Some Tooele County residents had a hard time Monday believing a state water engineer’s conclusion that there is still plenty of water in the Tooele Valley basin.
About 60 people gathered in the basement of the Tooele County Building on Monday night to hear representatives from the Utah Division of Water Rights and Jordan Water Conservancy District discuss local water issues in the third of a four-part series of town hall meetings sponsored by the Tooele County Commission.
“Overdrawing the aquifer is way down the road,” said Mike Drake, regional engineer with the Division of Water Rights.
Drake explained that if the Tooele Valley basin was approaching the point of being overdrawn, the division, which monitors water levels annually, would be seeing large, sudden drops instead of gradual declines in water levels.
We’re not seeing that,” Drake said. “The number of wells has not exceeded the recharge.”
“It is happening,” came one response from the audience. “Talk to everybody around and their water is dropping.”
“Just tell us how much water is under the ground so we can quit worrying,” said an Erda resident. “I had to go 20 feet deeper last year, not 50 years from now. Some of my neighbors didn’t have any water.”
“We were told we are over extended on water rights in Erda by 150 percent,” said another Erda resident. “I had to put in a brand new well at $30,000.”
Over the years different studies on the volume of the Tooele Valley basin have varied by as much as 10,000 acre-feet, making pinpointing the exact volume of the basin difficult, according to Drake.
An acre-foot is enough water to cover one acre of land with one foot of water, a volume roughly equal to half of an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
Using a number from a 2009 U.S. Geological Survey report, Drake puts the annual recharge, or water flowing into the Tooele Valley basin, at 67,000 acre-feet per year.
There are around 77,000 acre-feet per year of water being used, on paper, according to Drake. However, the actual use of water from the basin is estimated at 48,600 acre-feet per year.
“The basin is not close to being overdrawn,” he said.
The 10,000 acre-feet per year difference between the use on paper and the annual recharge doesn’t alarm Drake.
“Historically, the state engineer’s office deliberately over extended water allocations,” Drake said. “You have to look at this over an extended period of time. Over time use declines as people stop using their water.”
In 1996, the state engineer stopped issuing new water rights for Tooele Valley. Since then the only way to obtain a water right in Tooele Valley is to get it from somebody who already has one.
Drake offered two reasons why the water levels in wells could be dropping, other than the aquifer is being overused.
“We have had a drought for several years,” Drake said. “It’s piling up and water levels are dropping. I’m seeing applications to dig wells deeper come in to my office weekly and it’s not just in Tooele.”
Drake also said that state water law requires that the Division of Water Rights put all water to use to the the greatest extent possible.
“As we reach safe basin yield, it may require people to go deeper,” Drake said. “That’s just the nature of developing an aquifer.”
There is an area on the east side of Tooele Valley that consists of parts of Stansbury Park, Erda, Lincoln, and Lake Point that is set aside as an exclusionary zone, according to Drake.
“In 2008, the state engineer established a policy that a water right cannot be brought into the exclusionary zone,” Drake said. “That means an application to change the point of diversion [the place that water leaves the ground] cannot be moved into the zone from outside the zone.”
For example, somebody who buys a water right that is for a well in Grantsville can’t move the well from Grantsville into the exclusionary zone. However, water from outside the exclusionary zone can be pumped into the zone, he said.
Also in 2008, the state engineer adopted a policy that said the point of diversion for a water right in Tooele Valley can’t be moved more than three miles to the east, Drake said.
John Wright, a member of the Tooele County Planning Commission, told Drake that he wanted help figuring out what to tell people that come in and want their property rezoned.
“How do I know how many houses we can approve,” Wright said. “How do I know how much we’re impacting those that are already there and those that are to come. I don’t want to tell those that come in down the road that we have no water for them.”
“At some point it becomes a land use issue,” Drake said. “But when it comes to that endpoint, and we aren’t there in Tooele Valley, the state engineer will have to regulate water and according to prior appropriation, people with the more recent water rights may have to be told to shut off their water.”
Prior appropriation gives priority to water rights based on when the rights were first approved or used, Drake said.
Drake again stressed, “We’re not near that in Tooele Valley.”
“Yes we are,” came a quick retort from the audience.
Along with Drake’s presentation, the meeting also included a presentation from Alan Packard, the assistant general manager of the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District.
Packard explained how the water conservancy develops water resources from federal and state water projects and wells. It also builds and maintains the infrastructure to move that water around Salt Lake County and primarily wholesales the water to municipalities and water districts.
Tooele County Commissioner Myron Bateman suggested that if Tooele County organized a water conservancy district, it could be used to move water around the valley from places where there is water to places where water is in short supply.
“We could move water from the west side of the valley to the east side or maybe bring it in from Rush Valley,” he said.