Water Sustainability in the Snyderville Basin
Part I - Water and Our Quality of Life
Matt Lindon, P.E. - The Water Guy
Picture this, if you will: swollen streams cascading out of east-facing, high-altitude glaciers, rolling down newly eroded canyon rivers full of landslide hummocks and slumps, across huge alluvial fans, into lush valleys, verdant wetlands and hinterland savannas with grasslands growing as high as the belly of a buffalo. Imagine meadows incised with numerous meandering streams lined with willows and clustered with cottonwoods. Envision floods over-flowing stream banks and beaver dams, spilling into wide and undefined floodplains, saturating the natural sponge of wetland organics and alluvial deposits, recharging near-surface and deep aquifers that slowly bleed their stored volume, keeping streams and rivers flowing all year round. This was the Wasatch back, Park City, Parley's Park, and the Snyderville Meadow a mere 10,000 year ago: a hydrologic system in balance.
Part II – Shrinking Supply and Infinite Demand
Matt Lindon, P.E. - The Water Guy
We live at the divided headwaters of the Weber River. Everything south of Thaynes Canyon drains east down Poison Creek, prosaically renamed Silver Creek, towards Keetley/Quinns and Silver Creek Junctions thru Wanship, where it joins the main stem of the Weber River flowing from the High Uintas via Smith Morehouse Canyon. Then it all flows toward Echo Reservoir, past the towns of Henefer and Morgan. North of Thaynes Canyon, McLeod Creek drains everything through Kimball Junction north towards East Canyon Creek, dam and reservoir, to Morgan where it joins the main stem of the Weber River in Morgan and heads towards Ogden and the Great Salt Lake. Silver Creek at Silver Creek Junction drains barely 17 square miles and discharges an average of 5 cubic feet per second (cfs), 2250 gallons per minute (gpm) or 3,625 acre-feet (ac-ft) per year, with a peak flow during this dry decade of 80 cfs. East Canyon Creek drains 57 square miles and discharges an average of 26 cfs or 18,780 ac-ft with a peak flow this decade of 163 cfs. Only 10-15% of the area in these drainage basins is actually developed and much less of it is actually paved, so our effect on the large, historical infiltration and evapo-transporation rate is not tremendous. Peak flows typically come from snowmelt runoff in the spring, while base flows are reduced to almost zero in the late summer and are seldom strongly affected by summer thunder storms, as is typical of dense urban development or the slick-rock desert drainages.
Part III - Water Rights, Quality, and In-Stream Flows
Matt Lindon, P.E. - The Water Guy
"Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting over." The free and easy appropriation of new water rights for 'beneficial use' in the basin by the State Engineer and the Division of Water Rights was discontinued years ago as it became apparent that there were more 'paper' water rights in the basin than there was actual 'wet' water. This systemic over-allocation is typical in water rights appropriation because only a fraction of approved water rights are actually developed in the allotted time: undeveloped waters can be forfeited and lapse back into the system. The forfeiture statutes have been largely diminished recently by the State Legislature, especially for public water suppliers that need to hoard water and plan for future development, so the over-appropriation issue is even harder to solve. The only other tool available for administration of over-appropriated basins is the Doctrine of Prior Appropriation. The priority date that is attached to each water right when approved is the basis for the concept of 'first in time, first in right'. If your water right has a late Priority Date and there is no more water left, then you are out of water and out of luck. This concept is easily enforced with surface water, for when your stream runs dry, you stop diverting. With groundwater, when your diversion exceeds the recharge rate and the water table drops, you often just dig your well deeper. This can result in an unsustainable mining of ancient groundwater and is monitored closely by all responsible stakeholders.
Read more: Part III - Water Rights, Quality, and In-Stream Flows
