water rights

Farmers, urbanites and environmentalists were behind the California Legislature's proposed sweeping water reforms, but lawmakers balked at the $12 billion price tag and deferred the vote until the next session.

The bond would have paid for new water infrastructure, ecosystem restoration and supply projects such as water recycling and desalination, according to Bettina Boxall's article in the Los Angeles Times.

Still, there may be some hope for healing the convergence of two rivers in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta east of San Francisco.  As the West Coast's largest estuary, the rivers are home to delta smelt and provide a route both for salmon and for water shipped to Central Valley farms and Southern California cities.

Democrats said they would ask California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to hold a special session on water this fall. 

The delta is crumpling due to past excessive pumping of water to fill federal and state aqueducts, which has been temporarily curtailed to protect the smelt.  That, in turn, has amplifying the drought's effect on farmers and cities.

A plan, hatched largely beyond the public eye, to divvy up water in an already arid Utah desert and send it to Las Vegas has drawn the ire of citizens, conservationists, and elected officials. The controversial Snake Valley water deal is now the subject of a series of citizen meetings as critics try to learn why details of the four-year negotiations that led to the water deal remain secret,  reports Patty Henetz of the Salt Lake Tribune.

 The plan would divide water in the aquifer that runs under Utah and Nevada, and use it to feed growth in Las Vegas. "We don't have any surplus water in Snake Valley. For goodness' sake, we're the epicenter of the drought," rancher Cecil Garland said during a citizens meeting this week.

 Critics warn that a drop in the water table could kick up giant toxic dust storms. The soils that would blow away could contain mercury, deadly fungal spores, and radioactive particles, yet another legacy of nuclear tests in Nevada.

 The current recession has already forced many to revisit their history texts for information about the Great Depression and how we got there. Maybe it's time to re-read the chapter on the Dust Bowl.

Colorado residents are applying for rainwater collection permits since a new law went into effect in July allowing them to harvest the water from the sky. So far, about a dozen people are seeking the permits, John Ingold writes in the Denver Post. Colorado law holds that every drop that falls is already held by a water rights holder, although other Western states encourage rainwater harvesting.

The Idaho Department of Water Resources has ordered the shutdown of groundwater wells across 9,000 acres in the southern part of the state in response to a trout farm, which claims increased pumping from the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer is taking flow it owns, according to the Associated Press. Groundwater users, which include farmers, businesses and cities, have six days to find alternative water sources.

If California farmers switched to drip irrigation, it would save enough water to fill Yosemite's Hetch Hetchy reservoir 16 times, according to a new study by the Pacific Institute, an Oakland-based water policy center.

Kelly Zito of the San Francisco Chronicle highlights the report, whose controversial recommendations also include overhauling the state's water rights system and raising water prices.

Anadarko Petroleum of Houston is looking to intervene in a water-rights case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. Two years ago, Montana accused Wyoming of siphoning off more than its share of water from the Tongue and Powder rivers in violation of the Yellowstone River Compact. The water was used for methane drilling operations in Wyoming, the Associated Press reports. The Texas oil and gas company wants to join the case, saying its drilling operations in northeastern Wyoming would be compromised if the court sides with Montana.

The canal collapse that contributed to the deaths of a mother and two children has finally forced Utah legislators to look at regulating the privately owned water system , which has caused dozens of mudslides over its century-old history.

More than 1,000 companies operate tens of thousands of miles of canals, but no state laws dictate how such irrigation ditches should be built, maintained or serviced, write Matthew D. LaPlante and Nate Carlisle of the Salt Lake Tribune. Their persistent, digging on this story has forced lawmakers to respond.

But Sen. Lyle Hillyard, a Republican who represents Logan, where Saturday's deaths occurred, is himself a shareholder in two water companies, and said he was concerned about costs associated with regulation.

"I know personally most of the canal people who run the canals up there and obviously those people are very conscientious and concerned about the safety of their canals, not only because it might hurt people but because people rely on the water." he told the Salt Lake Tribune.

Searchers Monday began the grim task of trying to excavate the bodies of a woman and two children believed buried in a landslide that decimated their Logan, UT, home. Authorities are investigating whether the landslide was triggered when a nearby privately owned and maintained canal broke. Residents in the area charge the canal, which has caused dozens of landslides over the last century, is not adequately maintained or inspected by the group of water-rights shareholders that owns it, and are calling on government agencies to intervene and take over the inspection process. Matthew D. LaPlante and Maria Villasenor of the Salt Lake Tribune have been following the story.