It only took a year and 2 months and have final approval of my latest water right project. Two neighbors wouldn't sign off or it would have been done 3 months ago.
But the first for this project (at least for a long time) was it went through with no revisions, I think the dang thing was so confusing all the reviewers looked at everything and their eyes-crossed and they said: look's good.
Kept waiting for changes, never got any.
MM-
Excuse my ignorance, but what is a 'water rights project' ?
Cheers,
Derek
The state owns all the water in the state and they issue "rights" or appropriations to landowners to use the water. The older the right the more valuable, some water on this property was appropriated in 1886. There were 4 different appropriations from 1886-1967 covering 284 acres.
The appropriations overlapped, covered "blanket" areas, had points of diversion, points of use and means of conveyance changes. Each change for each item on each separate appropriation needs a petition to the state for the update and then everyone owning lands that were under the blanket appropriation needs to sign off on the new plan. So we write petitions for each item, basically an awful, old style legal document outlining the change usually a few pages long, then write consents for each neighbor and send them off.
A map is prepared showing the old and new configurations and all is sent to the state for review and then to the board of control for acceptance. if the board accepts it and all the neighbors agree by signing the consents then you are done.
The map is the easy part, the research, calcs, petitions are the costly portion for the job.
The map looks like this, showing the original rights and the actual use:
Worked closely with the local office who were very helpful and got us through without any changes, usually someone wants something done differently, maybe they are so busy that now is the time to do these.
you're gonna think this is stupid, but i gotta ask a question based on ... "The state owns all the water in the state and they issue "rights" or appropriations to landowners to use the water."
where you are...if a guy catches rain water in a five gallon bucket, does the state own it?
Wyoming, and good question, there are some complicated situations like reservoirs that were privately built by irrigation corporations were people downstream can buy shares and the state has less authority over those distributions, but yes every drop is claimed as owned by the state ground and surface water. Of course they won't worry about your bucket but will if it's a spring and they can shut off your water if you don't comply with the rules.
Frank
You must have more water in Texas than we do here in AZ. Here EVERYONE thinks they have water rights. There are large quasi-governmental water/power companies that have the rights to natural runoff over vast portions of the state. Some upstream owners can't capture water because some portion of it belongs to downstream owners. Some cities think they have rights to rainwater that falls on private property. Some cities impose a tax based on the area of impervious surface on the property. Sometimes property is bought and sold based on water rights, not on the actual property value. Then we have the issue of the Colorado River... There is a group investigating the feasibility of removing water from it and pumping it 3/4 of the way across the state. Some subdivision lot owners are entitled to fractional portions of irrigation waters appropriated before statehood.
It is all very interesting and complicated, and a great source of revenue for the water rights attorneys.
