Water, Water everywhere…

2005 

Mr. Gregori stated that they have made progress on the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and air quality permits. He added that the plant was a self-contained facility that required water usage. The City was looking to sell 4.6 million gallons of water per day and was working on an application for water intake above the Morony Dam for the coal plant. He added that the total project had financing.

Mr. Schmidt stated that the City had ample water under the existing water rights to run the City and even if the City was to grow there would be enough water to meet the increased demands.

1. The City agrees to sell to Southern the raw water necessary to operate a 250 mW circulating fluidized bed coal fired electric generating plant known as the Highwood Station to be located east of the boundary of the corporate limits of the City. The City agrees to dedicate an instantaneous maximum of 3,200 gallons per minute from the City’s available water rights to provide industrial water to be used in connection with operation of Highwood Station.(Agenda Item 17)

City Manager John Lawton stated that the City has thirteen separate water rights of reservation and the City had not touched majority of the water rights. Currently the City was using twenty percent or less of the total of all reservations.

2008

This is a table of City water rights, amounts, etc. from the January 2008 report by Water Rights Solutions.

It may have been twenty percent in 2005, but in 2008 it is a different story.  Additionally, while the city does in fact have 13 water claims, the way they are grouped shows that the amount of water is combined and limited to a specific amount alloted to the grouped claims collectively.

The claim we are using to sell water to SME is the only additional Municipal Claim, all the others are for irrigation.

Mary Jolly is concerned about when and how the City changed water right 41QJ 123410. The most significant part of the change of claim is not that 41QJ 123410 dropped from 53,574 af per year, but that 41QJ 123411 and 41QJ 123408 were incorporated into the total af, actually reducing the three claims collectively from 73,022 af to 20,140 af.

And now, we are trying to buy new water rights. Hmm.

22 March 2008 | Life | Comments