Industry sign banking arkansas lease template free
[Music] more about the Emily but a couple quick announcements the science useful let me address RC know I'm a partner now [Music] [Applause] sorry coming correct focuses her practice on water law and she works with both under districts or head she's an ad hoc decision butter walk for us and as you dream with a preset a prior to joining at all things you bought a water rights general teaching also meditations a wedge involved [Music] all our natural resource copy today is already up there water markets and water gang Isaac's me that should be telling us about the legislation offer has to come along [Applause] you hi pizza and small cramped rooms so an upgrade I'm very excited to be here today to talk to you guys about some very interesting innovative activity we have here in Utah regarding water banking and water markets this is really intended to be an interactive discussion as well and so I'm going to leave about half an hour at the end of our conversation for questions because typically we've now given mine I'll tell you kind of who the group is a version of this presentation probably were 50 times in the last six months and so in each one of those presentations we of inevitably have very really good questions from the audience and so I'd like to leave some time for some robust discussion and if you have anything that comes up kind of while you're going through while we're going through the presentation you know please just raise your hand and we can stop and talk about it but this is a project that is near and dear to my heart I have been working on this water banking project the last three years and we'll kind of talk about how that group came to be but before we talk about the specifics it's really important for us to set kind of the need in context for what we're doing here and so as you may know Utah is one of the driest states in the country who here went to the 2017 I believe Stegner Center symposium about water okay that was probably a good indicate that was a great conference we talked a lot about upcoming climate variability we talked a lot about drought we talked a lot about the changes there facing water here in the West and this kind of plays into that very very well so who here is seeing this slide before anybody okay so this is a Tennessee gardener population projections for the state of Utah so you'll see I love a good pointer wrong one so you'll see here that you know here we are in 2020 we're sitting in about three million people by 2060 five we are expected to cap right around six million people so that's legitimately almost a doubling of our population here in the state of Utah the majority of that growth is anticipated to be along the Wasatch Front you know you can see here Utah County you know I've lived here since 2007 when I came here for law school which seems like a really long time ago but isn't in some ways and just since I've been here the dramatic change of our landscape has been pretty pretty incredible and so you it's happening in front of us before our eyes and so what that means for our water is we've got a number of pressures you know we've got increased population growth we've got increased development we've got increased recreational pursuits you know here in Utah we have a multi-billion dollar ski industry with climate variability variability projections those ski a lot of the ski resorts are looking to use artificial snow to bolster their early sit seasons and so artificial snow takes water it takes water rights you know we have a recreation economy built on a changing source and so I think that that is something that we need to keep into context too we talk about what our water resources look like in the future environmental and water quality concerns the algae blooms have even seen the last couple years in Utah Lake those are extremely harmful and very dangerous to both people but also our water systems and so water quality is increasingly become a big concern for us the same thing up in East Canyon if you guys live up in the Park City area you know East Canyon Creek has really suffered from low streamflows for quite some times which jeopardizes its blue-ribbon fishing status so water quality and water quality concerns are closely linked and becoming another increasing pressure we also have our vote agricultural production and efficiency who here took the UU Utah survey like it's about three or four years ago by envision Utah they kind of did this big survey about what do we want the state to look like and so one of the key findings from that studies that Utah really does want to maintain a strong robust agricultural economy in the state as part of our heritage it's part of our culture it's part of our literal economy but that's a right now 80% of the water Utah is in agriculture and so how we deal with water and our culture is going to be a huge issue going forward and then drought and climate there we've seen here recently kind of impacts of drought and climate here in the state who here remembers 2016-2017 remember that winter who's a skier it was like the worst year ever literally on record and for skiing and in 2017-2018 one of the best years on record and that is just a great example of not just how climates going to affect our long-term trends but climates also going to affect variability from year to year which is something that we're going to have to deal with from a water management perspective so we're facing kind of an increasing number of pressures on our water resources here in the state what does that mean though for future growth how are we going to get all that water so like I mentioned right now eighty percent of the water in the state of Utah is held in the agricultural sector so right now that's really our bank so to say for water for future growth however if we only solely rely on that as one of our main primary source of water for future growth it has some pretty severe impacts and so part of the reason for having this water banking discussion is looking to our sister state Colorado and kind of seeing what happened there so Colorado is about 20 years behind us in terms of their population boom and so provides some really good real-time examples of kind of what could potentially happen here in Utah if we don't take some alternative measures so this is a case study the lower Arkansas Valley and so the lower Arkansas Valley I'm in Colorado is in Crowley County Colorado and we've got Pueblo and Colorado Springs two growing municipal areas and then we've got all these kind of like verdant and lush farms that were once along the Arkansas River and so what you see here in this first little box is a kind of right right around the town of Pueblo is what we call replacement in place and so basically what happened here is there were farms at one point in time as Pueblo developed those farms are bought that water was converted to provide water for housing for condos for homes etc we call this replacement in place now what happens here is that water in this particular circumstance the economic value of that water actually stays in the local community the local developers making money there are people living in those homes who helped the rusa port the local economy and it generally has kind of a neutral impact on the local economy and that's kind of where Utah is right now we're kind of in this replacement in place if you drive around the point of the mountain you see all those farms that are now turning into big buildings and turning into homes and to accommodate our growth and so we're kind of in the pink bubble but what happened in Colorado is as hot as all those farms and local areas began to be bought up they moved into the red box and this is what we call buy and dry essentially developers went further up the watershed bought farms took them out of production solely for their water took them out of production and move their water rights to the local municipality so this is kind of where we don't really necessarily want to go but this is kind of right now the kind of the status quo of how water is provided for growing municipal areas one of the Mait one of the main tools for providing that water and you can see here in the green box you know as all these little red dots each one of those is an acre production get bought up you see that you see that buy and dry go further and further and further up the watershed and so in Colorado they had a huge population growth 78% growth between 2008 and 2015 so in this area buying dry tranfer transfers have followed one-fourth of the area's agricultural lands they moved 10,000 acre feet acre feet of water were transferred out of the local community to provide municipal support and estimated 50% of the farmland could be followed by 2050 to supply urban growth so this is a pretty significant chunk of water that's being taken out of production and what that means and this is one County up on that slide is Crowley County you see Crowley County is kind of right here down in the southwest corner our southeast so they had seventy thousand acre feet transferred from municipal used for Pueblo and Colorado Springs five thousand acres were reduced to 50 thousand acres were reduced to five thousand acres they had a poverty rate of forty seven point four percent and then the M&I own 90 percent of the water in the twin makes reservoir which is a reservoir that was originally intended for agricultural use this is a pretty dramatic transformation of their water portfolio some of the other consequences of that is they had noxious weeds and dust storms as all this land was taken out of production and not being an active production and they had a negative wage growth in 2008 and 2009 that also kind of coincides with the economic crash but a lot of it has been attributed to the this dramatic transformation in their economy in that area so that's kind of one thing that's what that's kind of what we're trying to avoid by looking at these other alternative methods is right now the status quo is this buy and dry transfers and we would like to create something that's a little bit different it has a little bit more economic value stay in the local community another reason for kind of exploring these activities and exploring water banking is I think that one of the things that Utah really is is focusing on and moving more towards is management as one of the tools water management and the same plane as physical development here in Utah we have been really good at building things like we we love it and we're really good at planning to build things but the reality is is we're running out of things to build and we're running out of good places to put big dams and reservoirs however and so one of the reasons for exploring water banking is really to be an alternative to physical development one of these is the berry development project have you guys who here has heard of the bear of your development project okay great so 1991 the Barrett Development Act has passed it authorizes and directs the division of Water Resources to develop the surface waters of the Bear River and it's tributaries through the planning and construction of reservoirs and associated facilities and so this right here is a diagram of at one point in time what could have been potential reservoirs for bear development so this is a pretty large these are some pretty large reservoirs in on November 1919 2019 so just right before the holidays of this year Water Resources did an update on the development project which is kind of exciting so originally in 1991 when that when that that Act was passed they thought there would be a need to start developing these projects and actually build these dams by 20:15 but due to slow the flow and other conservation measures they've actually pushed that projection out until 2045 or 2050 so they're not seeing a need for these additional reservoirs for you know almost another 15 30 or whatever year we announced an example of how management techniques are kind of work in concert with physical development and planning this is a pretty this would be a pretty extreme pretty extreme activity 13 potential reservoirs reservoir combinations and pipelines this would develop 220,000 acre feet per year to be delivered at boxelder Davis and Weber counties a there'd be 85 thousand acre feet of depletion which means that water would actually get used and not be put back into the system to return flows and that would equal a great impact of the Great Salt Lake so if we depleted 85 thousand acre feet of water a year that could result in a lake level depletion from anywhere from eight point five to fourteen inches so it's a lowering of the lake exposing a fair amount of the Great Salt Lake bed and it's going to cost us 1.5 to 1.8 billion dollars so one of the reasons for exploring some of these alternative management tools is to also kind of push these bigger projects further out into the future or even potentially alleviate the need for them that's a big ask but you know I think that we're kind of having that discussion okay so that leads us to what do we do if the status quo is buy and dry and big development projects what do we do today to avoid this both are both kind of draconian results and so we move into the conversation of water markets and water banking and so water markets and water banking are nothing new they've happened across the West for quite some time now when you say water market or water bank they can mean very very different things depending on where you are but this is just a kind of a slide showing various activities Oregon's got a couple really good ones Washington's been pretty active Idaho doesn't look like it has a lot of banks but they actually have kind of one big bank that operates off the snake that's a state-run water bank that's been pretty effective California has got a number of kind of innovative and interesting projects so this is kind of a concept that's been tested in various forms throughout the western United States so then what do we do for Utah so before we get into specifically talking about kind of like what this water banking concept is for Utah it's important to kind of know how we got here so it's kind of interesting we had multiple threads in the water user community kind of come together and coalesce around this concept of water banking so in 2017 senator Janie Iwamoto put forth an in-stream flow bill that essentially allowed municipalities to add an in-stream flow purpose to their existing water rights right now under the law and stream flows are extremely limited and you can only have them under very very rare circumstances you have to basically be the Division of Parks and Rec the Division of Wildlife Resources or Trout Unlimited and they're only for a temporary period of time for a very specific stream reach and they have the lowest priority date in the system so in-stream flows here in Utah are kind of more just like a fig leaf they're not actually effective in a lot of ways yep totally so in-stream flows so basically water laws based on this concept of beneficial use and so you have a water right to basically further specific use so you get a water right for irrigation where you get a water right for power or you get a water right for I'm doing a bottle of water operation and so they're in the way the law exists right now there's really not a good vehicle for just having a water right for letting the water stay in the stream as solely water in the stream because if you think about it all of our laws here in Utah for Western in the Western water law were built back in the 1860s 1840s even in 1850s where really the the overall reaching goal was to you know make the desert bloom to like put that water to use and so it wasn't deemed useful to keep that water in the stream so now that we're in the modern era and we understand the need for having thriving natural habitats or meet the need for water for water quality this concept of interesting flows is becoming more prevalent because there's not really a legal foothold to save that water for an in-stream flow yeah that's a great question if you have questions let me know so in 2017 as energy you Emoto did her in streamflow bill the legislature kind of punted and they said this is a little too controversial for
us why don't you make a working group and we can talk about it so she started an in-stream flow working group representative Hawks started an AGG optimization working group talking about how we can make AG water use a little more effective and efficient central Utah Water Conservancy District was having independent discussions about creating a water bank in their Bonneville unit which is an area of central Utah Water Conservancy District is kind of the wholesaler for all the water you see in the big dam so Jordan L Deer Valley or Deer Creek all that water kind of comes through central Utah Water Conservancy District in 2017 we had a governor's water strategy report that set out kind of like big statewide goals and so that also identified water banking is a key element to explore and so what happened is in 2017 we start these water banking working group meetings all four of those things kind of come together into this large group working group of water water of the water community and right now the working group has about 70 different stakeholders working on it so I mean these are people from large Conservancy districts from municipalities from conservation groups from Department of Ag really a pretty wide and diverse group of water users working together and so from that in 2017 we worked for two years last year in 2019 we brought a joint resolution before Senate joint resolution one before the legislature that just said hey legislature we're exploring this idea water banking we don't know what it is yet but we think it's a good idea and so please endorse it and they did they said okay working group keep going you're doing you know come back to us next year with actual legislation in 2019 we also got a four hundred thousand dollar one-time state appropriation to explore this concept so we got some money behind it in 2020 we actually receive we applied in 2019 but receive the money in 2020 we received an additional four hundred thousand dollars of money to explore this concept so we have about eight hundred thousand dollars behind us and I'll talk about how that's going to be applied shortly then in 2020 we brought back SB 26 water banking amendments which essentially is the legislation that kind of sets up the Utah water banking concept and so that's kind of where I want to talk about now so through that working group Utah's unique who here loves working in Utah all kinds of people which is good many different opinions which is awesome and so for our working group we said how are we going to appease this extremely wide and diverse group of stakeholders I mean we're talking about you know TNC sitting next to Emory County Water Conservancy District these are you know traditionally diametrically opposed people about water and the group came together had some really constructive discussions and said okay whatever we do the banking has to be voluntary meaning that you know it can't be a statewide implemented program it has to be temporary meaning it's going to the bank really needs to facilitate temporary transactions for the use of water rights so we're not talking about buying and selling water rights we're talking about leasing water rights because the purpose for that is that we wanted the economic value to come from the use of water to stay with the owner of the water right and so they had to be a temp they had these banks had to facilitate temporary transactions and then most importantly local these banks are going to be local banks in a way kind of hyper local banks because that way they're really responsive to local conditions you have local buy-in the local individuals themselves are actually the ones who are going to kind of like decide what the form and function of the bank is and so you know kind of our thesis statement for the project ended up being to better support Utah's growing water demands water banking could facilitate local voluntary and temporary transfers of water that generate income for water right owners and increase access to water so what were really talking about here is leasing water rights that's what we're really talking about and creating a mechanism and a forum for doing so but why do we need new legislation to do this you know a lot of people are already doing something similar in the state but we are finding that that activity was pretty locally centralized and not really open to everybody like who here is anyone here a water user is anyone here a farmer I worked for an organization that uses water okay one all right so um yeah I asked that question in depending over here where we are it's like one person or like all the people and so one of the questions we ask is like who here has tried to buy a water right has anyone here ever tried to buy a water right okay how did you do it okay and how did you know about it neighbors exactly that's it there's no really central repository for water rights here in the state of Utah like there's a couple kind of wonky like websites that people set up but there's really no forum if you want water and you want to lease water that doesn't really exist here in Utah it's generally like word of mouth and so really why we wanted to create this new legislation was to kind of create a fulcrum for local people to get together and create a little local market for water rights to bring together willing lessors and women let's ease it also promotes we wanted to promote greater access to water for all parties because if you have your neighbor usually that's like an Ag - AG discussion I'm a farmer you're a farmer let's talk we understand farming more so in certain areas of the state that conversation is brought into being like I'm a farmer I'm a conservation group let's talk and see what we can do but those are pretty limited conversations and so we wanted to broaden the conversation to bring more people in and create more access to water rights also we wanted to allow water to be used for water quality and environmental purposes that comes back to that in-stream flow purpose right now the statutes are so limited it's really hard to do that also there's a lot of existing agreements out there right now that really don't square with law because you can have like a gentleman's agreement to let your water flow by for in-stream purposes but that water is not actually like shepherded and protected as an in-stream flow and so we wanted to give these existing agreements some legal authority and then we also wanted to incentivize it so banked water is exempt from beneficial use requirements under the law who hears heard it of use it or lose it charles has to raise the time because he was in my class so like if you don't use your water for seven years here in Utah it's vulnerable to judicial forfeiture which means that it's someone brought in action or you're in a general adjudication your water rate can actually be taken away for not being used remember that comes back to the concept of water is there to be used under the law and so if you have a water that's banked that water right is exempt from beneficial use requirements so that means that you don't have to actually use that water because the intent is it's going to be leased out to somebody else and then we also wanted to build and utilize existing water law so we're not creating things from whole cloth but basically we're kind of building on things that are already there so before we even get into the legislation though this legislation is heavily heavily heavily reliant on the local people being engaged and invested in the process of creating a water bank and so like to become a water bank under the statute will require interested water users to invest substantial time and resources to get together and see you know to have a conversation before they even get to apply to be a water bank and so you know I kind of you know highlighted a couple of the people who've been involved in this conversation to date old men who farm and women but mostly its old men let's be real we were Basin Water Conservancy District East Canyon watershed Emery County that's a farmer and I like this one I literally googled lady lawyer and that too came up and I was like perfect she's going in the slideshow um so you know before we even get to put in an application you know really this is premise taun having a lot of local interest from the get-go and that comes back to the three tenants of local temporary and voluntary okay so now we'll get into the legislation so what does this legislation do and suggest you know it's SB twenty six water amendments it was passed out of the Senate last week passed out of the Hat when it was passed out of the Senate two weeks ago out of the house last week so now we're just waiting for the governor's signature on it and he's already expressed his support for the bill so this is probably a most likely going to become Utah law so SB 26 so basically you know we define the objectives of the water Banking Act you know pretty much everything that I've just discussed oftenly used to the public's water transparency temporary flexible low cost transactions promoting agriculture we also want to facilitate water quality standards water rights administration distribution and then a healthy resilient environment kind of like these are the purposes of the Act so how the Act really works is it works through this concept and structure of an application to become a water bank that you submit to the Board of Water Resources and so I've also provided for you guys on your way out kind of our cover letter letter that we did for the legislature so that includes kind of a cover letter from the sponsors as well as a really good legislative summary so there's something you're interested in there's more information in that packet but basically the concept is application is all the individual local water users would kind of gotten together and we'll talk about how we're going to get to get them together in a second and then once they've kind of got these formulations of how they want to create the bank they have to file an application with the Board of Water Resources and the application of Board of Water Resources is really supposed to kind of frame the discussion to the boat that the local water users would have had because to fill out an application you have to come up with about 15 different pieces of criteria basically it's like a checklist like if you want to create a little local market in your area and a local bank in your area these are all the things that you would need to consider to make sure that you're successful for doing so and so it's going to be like what kind of governing board are you what kind of leasing type do you want to do like do you want to do a bulletin board do you want to do kind of a more complicated leasing tract transaction you know how your leasing practice is going to occur how are you going to price your water what's your service area for your bank what are your grievance procedures if a water user doesn't want to do with water users unhappy what kind of Bank are you going to be we actually have two kinds of banks on there a statute a statutory bank which is intended to be like a little nonprofit we think are most American of nonprofit corporation similar to irrigation companies or a contract bank which is really going to be we anticipate that being public water suppliers who already have contracts and just kind of allows them to get some of the protections that the banking statute gives and then you know most importantly how are you going to coordinate with the State Engineer so to be able to fill out this application really necessitates a lot of really kind of good pre work from the local water users once you have the application approved we'll go back over so once you submit your application the Board of Water Resources looks at it it's just a completeness review there's a public meeting so the people who are in the local area can come back and like give some comment on the water bank and then if this Board of Water Resources determines that the application is complete and you've met all those 15 check marks they don't do a substantive review they just look make sure you've completed all the check marks then they approve your application and you can kind of move on to operating your water bank and so to operate your water bank you use the regular change application procedure so if you want to move a water right into a water bank you have to file a file a change application and the goal is to do a one-time change application so instead of having right now oftentimes it requires water users multiple change applications to kind of get to where they want to go the goal here is to say if you want to put a water right in the water bank you do a one-time change application and the State Engineer reviews your water right they look for the traditional criteria for a change application which they vet the validity they address impairment to other water users but then they also set the terms and conditions for how that water right can be used in the service area and so it certainly our intention that service area is going to be designed pretty hand-in-hand with the State Engineer because the State Engineer already has existing distribution models that will kind of make sure that this service area you propose can actually happen and then distribution you coordinate with the local State Engineer about how you're going to move your water you distribute and Shepherd the water according to priority and calls and then you have to do whatever internal bank policies you've said that you're going to do for under the application so kind of you know how does your leasing going and how are you people getting paid how are people are they happy or your water users happy etc and so then once you're kind of working once the bank's operating there are annual reporting requirements so the banks have an annual recording annual reporting requirement to the Board of Water Resources the Board of Water Resources has an annual reporting requirement to the interim Natural Resources Committee at the end of our three year the first three years we have a water so our water smart water marketing strategy report do and then they'll they continue assessment and tweaking as we go and then there's a 10-year sunset on this legislation so it's really intended to kind of be a pilot project whether or not we continue after that ten-year period we're just really depend on how successful we are with the banks so this is kind of a graphic you develop your bank locally available look like local stakeholders get together you identify the purpose and type of water bank you organize the water bank you decide if your contract or a statutory bank you put in your application to the Board of Water Resources you describe all the things in the application the board will have a public meeting and then board approves complete applications you complete your change applications you distribute water and then you have your annual reporting requirements so that's a lot and we've actually given this presentation we did a pretty big roadshow this presentation and we went to like over 50 different places so we went to like Emory County and Paiute County and Washington County went all over the state to different water groups and usually at this point in the conversation people are like okay that sounds like a lot of work and we're like yeah it probably will be a lot of work but the benefits might be really good and so to kind of actually get the ball rolling on this is we're going to take that $100,000 pot of money and we've frozen we've chosen three pilot project areas that we're going to get going first now the statute is statewide and applicable now so if somebody wants to do a water bank they can but we're going to apply our resources and funds to kind of getting three water banks off the ground first and so the $800,000 is going to go to fund a project manager is going to go to work with local water users on the bank application and it's going to support and assist the creation of local water banks in the three areas we've chosen we chose because those individual water users came to the working group and said please put a bank in our area first and so those are two the Cache Valley area the Snyder Vil
e Basin and the price area so three very different parts of the state and so we'll kind of see how it works yeah hmm so the askance of the really the goal is to kind of like free up additional water so for example right now working its way through the legislature is a split season leasing bill so right now in a water right traditionally it's been administered so that like if you have your water right and you have the period of you sits for a whole season of use and so right now that bill is going to work in concert with this bill where if you're a farmer and you only want to do your first two cuttings of hay and that third cutting of hay is pretty marginal for you you could instead put that water in the bank and to be available for use and lease out and so in that case like if a farmer who has marginal crops on his third cutting hay he could lease that water for his purposes or a local municipality could lease that water during the high dry times of the year to help with water quality concerns so that's kind of one of the purposes or just to have better AG to AG transfers of water you know create a little more dialogue between AG users we're seeing this more as like a spot check for municipal supply realistically this is not going to be a tool for like hard municipal supply unless it's a pretty creative option which we can talk about there's a really good one called the super ditch in the super ditch in Colorado they had about a hundred thousand acres of irrigation the farmers got together and they said hey look we're willing to follow 30 percent of our fields so we're going to irrigate 70 and fallow 30 percent and we will provide you local municipality the equivalent of that water for that 30 percent of lamb we're not following but we get to choose which acre it is per year and so that one good well one there's legal protection for in-stream flows it doesn't exist now and so like if you have a water right and it's approved to be in a bank it's approved for the use of in-stream flows and so then if you want to lease out that water for in-stream flow purposes that's a designated use under the law that currently doesn't exist now in terms of following you know family is good and bad I mean following it depends on what you're doing you know following can provide that instead of having that water be used and you follow your land that water can be used instead of on agriculture use for a different purpose they're creative things like the super date sure people follow their land and provided a hard supply of municipal water for municipalities and there is the benefit of kind of like having more discussion about water waters doing because there's a lot of water out there that just like sitting in on unis applications or is being really used inefficiently but if it has a price marker on it you know that really gets people to talk and use it a little bit more carefully yeah and the income from the water is staying locally yeah it kind of is I mean it's not going to get rid of buy and dry like by Andrea it's still going to occur Lehigh is not going to exist one day I mean like let's you know it's just going to exist in a very different form you know and so Brian DRI is still going to occur but this is really an opportunity to kind of like slow that process and have because I think there are a lot of people in agriculture who want to remain in agriculture and would like an income stream to do so and so instead of having just the options on the table being selling everything and being out it's kind of like a half way to say okay well we could lease it and remain in farming or do half our operation or whatever it just really is intended to give water users more flexibility um so this is a great segue into questions um so I was going to show you real quickly kind of one of the examples but I need to get out of the PowerPoint first so just you guys know we do have a really good website called Utah water bank org it has all of the legislation on it it has our summaries on it it has all of our group meetings and notes and so want to go to that website for more information please do and then we also have a survey because we're trying to get more information back from water users and so if you want to do a survey that would be awesome kind of give us your feedback and interest in the project and so those are kind of my to type my to public statements but I'll leave that back up here but this is really intended now to ask questions about the process if you guys have questions Steve has already started the Tartan to grilling yeah good hmm yeah yes I would love to do that so here's what I want to show you guys and this is unfortunately not my computer it's the nice person Sam's computer and so I'm not as good at working this but so what I want to show you right here is for example the reason we chose the Cache Valley is because the Cache Valley Water Conservancy District which is newly created wanted us to come up so their their Conservancy District is charged with providing water for that area for the next 50 years and they're an entity that loans know water rights and so they're like please help us figure out to have a bank in our area and so in that area when cash Valley if I can sneak in here I tried to be a little more interactive my powerpoints typically have a lot more maps and stuff on them but this is a group communal PowerPoint I just want to show you real quickly who here is familiar with the state engineers website okay all of you guys should get on there it's pretty amazing so we're moving up those Brigham City okay there's Hyrum there's Logan okay so here we got cash Valley so cash Valley I want to say has a hundred and forty different irrigation companies like a huge amount of irrigation companies and so what this conversation is doing is it's right now if you're a shareholder and one of those irrigation companies your little tiny irrigation company might have like a lease pool but you don't have access to the least pool the other 139 irrigation companies so this conversation is really thinking about how are these guys going to actually you know work a little closer together so I'm doing is I'm adding a new layer under the GIS system and so this is all the canals in Cache Valley and so this is kind of giving you an idea these are all the mapped canals and so kind of see if how it goes you can kind of see there's already a ton of distribution system already built into this area and so the question is is like can we get this to work a little more effectively instead of having 140 independent system this is there a way that we can have these talk together maybe they just need one head gate to connect to systems we did have some really concrete interesting conversations with Erica Gattis about water quality concerns about being like we'll make sure you don't put a degraded water into a better water and I was like oh yes good good consideration Erica um but that's kind of a conversation here a conversation a different part of the state is the Snyder Ville basin and the Snyder field Basin is going to look pretty different than the other particular areas and these are all very very initial conversations but basically in Snyder ville what we've been talking about is they're basically three large municipal water suppliers in Snyder will there's Mountain Regional Special Service District which is above which is a public entity there's summer water distribution company which is a privately mutually held water distribution company and there's Park City which is a municipal municipal entity and so up there the goal is to get water into East Canyon Creek and so those guys are saying well maybe we need to figure out a way between the three of us to do like a conservation credit so people use less water that water can be marketed as being for an in-stream flow in East Canyon and if it goes through a bank it can be dead can be preserved and regulated as an in-stream flow in the bank in in the creek bed itself and so that bank is going to look extremely different than what cash Valley is going to look at look like because cash valley really is going to be like an AG bag [Music] and Steve that doesn't fit with our local temporary and voluntary aspects the goal is to have the local people figure out what works best for them I mean I think I mean we already have pretty stringent conservation goals for the state and we just came out with new conservation goals at the end of last year so this also works in concert with other existing state policies and programs it's just kind of like one more tool on the docket but so anyways going to show you price so each Canyon is going to look very different than what price would look like in price it's it's that's even even a different conversation because PacifiCorp owns a reservoir and so there's actually physical storage most these water right banks are realistically going to be like an orchestration of delivery and distribution whereas in Pacific in the price area they actually have physical storage to help them kind of do a bank and so that area is going to look completely different than like what our area is going to look like we have a couple of Comrie we've had a couple conversations with other groups for example well the Jacob irrigation company anyone know well they just well the Jacob so back in the day the Salt Lake Valley was full of canals and irrigation and fields not so much anymore so well be Jacob is an irrigation company that sits on the Utah Salt Lake or the Utah County of Salt Lake County line so some of the most developing areas in the state and so they had the problem where their shareholders are selling their land to develop it but then have access shares so they physically don't have the land to use all of their water I don't represent them I don't know if that's a true statement that's what I understand the case to be and so the question for them is like well maybe we could have a big with this excess water they do some minor leasing with West Jordan but that could be a little more robust area perhaps the Jordan River Commission which is a group that's been very interested in this project could lease water from them you know if the bank is a little more open there's a way to use that water that's presently not able to be used in the company preserve those water rights and good standing and provide income back to the shareholders so there's kind of one of those concepts J Humphries anyone know who J Humphries is so J Humphries is the Emery County Water Conservancy district manager and he's kind of like he shows up with the boots and the hats at all these meetings the first time we gave this presentation he was like this will never work it will never work we're like nah c'mon J let me forget some fun and J and now been to five of these presentations and he's like thought about it I think it's gonna work and I was like I think so too and so it's really kind of like because the statute is structured really just to be a checklist that you have to like complete the state doesn't tell you how you fill out that checklist or what the form is you just have to make sure that you have addressed these 15 pieces of criteria and so it's really intended to kind of like let the local individuals and the local water users and local stakeholders design something that works for their particular area so yeah other questions or thoughts yeah very question yeah well being someone who owns a bucket I mean I think that temporary for right now I mean usually tell elephants so many bytes at a time and so I think realistically these banks are going to be hyper local and all in full disclosure I'm applying to be the project manager and we put in our proposal it's with the Division of Water Resources right now through the RFP process and one of the people that we are partnering with is a group out of Colorado called West Water Research to talk about market transactions and so they're really going to be the group is going to help us figure out what do these individual market transactions look like and so the goal I think for the first stage is to be kind of more orchestration of distribution and then as we grow move into maybe storage and federal projects we might need some more on out contract changes but we're always welcome you to the table if you have thoughts Alma yeah [Applause] that's a great question so hopefully we'll be so successful that no one will think about Sun setting this thing but realistically I think that we could be considered Emily's one of the things we actually put in the proposal like I think this will be a successful project if for the for the three demonstration projects even if one of our banks fails and we don't get a bank set up because what it's doing is it's having that conversation occur and so for the metrics for me for the specifics of the bank I would like to see three or four banks up and running and having actual transactions by the ten year point if not more we have more interest than we have resources to divide to help those banks those banks besides those three to develop but there's a lot of really creative innovative people out here who might come up with something that is fantastic that's outside those three demonstration projects we do want to make sure though that like we don't want too many failures at the beginning because we want people to see this as a success but I think if we have a couple banks running and actually delivering water by the end of the ten year period or we facilitated a bunch of other market transactions like let's say the local water users got together and they thought you know what it is super onerous to make a non-profit we don't have the interest in doing this but these three water users really want to enter a lease agreement you know that that would also be successful I think just having the conversation and promoting more market activities is a success point [Music] I'm going to answer the last one first so I think a lot of like the critical mass question about is Bank size I think that we will not be successful if they draw their service area too big so like I think that that's going to be kind of an outlier in terms of restricting banks like if you drew a bank that like was the state of Utah you're never going to get a change application approved for that or if you do a bank that like transfers state lines most likely you're not going to get a change application approved for that and so I think that realistically the size and scope of the bank is really going to be determined by what can we physically deliver in the service area and a lot of that's going to be dependent on existing State Engineer distribution models but we could also have a like IO so I can actually foresee a very successful bank with one participant and for example like if you have a big municipality who presently doesn't have the ability to use their water rights for in-stream flows and creates a contract Bank and basically can lease it to themselves or lease to others and all of a sudden can use some of their water rights for in-stream flows that's a successful Bank in my mind like if it's meeting the needs of the project like that you know that could be a successful Bank yeah well I mean then this is kind of how the role of the State Engineer in these banks is critical and so already the State Engineer delivers water based on priority dates based on amounts based on users based on points a diversion in the stream reach that kind of already dictates some of those things and so if all of a sudden and then if we start working on canal companies canals have a physical volume limitation and so we're not going to be able to even though we might get through the change application stage to like get a water it approved in the bank to actually do what we're calling a delivery delivery request will require a hydrologic analysis whether or not that water can physically be moved in that in that capacity and what we're hoping to do or kind of my thoughts on are is that getting when we create the service area for the bank we kind of work hand in hand with the state engineers distribution staff and basically like create a map or a key and we're like okay this stream reach water can move from here to be a to be pretty
asily in this stream reach watt here are the limitations on this stream reach B here are the limitations on stream reach C and then when you have a change application the conditions will say this water right can be used in stream reach B and streaming C but not stream reach B and my goal is through this process is to work we actually are partnering with a tech company to help kind of write a program that automates these things so the goal is to hopefully by the time this is these three years pilot project is out does it also have some supporting technology to kind of spit out some of these kind of more technical questions we'll see but any opposition in the legislature or key concerns that you want to think about before the sunset date the kind of yeah and I think this speaks to how in constructive it is to have a large group of people in your conversation cuz we were like hunky-dory going along and then one person comes up and they say well I don't want people to condemn my water right and then there were like three or four pretty smart water attorneys in the room and we are like can you can you condemn a watering can you I don't know and so then we did all this research you can condemn a water right you have to pay fair market value and so then we had all these meetings with the utility good cities and towns and we added a provision saying you can't condemn it for five years afterwards so that was one of the biggest barriers we had we had a lot of people come up and say this will never work where I live and more like and it might not work where you live you know I'm severe County is a great example that they have what they call direct flow rights that are heavily dependent on return flow and so if a water user up top is using that water that return flow might not get down to the bottom of the system and so those guys have essentially been using free water as junior water users and so this system is intended to keep the prior appropriation structure intact and so for those states those areas they may not really want to bank and so our solution to them was it's voluntary if you don't have to do you don't want to do it but yeah those are some some key ones so okay there's one other we hand up yeah country in the entire world somebody forgot to tell me that's right and so and I really like those three choices public Valley and promo and artists you know that word for those communities already exist am i right and I think that and this is kind of what really the intent of the statute is to be and it kind of falls into this concept of like iterative thinking being like if we put something out there that's flexible to accommodate the needs of the future you know we're not telling you what these bags look like but perhaps in the future there is a way for to do a conservation credit like we're thinking about in Snyder Mill Basin for Salt Lake City to say hey if you install this low-flow toilet and you know like if your water consumption goes down by X that water could be put in a bank or what to include conservation measures and so we don't want to bite off more than we can chew to start but I I see conservation playing a big role in this in the future especially an ad conservation if there if there are ways to really kind of like both measure and move conserved AG water that would be a huge benefit [Music] um we we studied Nevada I don't remember exactly what Nevada's banks looks like off the top of my head do have an idea what I don't remember what the contours of that Bank were but this really kind of the genesis of the conversation and Farm Bureau was heavily involved at this point in the conversation was that it just had to be local and a statewide program or a statewide system or one size fits all was really deemed to be not palpable palatable to the water user community and so this is kind of the direction we go not that being said you know I haven't looked in about in a while but if that's a structure that might work for local area the you know they could adopt that there I mean they also have a water bank in Idaho they've a water break in Washington I mean there's lots of water banks is to take from and we just decided that this was the best role to keep it kind of generic and then local areas could fit make something that works for them you have to you have to want to do it though this is this is something that people have to want to do but people do want to do it so it's exciting [Music] I don't answer first though I'm doing a water podcast and you guys should all listen because it's going to be super cool it starts on March 2nd so I've made sweet little cards that you can take but if the intent is to really provide a forum to have some of these innovative water discussions but I listed to kind of go over some of the like the structural parts of the state for water so hopefully you guys should listen [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you
