second-most acres burned in its history, trailing only 1988. 

Wyoming officials are fighting back against a future of more wildfires and more cheatgrass. 

There was a bygone era when many Wyoming weed and pest districts threw in the towel and did nothing to interrupt the cheatgrass-wildfire cycle. 

“For a lot of years in this state, for a lot of the counties — especially more heavily infested counties — [cheatgrass] was not on our priority list at all,” said Lindsey Woodward, the weed and pest coordinator for the Wyoming Department of Agriculture. 

The mentality at the time, Woodward said, was: “We have no tools, we have no time, we have no budget, we’re not going to win — we’re just not going to [treat] it.” 

Fighting back

That attitude has abated. 

Nowadays, the Wyoming Weed and Pest Council facilitates massive efforts to address cheatgrass and other invasive annual grasses. 

“We have, in the last 10 or so years, really really pushed for bigger landscape-scale projects — watershed-sized projects,” Woodward said. 

During the last three legislative sessions, Wyoming lawmakers have fought over funding levels for spraying cheatgrass that enables those projects. Tens of millions of dollars have ultimately been made available after each fight. That’s helped, but experts say it’s still not enough to hold the line on invasive grasses that have already affected over a quarter of Wyoming’s landmass.

Partly that’s because of the exorbitant cost of spraying cheatgrass. 

The most effective herbicide, Rejuvra, provides enduring protection against cheatgrass, but spraying quickly runs up a steep bill. Woodward used the term “staggering” to describe the per-gallon cost. 

“It’s about $1,100 a gallon,” she said. 

Largely for that reason, Hot Springs County Weed and Pest District Supervisor Heather Love applied for $9.8 million to treat the Red Canyon Fire scar. 

Some spraying is already underway, though there could be years of effort ahead before the restoration work is complete, Woodward said. Spraying blackened ground can be counterproductive, because it can also kill native perennial grasses trying to reestablish. Reseeding can also delay spraying. 

“By the time you consider all of that … some of these projects are three or four years before you’ve completed the steps,” Woodward said. 

Ultimately, the costly and complex landscape recovery efforts will help ranchers whose cattle and sheep graze within the Red Canyon Fire scar.  

Out on the fire scar tour, the stewards of the V Ranch — where the blaze began — recounted confronting the wildfire and their experience helping the landscape heal in the 10 months that have since lapsed.

“Proper grazing is critical,” said Jim Wilson, whose granddaughter, Emme Norsworthy, will become the family’s fifth generation overseeing the ranch. 

“The BLM is right,” Wilson said about the need to rest rangelands from grazing after wildfires, motioning to his own federal allotment. “That country will probably not get grazed for two more years. We’re gonna let it grow up, let it go to seed.” 

Wilson was sanguine about Red Canyon Fire’s long-term impact on his ranch and adjoining allotments. The blaze could actually do some good for wildlife and cattle alike, he said. 

“All old sagebrush is not good,” Wilson said. “They’ve got to have new sagebrush, they’ve got to have forbs.”

But to ensure the land’s productivity, Wilson, weed and pest professionals, the BLM, and others will have to make sure that cheatgrass doesn’t take over. 

Ian Tator, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s statewide terrestrial habitat manager, spoke to how thresholds of invasive grass cover can make or break the habitat for mule deer. Cheatgrass coverage greater than 10% can cause the struggling ungulate species to avoid an area; 20% coverage can trigger habitat abandonment. 

“We want to work really hard to not let it get to that point,” Tator said.

The post Drought delivers ‘worst case scenario’ for fire scar recovery in Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin appeared first on WyoFile .

As campers with boats flocked to Buckboard Marina at the start of Memorial Day weekend, Tony Valdez was busy issuing refunds and repairing broken boat ramps. One older Green River man, who walked with two canes, left with his money refunded for the season after discovering he could not safely make it down to the boat slip. Due to dropping water levels at Flaming Gorge Reservoir, the ramp is now buckled, angling up and down like a pitched roof. 

“It’s devastating, not just to me, it’s all the marina owners,” said Valdez, who owns Buckboard Marina, south of Green River. “It’s a big loss, and this is a big loss to the community.” 

Along the cliffs and shoreline, darker and lighter lines of rock and sand trace the water’s elevations, showing where the water hits when the marina is full, where it hovered this spring and where it dropped after an initial “flush.” Valdez estimates the reservoir has dropped by 7 feet since April. 

But that’s not the worst of it. Valdez anticipates that by the end of this summer, the reservoir will be as low as it’s ever been. 

Why the drain?

For all its charm as a beloved recreation spot and its utility as a local economic driver, Flaming Gorge Reservoir owes its existence to a legal compact that essentially regards it as an insurance policy in times of drought.

Its primary purpose, according to federal officials and Colorado River Compact scholars, is to serve as a backup water bank to help maintain the Colorado River system. Specifically, Flaming Gorge and a handful of other reservoirs in the upper Colorado River Basin states of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico are key to ensuring a minimum flow of 7.5 million acre-feet of water, on a running 10-year average, at Lees Ferry just downstream of Lake Powell, a massive man-made reservoir straddling the Utah-Arizona border.

Today, after more than 20 years of drought intensified by human-caused climate change, the Colorado River is in crisis, putting at risk massive agricultural irrigation operations that consume about 80% of its water. This past winter saw historically low snowpack in the Upper Colorado River Basin — a primary source for the river’s flow. 

Combined with record heat in March, Lake Powell is at risk of dropping below Glen Canyon Dam’s “minimum power pool,” the point at which it can no longer produce hydroelectric power, according to water officials. If it falls even lower, the dam, which holds back Lake Powell, could be at risk of structural damage or unable to allow water to flow downstream.

The situation triggered a drought response operations agreement that calls for restricting releases from Lake Powell and an order to draw extra water from Flaming Gorge upstream. In total, water managers will release about 1 million additional acre-feet of water from Flaming Gorge in April 2026 through April 2027. 

“These actions are expected to lower [Flaming Gorge’s] elevation by roughly 35 feet over the next year to approximately 59% of capacity,” the bureau said in April.

“The elevations are real critical,” Valdez said. At Buckboard Marina, high water has hovered between 6,030 and 6,040 feet above sea level over the past 50 years, he said. Dropping 35 feet could expose 400 feet of shoreline in some places, including marinas with boat ramps, he said. 

If the water elevation continues to retreat, it could reach a point where boats can’t be brought in or out.

“By September, this thing is going to be down to 6,000 feet. That’s it,” Valdez said. “Next year, if it goes below that, there’s no more marina here.”

Setting a course 

Water managers set a course in April to “stabilize” Flaming Gorge’s outflow to about 1,100 cubic feet per second, representing the rate needed to achieve the 1 million acre-feet of extra water release, according to the bureau. On top of that, there are two previously planned “flushes” from the Gorge. The first, in early May, temporarily increased the outflow to about 8,600 cubic feet per second to enhance the proliferation of razorback sucker larvae, and a second 72-hour flush beginning June 8 will temporarily increase the outflow to about 4,600 cubic feet per second to discourage the proliferation of smallmouth bass.

So far, Flaming Gorge has dropped from about 3 million acre-feet in April (or 82% capacity) to about 2.83 million acre-feet as of May 25. Meanwhile, water managers warn, “This release plan is subject to change depending on evolving river conditions and weather forecasts.”

Those evolving conditions include forecasted versus actual flows from streams feeding the system. For example, those “unregulated” or natural flows are forecasted to be much lower than normal: 70,000 acre-feet of water into Flaming Gorge during May (28% of average), 175,000 acre-feet in June (45% of average) and 84,000 acre-feet (42%), according to the Bureau of Reclamation.

Water officials caution that water flowing from the Flaming Gorge Dam could change, and that those recreating on the Green River below should monitor release schedules at this website. The bureau also noted, “Water will be colder than usual and will run high and swift during periods of elevated releases.”

Water floats recreation economy

Buckboard Marina went through a similar drop in water a few years ago. The Bureau of Reclamation began pulling water from the Flaming Gorge in 2021, and by 2022, the marina’s water level was at an all-time low. While the reservoir recovered somewhat in 2023 thanks to a good year for moisture, Valdez said, the reservoir has continued to decline since then. 

Kokanee salmon and trophy-sized lake trout draw tens of thousands of visitors to Flaming Gorge each year, supporting a recreational economy in southwestern Wyoming and northeastern Utah. But as the lake is drawn down, water recedes from shallow shorelines and fish are forced into a smaller space, essentially shrinking the fishery toward the dam side of the reservoir. 

One of Valdez’s primary concerns is that water levels could drop below the ideal elevation for kokanee to spawn in the reservoir. 

“I think people don’t realize the economic value it brings,” he said. “It is a big deal when you lose your kokanees.”

Already, kokanee are struggling to thrive in the reservoir. 

Drinking water dries up

Valdez has already lost money this year just from people being concerned about water levels. He estimated that the marina lost roughly $30,000 in cancellations when discussions about releasing water began as early as February.

Other problems also start to arise as the water drops. The marina will lose access to drinking water at 6,010 feet, below their floating pump that supplies potable water. It’s only 7 feet away from the current level.

“That’s scary to me,” Valdez said. 

The marina can truck in water from Rock Springs, but it costs about $1,200 to bring in 8,000 gallons, which lasts about two weeks. For Valdez, it feels “asinine” to lose water at a marina.

“Why would we run out of water on a lake?” 

Water levels also impact the location of the fuel dock and fuel lines extending to it. If the reservoir sinks too low, it could cost up to $100,000 to adapt, he said. 

Drawing down water levels quickly — as happened in early May — can damage marina structures. After the 2021-22 drawdown, Valdez said he spent about $130,000 in repairs. 

This time, he’d hoped to keep up. He and a group of 10 men worked to keep pace with the dropping water levels, repairing and modifying ramps. It wasn’t enough.

“The drop was dramatic enough to break all of our approaches, our bridges, our stuff, so it broke a lot of the welds, broke a lot of the structured steel, because it just vertically dropped too fast for the weight,” he said. 

When structures go from water to land that quickly, the weight is too much for them to hold up, Valdez said. 

“I’m re-rigging everything, and this is only a temporary fix ’til September, because that’s when the season ends.”

The marina should remain mostly functional until the summer season ends, he said. But with extra water releases set to continue through the winter, the lake could drop another 10 to 12 feet by the spring. 

“We’re getting into numbers that I don’t even want to talk about,” Valdez said. “I mean, there’s no marina.”

What’s next?

“The guy with the boots on the ground that watches this every day,” as Valdez describes himself, can see what water managers can’t, and he questions whether official numbers and estimates match reality.

“It’s hard to watch this when it’s out of your hands.”

Valdez is critical of the 1922 compact, doubting the legal rationale of sending Wyoming water to places like Arizona. He also wonders about the role of local industries — refineries, coal-fired power plants and trona mines — that use large amounts of water, and the idea of adding more industrial facilities that require even more water, like data centers. 

“We don’t have the water to give away,” Valdez said.

Bryan Seppie, general manager for the Joint Powers Water Board for Sweetwater County, Rock Springs and Green River, agrees. “The poor hydrology this past winter has affected most all water users in some form or another,” he said.

His board monitors the Colorado River system closely. Just upstream from Flaming Gorge, the Bureau of Reclamation reduced releases from Fontenelle Reservoir due to poor inflow projections. Although the water will still be enough for river users, the low summer flows will have a negative impact. 

“Low river flows typically result in higher water temperatures, which generally leads to higher levels of moss/algae and overall lower water quality,” Seppie said in an email.

What about recovery? 

Valdez wonders: What’s the plan to allow the reservoir to bounce back?

Wyoming State Engineer Brandon Gebhart and his staff have warned for months that although Flaming Gorge can serve as a backup to Lake Powell this year, it drains the Gorge’s ability to play a similar role next year, or the year after. It takes time for Mother Nature to replenish the bank.

“The big thing that nobody is talking about is the recovery,” Valdez said. “Where is the recovery of our water?”

This year’s drain on Flaming Gorge began at a low point. The reservoir hadn’t fully recovered after the last major pull. Rather than starting at a high point of 6,040 feet, the marina was at about 6,024 feet, he said. 

“There’s no recovery plan,” he said. “We can’t just let them keep taking. I mean, where’s this end?” 

If there is no grace period for the reservoir to replenish and officials want to take even more in the near future, starting from such a low elevation point, it will be “devastating,” Valdez said. 

“The water going down is not the end of the world, it’s the recovery in a timely manner that really matters,” he said. “I can’t preach recovery enough.” 

Watching people come to the marina and seeing how happy they are still motivates Valdez to keep going. Despite the drawdown, there’s nowhere else he’d rather be. 

“We’re not going to run away. We’re not going to give up,” he said. “We’re going to fight.”

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A Cheyenne attorney who filed a formal complaint in April against Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray for sharing sensitive voter data with the federal government says Attorney General Keith Kautz is keeping the public in the dark about the status of the complaint. 

“We’ve seen nothing from him,” George Powers told WyoFile on Friday. “And his last comment was, ‘I’m not going to talk to you.’” 

In the April 13 complaint, Powers alleges that Gray may have broken state law when, in August, he gave the driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers of every registered Wyoming voter to the U.S. Department of Justice. The Justice Department sought that information from all 50 states.

Gray has stood by the decision and said it was made in consultation with the attorney general. As such, Powers asked Kautz to hand off his complaint to avoid a conflict of interest. 

“The conflict between your duties to Gray and your duties to the public create an intolerable conflict of interest,” Powers wrote in a May 20 letter. “The law of Wyoming demands that you recuse yourself and refer this matter to an independent special prosecutor.” 

Since the complaint was filed in April, Powers says he has written and tried to contact the Attorney General’s office but has yet to “receive a meaningful response.”

The last time he heard from the office was a May 4 email, Powers said. 

“This response is not an invitation for further communication,” Kautz wrote. “A prosecutor’s investigation and exercise of prosecutorial discretion are not conducted in the public square. I previously told you that your complaint would be addressed in accordance with our office policies, the law and the Wyoming Rules of Professional Conduct for Attorneys at Law.” 

Powers isn’t certain what will happen now. 

“We’re considering options,” Powers said. “But haven’t really been able to decide exactly what the next step would be on our part.”

Kautz did not respond to WyoFile’s request for comment by publishing time, including an inquiry as to the status of the complaint. 

Powers is a retired attorney who worked primarily on civil trial and appellate litigation in Wyoming with a focus on medical malpractice, insurance claims and railroad litigation. In 2024, he was a plaintiff in a successful public records lawsuit against the Wyoming Department of Education.

How we got here 

Last year, the Justice Department started asking states to hand over election-related records and data, including copies of statewide voter registration lists. The Trump administration has argued its efforts are intended to keep elections secure. At a hearing in March, a Justice Department official said the agency planned to run the collected voter roll data against Department of Homeland Security data. 

In response to the federal government, most states either provided publicly available versions of their voter registration lists — i.e., data sets without sensitive information — or refused to provide such records, underscoring the fact that the U.S. Constitution explicitly tasks states, and not the federal government, with administering elections. Many states also raised privacy concerns. 

So far, the Trump administration has filed 31 lawsuits against states with both Democratic and Republican chief election officials. Eight of those cases have been dismissed. Wyoming, meanwhile, was the first of 15 states to fully comply. 

“What was the big hurry?” Powers asked WyoFile. “Why did Chuck want to be number one?” 

Gray did not respond to WyoFile’s request for comment by publishing time. When Powers filed his complaint in April, Gray said the attorney was attempting to undermine his office’s work.

“I stand by my work with the Trump Administration to advance election integrity. I have worked to maintain compliance with the law and these actions have been carried out in close consultation with the Attorney General,” Gray wrote in a Facebook post.

Complaint and correspondence

In his complaint, Powers cited three separate state laws, including one that makes it a felony for an official to violate the election code and another that specifies the confidentiality of certain election records. 

According to the statute, “election records containing social security numbers, portions of social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, birth dates, telephone numbers, tribal identification card numbers, e-mail addresses and other personally identifiable information other than names, gender, addresses, unique identifying numbers generated by the state and party affiliations are not public records and shall be kept confidential.” 

Powers argues that Gray may have broken this law by sharing confidential records with the federal government. 

“When Secretary Gray authorized and directed the officers and staff of the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office to release an unredacted [voter registry list] to the DOJ, he knew that the [list] contained personally identifiable information about the registered voters of Wyoming, which was confidential and not public records,” the complaint states. 

One week after Powers submitted his complaint, Kautz wrote him an email. 

“Our office received your Complaint of April 13 and a Supplement on April 17, 2026,” Kautz wrote. “We will address them in accordance with our office policies, the law and the Wyoming Rules of Professional Conduct for Attorneys at Law.”

Records indicate that Powers wrote back several hours later, thanking the attorney general for acknowledging the complaint. 

“I look forward to receiving your further response,” Powers wrote. “With regard to the ‘office policies’ mentioned in your email, could you please let me know what those policies are or where I can find them?”

“There are no written policies,” Kautz responded 30 minutes later. “No response will be forthcoming.” 

A week later, Powers received a letter from Deputy Attorney General Mackenzie Williams.

“I am writing this letter to refute your claims that the Secretary of State has waived attorney-client privilege as applied to the Attorney General’s advice to Secretary Gray,” Williams wrote on April 27. 

The letter did not otherwise address the complaint or its status, including whether it had been referred to an independent party. Since then, Powers said he has not received any more information on his complaint. 

“There are specific rules relating to prosecutors as to what they can and cannot say. They have to be very careful not to prejudice the rights of a defendant or a party under their investigation,” Powers told WyoFile on Friday. “On the other hand, the rules do allow for prosecutors to say whether they are investigating, to make broad statements, particularly in matters of high public interest.” 

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Thousands of acres southeast of Cheyenne owned by and associated with U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis lie in the path of Microsoft’s planned data center expansion, Laramie County property records show.

One of Microsoft’s existing data centers — a climate-controlled warehouse of computers, data storage and networks — sits southeast of Cheyenne on land the company purchased from the Lummis family in 2021. In April, the Seattle-area tech giant announced plans to buy 200 acres adjacent to its data center in the Bison Business Park and said it will purchase another 3,000 acres nearby.

Lummis, members of her family and companies associated with them own about 6,000 contiguous acres that almost surround the Microsoft center. Microsoft displayed a map Thursday at a Cheyenne community information session showing its 3,200-acre expansion extending into that Lummis family property.

Microsoft’s pending purchases land at the doorstep of one of tech’s biggest supporters in Congress. Lummis, known as the crypto queen of the Senate, has sponsored at least five significant cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, blockchain, stablecoin and tech bills. Political action committees associated with her received $1.34 million, including from major cryptocurrency and tech interests, since Dec. 31, 2021 and July 2025, WyoFile and reporting partner the Sunlight Research Center have found.

Microsoft and members of Lummis family — the senator, her brother Doran and daughter Annaliese Wiederspahn — would not comment or agree to interviews about the development or their relationship to the project. The senator’s family has owned much of the expansion property for decades — some dating back to 1944 and before — and has a long history of ranching, real estate transactions and business operations in and around Cheyenne.

Wiederspahn is a board member of Cheyenne LEADS, a corporation dedicated to area economic development, including data centers.

Microsoft’s land-buy announcement comes as Cheyenne is quickly becoming a data-center hub — the city is weighing proposals for 40 to 70 new data centers, according to some estimates — amid questions among area residents about water and energy usage, plus sweeping changes to the landscape. Those concerns prompted the Cheyenne City Council to consider a moratorium on new data centers, but local officials ultimately voted against such a measure.

Lummis has heard those queries, she wrote in a September op-ed.

“During my travels across Wyoming, countless folks have approached me about AI and the data centers coming to our state,” she wrote. “I tell them the truth: If we don’t power America’s AI with Wyoming energy, China will build their AI dominance on their coal instead.”

Abundant energy and land

Data centers are large, climate-controlled warehouses that contain computers, data storage and networks — used by Microsoft to establish and maintain the Microsoft Cloud, where data is kept. “[Y]ou can store your photos, play Xbox games, video call with your family, and work on documents from anywhere and on any device, without needing a powerful computer,” the company explains.

While some data centers focus on storage, others focus on providing the computing power to operate artificial intelligence. Those servers can also be used for bitcoin mining. 

Wyoming’s coal and potential nuclear power generation are a plus for energy-hungry data centers and AI, Lummis has stated. Wyoming’s cool climate and lack of corporate business tax also fuel data center development near Cheyenne. The state’s open land is another plus for data center development — and Lummis and her family own a lot of it.

“Folks have approached me about AI and the data centers coming to our state. I tell them the truth.”

Cynthia Lummis

Microsoft established its existing data center southeast of Cheyenne on 249 acres of Lummis-family land in the Bison Business Park in 2021, a subdivision created through a fast-track planning process. Arp and Hammond Hardware Co., whose president is Lummis’ brother Doran Lummis, carved out an adjacent 200-acre parcel in April 2025, a year before the tech company announced its intent to expand there.

Beyond that, Lummis’ family owns almost all the surrounding land — about 6,000 acres of it — including property mapped for purchase by Microsoft and displayed at Thursday’s open house in Cheyenne. The sprawling holdings, most of which are unirrigated rangeland, are owned by Lummis family companies Arp and Hammond, Lummis Livestock Co., Old Horse Pasture Inc. and Sweetgrass Land Co., Laramie County property records show.

The expansion, Microsoft said in an April statement, will be “strengthening Southeast Wyoming’s role as a growing hub for technology-driven economic activity, innovation and job creation.”

Crypto Queen

Lummis, elected to the Wyoming House of Representatives in 1979 at 24, was the youngest woman to serve in the Legislature. Voters then elected her to the state Senate, Wyoming treasurer and, in 2008, as Wyoming’s lone U.S. representative. She won election to the Senate in 2020, defeating Democrat Merav Ben-David with 73% of the vote.

Lummis announced in December she won’t seek reelection this year.

While in the Senate, Lummis has advocated for and sponsored legislation boosting cryptocurrencies — virtual money like bitcoin and stablecoins — and supported technology innovators, artificial intelligence and blockchain.

In 2021, “I founded the Financial Innovation Caucus to educate my fellow senators about the vast potential of emerging technologies to promote financial inclusion and build new wealth for all,” she said in a statement that year.

In December 2022, she placed her shares of Microsoft (valued between $15,000-$50,000) and bitcoin (valued between $50,000-$100,000) in a blind trust “to avoid any conflict of interest or appearance of any such conflict.”

Details about the land sale, including the price, have not been publicly disclosed.

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The Cheyenne City Council voted down a one-year moratorium on new data center development Tuesday after about five hours of public comment from more than 50 residents. 

“We need to slow down and make sure that none of these are going to be in our populated areas,” Cheyenne resident Michelle Cobb told the council, adding that there are too many unanswered questions regarding water use and property values. “We need a big buffer zone, because a lot of our open areas in Cheyenne are being pegged for rezoning.”

Already home to more than a dozen computing centers, Wyoming’s capital city is entertaining proposals from industry heavyweights such as Meta and Microsoft for a potential 40 to 70 new data centers, according to some estimates. Current plans in the region could require double or triple the volume of all electricity consumed in the state. The scale of investment, construction, jobs and demands on the city is so massive and, by nature, speculative, many said, that it’s difficult to fathom its impact with any accuracy.

For some, like Mark Moody, who sponsored the measure, that’s reason to hit pause, but his fellow council members outnumbered him 8-1 against pausing data center development.

Others, including about a dozen union workers, warned that a moratorium — albeit temporary — would chill data center investment in the region, along with steady construction work that’s already allowed local trade workers to stay close to home rather than chase jobs around the country.

“Until Meta ramped up and brought all of us home, all of these guys from Casper, Cheyenne, South Greeley, Laramie and other parts of the state were in a completely other state,” said Matthew Miles, a journeyman pipefitter with United Association Local 192. “[They were] away from their families, away from anybody they cared to share life with, trying to earn money to support not just their family, but the town they live in.

“This moratorium will only achieve one thing,” Miles added. “These companies will find somewhere else that doesn’t care about what the locals think or which locals want to stay home and have jobs and stay with their families.”

Even those against the moratorium, however, implored the council to demand that data center developers invest in the city beyond their facilities to ensure Cheyenne can handle growing demands on schools, healthcare and other local services. It was a sentiment shared by council members who voted against the moratorium.

“I think we need to do a better job,” councilman Larry Wolfe said. “We, the council, we the city, need to demand more of these companies. 

“Yes, it’s great that Microsoft gives us money and Related Digital gives us money,” Wolfe continued. “But it’s chump change in the whole economic calculation for them. I think we have an opportunity to do that.”

Dozens of residents cast doubt on assurances that the industry is moving toward cooling technologies that require far less water than in years past. Yet Mayor Patrick Collins and several council members said they have more than 10 years of data from city water managers, showing that the current data center fleet is not straining water supplies.

The industry accounts for 1.48% of all water consumed in Cheyenne, Collins has testified before lawmakers. Plans on the books would boost that figure to 3%.

Several council members acknowledged they don’t know for certain how a proliferation of data centers might change Cheyenne, but said they’re committed to economic growth and setting expectations for the companies driving it. But imposing a year-long moratorium probably isn’t going to make skeptics more comfortable, councilwoman Michelle Aldrich said.

“I believe that our job as the council is to enter into things like this, to continue to get answers to our constituents, but also to hold our corporate partners accountable,” she said.

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