Rural Land is Property Too

Wyoming's wide-open spaces and horizons that appear to stretch to infinity are some of the most remarkable amenities residents can enjoy. For those who are more familiar with life in towns or even small acreages, these magnificent expanses of land without buildings can sometimes seem empty. Agriculturalists, however, can recognize how actively our countryside is working to produce the food and fiber our society depends on for food and clothing. The fields and pastures individual farmers and ranchers own and operate are not empty; they are the basic components of every agricultural operation. The potential income for a farmer or rancher is limited by the number of acres that farm or ranch has available to plant crops or graze animals on. Our founding fathers did not simply protect property because of some abstract theory of independence and individual liberty symbolized by land ownership; they did so because they understood that land is the essential foundation for economic productivity and sustenance that the rest of any economy is built upon.

Today, even well-meaning government officials who claim to respect private property sometimes forget who really owns those fields and pastures. When those officials also begin to think of unimproved rural land as empty and available rather than as integral to an agricultural production operation, then it is easy to simply suggest rural landowners sell more land to each potential buyer than either the landowner or the potential buyer agreed on.

The Laramie County Commission recently considered a number of plat and subdivision requests by farmers or ranchers who want to sell a small home site to an employee, family member, or existing tenant. In more than one case, the landowner and potential buyer had agreed on a 5-acre transaction. The most recent example was far from Cheyenne in rural Eastern Laramie County.

The problem comes because, as a matter of practice, the Laramie County Commission has an unwritten minimum-lot-size rule. The Commission has said that it tries to ensure each new rural residential lot served by an individual domestic well is at least 8.5 acres, based on the recommendation of the State Engineer. This, the Commission says, is to help protect the aquifers that lie beneath Laramie County and the individual rights each well owner has in the use of the groundwater. Given the Wyoming Constitution's treatment of water rights, this is the type of property rights protection local government is rightly concerned with. However, there is no reason that landowners, the State Engineer's Office, and the County Commission cannot meet their respective needs without forcing the original landowner to cede 8.5 acres of surface area to a new neighbor.

True respect for private property would seek the least-intrusive means possible to protect water rights while still protecting all rights of all users. An easy example would be for the county government to require a combination of a lot and an easement totaling the desired minimum 8.5 acres tied to each new domestic well. This would allow the private parties to privately negotiate for the size and price of the new residential lot without government imposing a heavy-handed mandate of what the final deal, or rural parcel must look like. While the additional 3.5 acres Commissioners ask for may not seem like much to people who look at agricultural land as empty and available, to the farmer selling and the prospective homeowner who is buying those acres there are real costs and operational consequences involved. By allowing individuals to strike their own bargains about how much land to buy and sell, officials would better respect both private property rights and the role of the free market in deciding who owns what property.