Munk's corn hasn't had irrigation since the third week of July - and it shows. "It's rotten. It stinks," he says.

And he's not talking about the corn.

Munk is angry that the state ordered him and 89 other Cache Valley farmers in July to quit pumping from the Bear River because of drought restrictions.

It was the first time in more than 55 years of farming in northwestern Cache Valley that Munk can remember losing his water.

"It's just disgusting what they did to us," says Munk, who - unlike a neighbor - didn't have the stomach for a court fight. "It's degrading to me."

Munk, 78, farms 900 acres with his three sons, a grandson and two hired hands.

All of what they grow - corn, barley, oats, alfalfa and grass hay - is for the herd of 350 Holsteins they milk twice a day, as well as another 50 dry heifers and 400 calves and steers.

The northern Utah farm is one of the larger family-owned operations remaining in a valley once known for its dairies.

The 140 acres of corn the Munks have been chopping for silage will be stored in a bunker and mixed with nearly a dozen other ingredients - including sugar beet syrup, soybean meal and hominy - for cow feed.

Munk is surprised the corn didn't suffer more for lack of water, but he worries about possible nutritional shortcomings. The kernels are pale and look as if they have been frozen. But he won't know whether they are nutritionally deficient until he sends samples of his feed mix for its regular lab assessment.

"The ears are there, but they didn't develop as they should."

Besides the corn, Munk's hay crops were stunted. He estimates he got 400 to 500 fewer tons of hay because of the lack of water.

Two small rainfalls in early August and a big one the first week of September helped, but nature's timing was not perfect.

Altogether, Munk says, "I figure it's costing me $75,000."

What rankles Munk most is that the Bear River, which meanders through his land, is still running high.

"The river is higher than it's been all summer," he says. "They haven't been fair to us."

The "they" is Utah Power & Light, which has hydroelectric dams on the river and controls the water stored at Bear Lake upstream, and the Utah Division of Water Rights, which enforces water rights and ordered 90 irrigators who draw directly from the river to stop pumping July 27.

Those 90 Utah farmers had used up all of their allocations for the season, an amount that was 40 percent of what they normally use. (Another 350 farmers lost their water in early August, when the West Cache Canal Co. used up its allotment.)

UP&L determined in April that a shrinking Bear Lake called for drastic reductions in water use and notified users. The lake began the year at its lowest level in 70 years.

One of the 90 pumpers, Jerry Simmonds, refused to stop pumping and now faces court action. The state obtained a preliminary injunction from a 1st District judge to restrain Simmonds from pumping, but he is challenging that action.

"We are in a drought, a severe drought," UP&L spokeswoman Margaret Kesler says. "Every effort was made to advise people [that] the amount people would get would be far less than usual.

The water Munk sees flowing past his farm, Kesler says, belongs to someone else.

Bob Fotheringham, regional engineer with the Division of Water Rights in Logan, says Munk's beef should not be with the state.

It should be with farmers who have more senior water rights through the Bear River Canal Co., which is downstream from Munk's farm and which in July was asking the state to protect its water rights.

Farmers on that canal system got 50 percent of their normal water this year because of senior rights to some of the river's natural flow.

"I'm not in the mode of debating whether [shutting off pumpers] was fair or not fair," says Fotheringham, adding that the state's only role is to ensure that water goes to the users with the best water rights.

Munk acted on UP&L's warnings about scarce water by planting corn with a shorter growing season. But the utility's advice was not worth much, he says. "What could we do about it? We couldn't just lay down and die." Munk likewise scoffed when he got a call from state regulators during a Sept. 2 rainstorm advising him that it was OK to turn on one of his six Bear River pumps again.

"That's like trying to give a drink to a horse that's been dead three weeks. It stinks and what they did stinks, too."

kmoulton@sltrib.com