Local protests mount over Sanpete water diversion plan

By Matt Ward

Price City Council voted Wednesday to approve adding its own protest letter to a growing pile of protests being collected by the Utah Division of Water Rights over a plan by the Sanpete Water Conservancy District to divert 5,400 acre feet of water from Gooseberry Creek.
An application for a permanent change of water was filed with the state’s water rights division in July.
Since then six entities and individuals have already filed protest letters, including from the North Carbon Group, PacifiCorp, the Utah Rivers Council, as well as from outdoor enthusiasts and concerned residents.
Price City Engineer Russell Seeley said he expects Carbon County will also join the protest.
According to the Sanpete water district’s application, the diverted water would go toward irrigating 30,000 acres of agricultural land, service Sanpete municipal water needs and go toward industrial uses. The water would be diverted by building stream diversions at five locations along tributaries that feed Gooseberry Creek. The captured water, snowmelt and runoff water, would then flow through the existing Narrows Ditch and tunnel.
“Water thus diverted shall enter Cottonwood Creek and thereafter be used and managed by Sanpete Water Conservancy District within their service area to meet both existing and future demands,” according to the water district’s application.
Price council members voted unanimously to protest.
Seeley explained to the council before the vote that the application represents a new chapter in an ongoing, generations-long fight between Carbon and Sanpete counties over water.
A number of protests point to concerns about what a diversion of so much water from Gooseberry Creek would do to Scofield Reservoir, which feeds local water supplies.
“Because Price City has water rights and shares in Scofield Reservoir, we felt it was appropriate to file a protest on behalf of the city, to protect the interests of the city and the residents,” Seeley told council members.
The city engineer said he was working with a water rights attorney to craft the city’s protest letter. The deadline for protests is Sept. 17, he said.
Councilman Layne Miller said he was glad to see the city protest before making the motion to approve it.
The water rights application states that the original water right, 91-132, was originally filed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on Jan. 16, 1941. It wasn’t assigned to Sanpete County Water Conservancy District until July 22, 1975. That assignment wasn’t officially consecrated until Jan. 7, 1985.
At that time plans were in place to construct a dam and reservoir to service Sanpete water needs. That reservoir and dam have never been built.
“Regulatory requirements and legal battles have prevented the construction of the dam,” according to the water district’s application.
A number of concerns have been raised by the Sanpete water district’s latest plan.
Helper resident Gordon Odendahl sent a protest letter Sept. 7. He said he was worried that approving the application would lower the water level in Scofield Reservoir.
“Not only would the diverted water flow not be allowed to reach the reservoir, but because of downstream free flow requirements, the amount of water not allowed to flow into Scofield Reservoir would need to be released from the existing water storage in the reservoir in order to satisfy the rights of downstream water users who have rights to use the water,” he wrote.
Frank Saccomanno represents a group of those downstream water users.
He is with the North Carbon Group, which owns a large number of water shares in Scofield Reservoir and represents some of the earliest direct flow water rights holders along the Price River. He wrote in a protest that approval of the change application would “void a long time agreement in which the current approved change application is based on.”
“The natural flow water users on the Price River will be greatly harmed by this new application,” Saccomanno wrote in a letter submitted Aug. 29. “The natural flow that will be interfered with on this application is a vital and necessary resource to thousands of people on the Price River.”
PacifiCorp’s water right administrator, Buffi Morris, wrote in a Sept. 13 letter, that because the power company owns a number of direct flow water rights from Price River, the company is concerned any diversion from Gooseberry Creek would do harm to those rights.
Nick Schou, conservation director for the Utah Rivers Council, submitted a lengthy letter on Sept. 13, spelling out an array of environmental and economic concerns related to Sanpete’s proposed diversion plan.
“The catastrophic harms the proposed diversion could bring to the human and non-human communities that rely on Price River watershed are not worth the minuscule and dubious benefits to a few Sanpete County farmers,” Schou wrote.
A public hearing on the water diversion application has not yet been set.