04/22/2026
*****I have edited this letter to reflect that the contract for water was actually signed. I had inaccurate information and corrected it. ******
Open Letter to Rep. Celeste Maloy and Rep. Candidate Phil Lyman
How Much Does Daggett County Have to Suffer?
From: Annette McRae, Candidate for Utah Senate District 20 (Forward Party)
Date: April 2026
April 17, 2026. The Bureau of Reclamation ordered the release of up to one million acre-feet of water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir, as much as a third of its usable storage capacity.
Over the next twelve months, the reservoir is projected to drop 35 feet in elevation.
The purpose: to prop up Lake Powell for Nevada, Arizona, and California, at a moment when the Colorado River system sits at 36% capacity with the worst snowpack on record. Arizona officials have already signaled the release is insufficient and are pushing for more.
Nobody asked Daggett County.
Daggett County has 783 people. 81% of its land is federally owned and untaxable. Its economy is built on recreation, fishing, boating, tourism at Flaming Gorge.
A 35-foot reservoir drop does not merely inconvenience that economy. It guts it.
And when Daggett County is gutted, it has no oil royalties to fall back on, no large tax base, no corporate headquarters. It has Manila. It has Dutch John, population roughly 150 year-round, a town the federal government built in the 1960s for dam construction workers and then, in 1998, effectively abandoned through privatization.
As of early 2026, Dutch John is still sitting across a negotiating table from the Bureau of Reclamation trying to renew the basic water service contract that allows the town to draw water from the very reservoir Daggett County was built to serve. The original 25-year contract expired March 6, 2026. If negotiations fail, the county loses its contractual right to pull water from Flaming Gorge at all.
Let that land for a moment.
Daggett County could lose access to Flaming Gorge water at the same time Flaming Gorge is being drained for Phoenix.
WHAT DAGGETT COUNTY HAS ALREADY GIVEN
Flaming Gorge Dam has generated hydropower for the Southwest since 1964. For sixty years, Daggett County has housed the infrastructure, absorbed the federal footprint, watched 81% of its land taken off the tax rolls, and received the construction workers, and then the bill.
The county’s most recent investment from the Community Impact Board was a $612,750 grant to relocate its fire station. That is the scale at which Daggett County is resourced. County road projects wait through reapplication cycles just to fund engineering phases. The county cannot tax its way out of anything. It is entirely dependent on the goodwill of the state and federal governments it has served faithfully for six decades.
Flaming Gorge Dam was a national project. Daggett County bore a national burden. The benefits, hydropower, water storage, downstream deliveries, flowed south and west. The tradeoffs stayed home.
Now, in the worst drought year on record, the federal government has decided that Flaming Gorge is, in the words of a Wyoming water official, “low-hanging fruit.” And nobody, not the Bureau of Reclamation, not the State of Utah, not Utah’s Congressional delegation, has produced a single document showing what Daggett County gets in return.
REPRESENTATIVE MALOY: “I DO A LOT OF THE WATER STUFF”
On April 15, 2026, Representative Maloy sat down for a radio interview and said: “So I do a lot of the water stuff in Utah.” (Castle Country Radio, April 15, 2026) That is a statement of ownership. She was not speaking modestly. She meant it as a credential.
One day later, on April 16, Representative Maloy co-led a bipartisan letter to the Bureau of Reclamation. The letter demands that any drawdowns from Flaming Gorge “remain in compliance with existing agreements,” that releases be made “for the direct purpose of protecting Lake Powell,” and that Flaming Gorge “must be fully recovered” once releases conclude. It is a careful, legally grounded letter. It is the product of someone who has been tracking this issue and knows how it works.
I have read that letter. Daggett County is not mentioned once.
Not the 783 residents. Not the recreation economy. Not Dutch John’s expiring water contract. Not the 35-foot drop in the reservoir that anchors the entire local economy. Not one word about what these communities are owed.
Representative Maloy sits on the relevant committees. She knew Flaming Gorge was going to be tapped. She knew the releases were coming. She engaged on the legal compliance question, because legal compliance protects the upper basin states’ long-term water claims. That is a legitimate concern. But legal compliance for the State of Utah and economic survival for Daggett County are not the same thing, and she treated them as though they were.
When you say “I do a lot of the water stuff in Utah,” Representative Maloy, that includes Daggett County. That includes Dutch John. That includes the 783 people whose livelihood depends on a reservoir you just watched get drained.
PHIL LYMAN: YOU WANT CD3. DAGGETT COUNTY IS IN IT.
The 2019 Drought Response Operations Agreement is the legal mechanism that authorized this release. Upper basin states, including Utah, agreed to it. When the crisis came, Flaming Gorge became the instrument of that commitment.
On April 9, 2026, Governor Spencer Cox joined the governors of Colorado, Wyoming, and New Mexico in a joint statement acknowledging “the impacts of water shortages and water releases from Upper Basin reservoirs on local communities, not only related to future water supply availability, but also how they affect jobs and local recreational and other economies.” Governor Cox acknowledged the harm. He put it in writing.
Phil Lyman, you want the congressional seat that represents this region. The acknowledgment has been made by the sitting governor. What are you going to do about it?
Utah entered the 2019 agreement. Utah negotiated at the table where Flaming Gorge’s fate was decided. What did Utah negotiate for Daggett County specifically? What protections did the state secure for the community that lives at the base of the dam? Were there impact payments? Mitigation funds? Any mechanism at all to compensate a county of 783 people for the loss of a recreation season, or two, or three, while the reservoir recovers?
You have championed rural Utah. You have built your political identity around the principle that communities like Daggett are not afterthoughts, that their land, their economies, and their people matter to state government. I take you at your word on that. Now prove it.
Because right now, from where Daggett County stands, the state of Utah made a deal with their water, took a seat at a high-stakes negotiating table, and came home without so much as a term sheet protecting the people who actually live there.
FIVE QUESTIONS THAT REQUIRE PUBLIC ANSWERS
These are not rhetorical. I am asking Representative Maloy and Phil Lyman to answer them, publicly, specifically, and soon.
1. Daggett County has 783 people and 81% untaxable federal land. What specific compensation or mitigation did you negotiate for Daggett County’s recreation economy before agreeing to drain Flaming Gorge?
Not a general acknowledgment of impacts. Not a promise of future conversations. A specific answer: what was secured, when, and by whom.
2. Arizona officials have signaled this release is insufficient and are already pushing for more. What is your firm commitment that Flaming Gorge will not be tapped again before it fully recovers?
The four-governor statement says Flaming Gorge water “will be fully recovered.” So does Maloy’s letter. What enforces that? What happens when Arizona comes back in 2027 with another drought year and another demand? Who protects Daggett County then?
3. Dutch John, a town the federal government built for its own purposes and then abandoned, is still negotiating its basic water service contract with the Bureau of Reclamation in 2026, nearly 30 years after privatization. When does Daggett County stop being an afterthought in its own backyard?
The contract expired March 6, 2026. The Bureau of Reclamation’s own negotiator said “that would probably be a bad thing” if it wasn’t renewed. That is not a reassurance. That is a federal agency describing a crisis it is itself creating. What have you done to resolve this?
4. Representative Maloy, you said on April 15, “I do a lot of the water stuff in Utah.” One day later, your letter addressed legal compliance. Where in that letter is Daggett County mentioned? Where is the community impact assessment? Where is the compensation plan?
If doing “a lot of the water stuff” means fighting for legal frameworks that protect Utah’s long-term water claims while leaving Daggett County’s 783 residents with no specific protection, no compensation, and no mention in your advocacy, that is not leadership for rural Utah. That is management of a resource that rural Utah happens to sit on.
5. Phil Lyman, Governor Cox signed a statement acknowledging “impacts on local communities related to jobs and local recreational and other economies.” You want the congressional seat that includes Daggett County. What is your specific commitment to make Daggett County whole, in dollars, in timeline, in policy?
Not in principle. In specifics. If the answer is “the CIB grant process,” then the answer is that Daggett County must wait in a reapplication queue to be compensated for a decision the state made on its behalf without its consent. That is not acceptable.
THIS LETTER WILL NOT GO AWAY
I am Annette McRae. I am a candidate for Utah Senate District 20 on the Forward Party ticket. Daggett County is in my district. These 783 people are my constituents, or they will be, and they deserve a senator who asks these questions before the vote, not after the reservoir drops another 35 feet.
I will be asking these questions at every candidate forum. I will be asking them at every public event where Representative Maloy or Phil Lyman appears. I will enter them into the record of the Utah Senate, if the voters of District 20 send me there. And I will keep asking them until I receive answers that are specific, public, and accountable, not press releases, not statements acknowledging “impacts,” not promises that water “will be fully recovered.”
Daggett County has been funding the West’s water and power infrastructure since 1964. It has done so without complaint and without commensurate compensation. That is over.
The Flaming Gorge belongs to the people who live next to it. Sixty years of service is enough goodwill. It is time to pay the bill.
Annette McRae
Candidate, Utah Senate District 20
Forward Party
[email protected]
McRaeForUtah on Facebook | on Instagram
Sources:
Flaming Gorge release order: https://www.fox13now.com/news/colorado-river-collaborative/feds-order-massive-water-release-from-flaming-gorge-to-prop-up-lake-powell
Maloy bipartisan letter: https://neguse.house.gov/media/press-releases/colorado-rep-neguse-and-utah-rep-maloy-lead-bipartisan-effort-urging-bureau
Four-governor statement: https://coyotegulch.blog/category/colorado-water/colorado-river-basin/2026-guidelines/
Maloy radio interview: https://www.castlecountryradio.com/2026/04/15/a-conversation-with-congresswoman-celeste-maloy/
Daggett water contract talks: https://citizenportal.ai/articles/7424741/daggett-county-bureau-of-reclamation-begin-hurried-talks-to-renew-dutch-john-water-service-contract
Daggett County general info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daggett_County,_Utah
Just Phil Lyman
