Who should get underground water? Good question to ponder as Nevada wants to pump from aquifers on border
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 7, 2008 at 6:36 amFrom the Deseret News:
As Nevada jockeys for water to quench a thirsty, growing Las Vegas, officials in Utah have spent about half of a $3 million budget to study valuable aquifers along the border.
Utah Geological Survey researchers are midway through a project that involves digging monitoring wells south of the Dugway Mountain range and near Nevada’s Great Basin National Park to study the quality, quantity and connectivity of aquifers that for decades have supplied Utah water rights holders. “Westerners realize water is limited,” said Lucy Jordan, a UGS hydrogeologist. “So, as a Westerner we all need to make the most out of those supplies.”
Utah lawmakers appropriated $3 million for the study after the Southern Nevada Water Authority filed for rights to 110,000 acre-feet of water on their side of the border:
Does Nevada have the right to go after 110,000 acre-feet of water so close to the border? “That’s an interesting question,” Jordan said. “It depends on who you ask. That’s where the big problems come in. Whose water really is it?”
In talks about who should have access to groundwater that flows underground on both sides of the state line, Jordan said. Nevada officials have maintained water is flowing from their state into Utah. Jordan noted in an interview Friday that Western water historically has gone to whomever began using it first.
Monitoring will continue, with results up until now showing that two aquifers studied are flowing from one to the other and that the quality is good. Jordan said they’ll be looking closely at how spring runoff impacts the volume of those aquifers, which have yet to be tested by any large-scale pumping project.
Read the full text of the story from the Deseret News by clicking here.
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