aquifer

A battle over resource management and clean water on south Vancouver Island came to a head when Halalt First Nation filed a petition with B.C.'s Supreme Court to review plans for a new water project before proceeding, reportsMark Hume of the Globe and Mail. Halalt opposes the North Cowichan District's plan to dig two wells and install a 1 million gallon reservoir to provide clean drinking water for residents in the Chemainus area because the wells would draw water from an aquifer below Halalt lands.

Halalt First Nation has objected to the plan since 2003, maintaining that the aquifer cannot support that many peoples' water needs without negatively impacting the connected Chemainus River and its fish stocks, reportsMark Kiemele in Klahowya. They are requesting creation of a watershed management plan, as well as involvement in monitoring programs for the area, before the project goes ahead.

Residents in the Chemainus area currently get their water from surface sources, which regularly suffer from high bacteria counts due to heavy rains, according to Hume. The District issues advisories several times a year for residents to boil their water. The District says drilling wells will draw up clean water, and it has agreed to halt their use if its three-year monitoring program shows negative impacts.

Halalt Chief James Thomas worries the District wouldn't be able to stop the pumps once they were supplying thousands of homes in an area he says is already overdeveloped. The North Cowichan municipality has admitted it wants to pursue the well project mainly for financial concerns.

After four years of negotiation, Utah and Nevada have come up with a plan to divvy up water reserves from the Snake Valley. The controversial plan would divide whatever water has not yet been allocated from the aquifer equally between the states. Critics said the plan is flawed and could disrupt an already fragile water equilibrium, drying up meadows and triggering dust storms, writes Patty Henetz of the Salt Lake Tribune. Proponents say the water-sharing agreement is necessary to maintain growth in the Las Vegas area.

Water wars go way back in the West, but water stewardship is also critical to its future, as Interior SecretaryKen Salazar says here in this recent video clip from the Billings Gazette.

Such decisions deserve careful thought, and at least the most recent proposal postpones until 2019 a final decision on a 285-mile, $3.5 billion pipeline that would slake thirsty Las Vegas.

"The point is to avoid a water war that would have to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court," Henetz writes from her interview with Mike Styler, executive director of the Utah Department of Natural Resources.

The agreement includes a $3 million "mitigation fund," but that couldn't begin to mitigate the real problems.

 "You can't drink dollar bills," said Steve Erickson, a Utah resident speaking for the Great Basin Water Network and quoted in the Tribune's story. "Once the water's gone, it's gone."

A new study by the Utah Geological Survey is trying to determine whether new cracks are appearing throughout Utah valleys. The study will focus on the Enoch fissure - a 2 ½ long rupture in the ground in Iron County. Such fissures apparently result from groundwater mining and the lowering of water tables, the Associated Press reports.