Heart(less) Mountain Irrigation District
By: Conner Drigotas
Go with the flow
The first time Tom Hamann met Heart Mountain Irrigation District official Randy Watts, it was supposed to be a friendly meeting. Hamann owns 100 acres in Wyoming where, since the mid-1990s, he and his wife Ayda have lived and grown a homestead. “We put a barn out here, of course, and got the horses,” Ayda told Respect America in an interview, “we finally built our house in 2001 and started doing all the improvements, year by year.”
The Heart Mountain Irrigation District was always part of their lives on this property, managing water access and filling water orders that allowed them to grow hay and keep a Red Angus cattle herd. The relationship was straightforward: Hamann paid for his water, and never broke the rules, and district officials kept the water flowing.
Hamann says Watts asked for a meeting shortly after he took over as the manager for the area, and set a difficult tone before they even started saying hello:
“I was going to shake hands, introduce myself, because I had never met him.” Hamann says, “And before I ever get over there, he goes: My name is Randy Watts. He says, I'm going to put a road through here on the other side of the canal. And there's not much you can do about it.”
https://pacificlegal.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Tom-Hamann-v.-Heart-Mountain-Irrigation-District-et-al._Opening-Brief_01.21.25.pdf
The introduction had Tom “taken aback,” not just because of the brazen delivery, but also because of the substance of Randy’s claim. The water running through the Hamann’s hundred acres, Lateral 79, was already flanked by a county road providing access to the lateral for maintenance, general operations, or other Irrigation District business.
Tom says Randy told him in that first conversation, “I've got more power than the sheriff, and we're the government, that's it,” and their conversation ended in a stalemate. According to Randy, the agency claimed to have an easement on both sides of the water, giving them all the legal permission they needed.
The Hamann’s quickly contacted their local attorney and made plans to preserve their land via an appeal to Heart Mountain leadership.
Logjam
The Hamann’s appeal to the irrigation district leadership went, in a word, poorly.
“I said, until you let me know why you have to build a road on my property when there's already an existing road that you use to service that canal, you need to stay off, or I'll turn you over to the sheriff, because you have no easement.” Tom says he explained, “You would have thought that I had stepped on the Mary Saint herself when I said, you have no easement.”
Despite irrigation district officials’ indignation, Tom maintains that he and Ayda were certain no such permission existed in any law. They had thoroughly researched before resting their argument on that claim. On advice of their attorney, they had scoured the local courthouse, the county seat, and the state records in Cheyenne. They chased down each successively larger pool of records, sinking hours and days into making sure they wouldn’t lose their case.
“No easement existed,” Tom says.
In the end, however, not being able to prove their claim was shrugged off by the irrigation district. Instead, they claimed it was an “unrecorded easement” and refused to back down.
“The best way to describe Randy Watts is a bully,” Tom says, “[irrigation district officials] they feel that they can do anything on your land that they want to.”
While the battle unfolded in courts, communication with the irrigation district leadership continued – mostly about business as usual. How much water would they be ordering? Any feedback on the District’s service? The things both the Hamann’s and Heart Mountain officials agreed on.
Around two years after that first meeting, however, business went south.
Tom and his neighbor, Bryan, agreed to let irrigation district employees move a concrete bowl that helps irrigate the neighbor’s land, what they initially understood to be a simple task.
As the area manager, it was Randy Watts who showed up to do the job, arriving with heavy equipment and an assistant named Kenny. When they started talking, Randy brought up that Tom would be on the hook for the cost of the project – something Tom says he never agreed to, raising red flags about their intentions with the heavy machinery.
Tom then drove his quad back to the house. “I called the sheriff. I called my attorney, Joey. I said; What do I do?”
In the following minutes, Tom realized he couldn’t keep track of both irrigation district employees as they began using the machines. He called another neighbor, Steve, who came over to stand with Kenny and prevent him from going further.
“I said, I've called the attorney, I've called the sheriff, and we're going to handle this in court. Nobody's going to get fired. I said, just don't. Don't do anything.”
With the neighbor keeping an eye on one machine operator, Tom headed over to where Randy sat in his machine, an 8-foot fence post already ripped out of the ground in front of him, and pleaded with him to hold up until the sheriff arrived.
“So, he shut it down, and he calls. He calls up somebody on the phone. On the phone, the last thing I heard [Randy say] was ‘run the son of a bitch over.’” Back up the road, Tom could see Steve standing in front of Kenny’s machine.
Tom was standing at the fence, hands on the barbed wire, and swung his leg over, planning to “stand in front of the fence so he couldn't tear that post out.”
“As soon as I got halfway across with my leg, I hear the mini-excavator rev up,” Tom says of that moment in 2018, “and out of the corner of my eye, he's swinging the bucket at me.”
An unstoppable broken man
“I'll remember tomorrow that we had a discussion,” Tom says in an April 2025 interview, “but I won't remember your name.”
Ayda Hamann sits next to him at their kitchen table, present to help her husband finish some sentences, gently remind him of key points, and share more about the challenges their family has faced since the assault.
The excavator bucket had “glanced” the side of Tom’s head, causing spinal cord damage and fracturing his third vertebrae.
By the time the Sheriff had arrived, Randy and Kenny had done more than $10,000 in property damage.
“I've got three herniated discs on my left side. Okay? I have a left biceps tendon tear, the rotator cuff is torn, the right shoulder biceps torn, and the labrums torn… they found the fracture in my neck. It's on transverse process c3, which is where your vertebral artery comes up on both sides, goes through a little hole, and then goes up into the brain. Well, mine was fractured right across.”
Tom and Ayda are engaged in an ongoing lawsuit with the help of a nonprofit law firm to address the property damage and the underlying legal question of when government agencies can be held accountable, however, by law, Tom isn’t allowed to seek damages from Randy Watts. The irrigation district is claiming “government immunity,” which Tom says is part of their playbook.
“They just turn [Randy] loose, and he goes out and confronts or attacks these people. And then, when somebody stands up to him, all the members of the board and their bulldog, they scramble back over the fence yelling government immunity... So I can't, I can't get any help with any of the medical stuff. The only thing we can get out of it would be whatever it costs to repair our fence and our entryway, plus possibly our lawyer fees.”
Ayda and Tom’s lawsuit claims “inverse condemnation,” which is basically when property owners have to chase down payment for property losses caused by government actions, the reverse of eminent domain.
“When the government takes or damages private property, it must notify the owner and pay just compensation,” reads the law firm's website, “Failure to do so is illegal under the Constitution.
Tom says he just wants to see a check on this kind of power and will see it through to the end. “I don't know why God put it in front of me,” he explains, “but he did, and I guess he knew that I wouldn't back down.”
