The biggest obstacle in claiming $100 million to rebuild and shore up Goshen County irrigation tunnels from a federal agency’s larger appropriation was that “everybody’s clamoring for the same money,” U.S. Rep Harriet Hageman told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday.
Out of an $889 million appropriation the U.S. Department of the Interior received via the Trump-backed one Big Beautiful Bill Act, $100 million is now officially earmarked for long-term repairs to the Fort Laramie Tunnels.
That’s according to a Tuesday announcement that followed what Hageman, a Republican of Wyoming, cast in a phone interview as a persistent advocacy effort for the Wyoming rebuild.
The Gering-Fort Laramie Canal tunnel about a mile south of Fort Laramie collapsed July 17, 2019, cutting off irrigation water to more than 100,000 acres of farmland in Goshen County and Nebraska.
The backup flooded fields.
The infrastructure, which was first permitted in the early 1900s and more than a century old, needed desperately to be replaced, Hageman recalled.
‘A Huge Priority'
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act contained an appropriation to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, but an advocacy struggle over which projects would win the money followed, she said.
When the Department of the Interior made the announcement Tuesday, Hageman celebrated alongside U.S. Sens. Cynthia Lummis and John Barrasso, also Republicans of Wyoming.
Barrasso in a statement called the money is something the Goshen Irrigation District “urgently needs,” and Lummis called the system a critical pillar of agricultural life in eastern Wyoming.
“It was a huge priority for my subcommittee,” Hageman told Cowboy State Daily, referencing the Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries, which she chairs.
She said she’d been “talking with the various committees, making sure this was at the very forefront of their mind — the Fort Laramie canal needed to be fixed.”
Hageman also had secured $14.6 million in community project funding toward the project, she said in a joint statement with Barrasso and Lummis.
‘Amazing Opportunity'
Gov. Mark Gordon lauded the “amazing opportunity for Wyoming” in his own Tuesday press conference with the state’s political reporters.
The award is something he’s been working toward since the American Rescue Plan Act money first became available during the COVID-19 pandemic, he said.
“People did not recognize that even in the (Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021) they did not carve out enough for the kind of aging infrastructure we’ve seen,” he said.
That canal feeds into Nebraska as well, impacting two states. Restoring it is an “incredibly complicated task” he said.
That canal has three tunnels, all about the same age, one of which failed, said Gordon.
The others failing looks “a lot more likely” in light of the one tunnel’s collapse, he said.
Gordon’s spokeswoman Amy Edmonds confirmed Tuesday that the money is not a loan.
Six Years Of Work
That’s a good thing for the locals, Goshen Irrigation District General Manager Kevin Strecker told Cowboy State Daily.
The district would have to ramp up “assessments” to pay back a loan, if it were required to get one for what remains of that project, he said.
Crews broke ground on the repairs Oct. 28, 2025, more than six years after the collapse, The Fence Post reported.
Further repairs on another tunnel were set for autumn of this year into the coming winter, with more repairs scheduled through the spring of 2028.
“Funding for the project continues to be a challenge for the districts,” The Fence Post had reported in October, adding that the total anticipated cost of the project is estimated to be $150 million and the irrigation districts had then secured $64.5 million in grants from Nebraska and Wyoming
The district takes care of the entire Fort Laramie Canal, which is about 135 miles long, said Strecker. Eighty-six of those miles are in Wyoming; the remainder is in Nebraska.
When it reaches the state line, the Gering Fort Laramie Irrigation District takes over, he said.
“But we convey their water through Wyoming for them,” so the Gering Fort Laramie District pays for that service and is a stakeholder in projects that impact the Goshen Irrigation District, Strecker added.
Strecker brimmed Tuesday with gratitude.
“I want to thank everyone from our Nebraska and Wyoming delegation to the Bureau of Reclamation, the Department of the Interior, the governor – everyone that’s helped us along the way,” said Strecker. “Six years of work to get to this point, and without everybody’s help we wouldn’t be able to do this.”
The Bureau of Reclamation built the tunnel in 1917 as part of the North Platte Project, then signed over responsibility for its maintenance to both irrigation districts, a bureau spokesperson told Cowboy State Daily in 2019.
Another longtime advocate of the repair effort, state Sen. Cheri Steinmetz, R-Torrington, celebrated the news Tuesday.
“That is so exciting,” said Steinmetz, who remembers fielding calls from farmers when the washout happened.
A suffering water system hurts everything else in the region’s economy, she said.
“I’m so thankful to our (Washington) D.C. delegation for their work on this issue because that canal is the lifeblood of both Goshen County and the Scottsbluff County area,” said Steinmetz.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
