Don Anderson and Curt Severson graze cattle along Sather Dam, while Tim Leland works a ranch with his father, Myron, and uncle, LeRoy, near Leland Dam. The trio responded this week to concerns by North Dakota Game and Fish Northwest District fisheries supervisor Fred Ryckman that cattle feedlots produce damaging runoff that carry manure.
Sather Dam is suffering from serious algae blooms as a result of poor water conditions.
"I don't own a feedlot. I don't have a feedlot," Anderson said of his main operation east of Sather Dam. "We do feed cattle there, but it is all spread out in a large acreage."
The land between his main operation and Sather Dam is where Anderson grazes cattle, he said. "Most of it on the Forest Service land is a grazing situation," Anderson said.
Curt Severson grazes cattle on Forest Service land on the west side of Sather Dam and farther south of Anderson.
"I don't think it is a livestock issue myself," Severson said. "I think every dam in North Dakota has the same issue, whether there is livestock there or not."
The three ranchers and other members of the McKenzie County Grazing Association joined representatives from the Forest Service to meet with Ryckman Wednesday morning to discuss the issues associated with the two dams.
Anderson said Sather Dam was first constructed in 1936 as a stock dam and was rebuilt in 1963. It reportedly drains about seven square miles and has about three miles of shoreline.
Anderson said cattle obviously do impact the land, but that impact is minimal when discussing the water quality concerns at Sather Dam.
"The livestock get a black eye at times that we don't deserve. There are other things involved in it," he said of the water quality concerns at the dams.
The natural lifespan of a lake and runoff from the terrain are factors to be considered, Anderson said.
As for Leland Dam about eight miles south of Sather Dam, Tim Leland said Chicken Creek drains in from the east and Sheep Creek drains in from the northeast.
"There isn't a feedlot that exists on either one of them," Leland said of the drainages.
Land adjacent to Leland Dam he once planted crops on were returned to grass about three years ago, he said. So runoff from tilled land is basically not an issue, Leland added.
He said Leland Dam fills on private land, but backs up onto Forest Service land.
The dam was built by his grandfather, Ernest Leland, for livestock and irrigation purposes in the early 1960s, he said. Leland Dam reportedly drains about 14.5 square miles.
Ryckman said late Wednesday afternoon regarding the Sather Dam and Leland Dam situations that although the exact magnitude of the impact is not known, "livestock physically damaging habitat and shorelines and animal waste has been documented to be a serious problem in many other places and is a problem here as well."
Forest Service McKenzie Ranger District planner Libby Knotts said conversations regarding water quality issues at Sather Dam and Leland Dam most recently took place with Game and Fish about seven years ago.
At the time, some tentative ideas were tossed around to address the concerns, but those ideas never got off the ground.
Knotts said updating the grazing component of the overall grasslands management plan was delayed at that time due to a scientific review process that didn't conclude until 2006.
"Leadership wanted this all to be resolved before we began updating the allotment management plans," said Knotts, who added the Forest Service is now in the process of updating Anderson's allotment management plan and others.
"The Forest Service perspective is we are working on both dams and the issues," Knotts added. "We're working with all of the parties involved."
Ryckman thinks everyone agrees Sather Dam is valuable.
"We would all like to do what is right for Sather," he said. "It is just a matter of finding the right way for it to be done.”
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