Water Conservancy District to Meet with Utah Power

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The Emery Water Conservancy District held its monthly meeting on May 28 in the District office. The district announced that it will be holding a meeting with Utah Power, the State Engineer and the Board of Reclamation on June 9 in an effort to help resolve several water rights issues. The district is seeing several issues arise that need to addressed.
Another thing that will be addressed at the meeting will be the need for measuring devices on four reservoirs of the Left Fork of Huntington Creek. These devices will be necessary to measure how much water is being released during the winter months. Currently, unless water is stored, there will be no water left to use after October 31.
The district is looking for a suitable place to build a weir in Huntington Creek, but has not found one yet. Craig Johansen and Jay Mark Humphrey will continue to look at some nearby areas, but stated that the project looked to be fairly expensive. However, the plans for the weirs at Joe’s Valley are good and may actually be enlarged.
Johansen reported on the wild and scenic rivers issue. The BLM will both provide suitability reports for the area rivers. The BLM will do their report in-house and take comments from the public. The forest service has asked the Emery County Commission to provide a suitability report and will also take public comments. The reports will be available this fall. There are two areas of Huntington Creek that are being looked at, one is scenic/recreational and the other is just recreational. Should one of these sites be designated as wild and scenic, there will be a federal reserve water right of an unquantified amount, there will be no more diversions or reservoirs, and no more federal funding for any projects that would impair the river, which would include the Ferron irrigation project and Muddy Creek. Johansen mentioned that he had called several state officials and appeared before several other committees and received no response to his request for assistance.
The Cottonwood Creek Huntington Canal project is completed. Humphrey reported that the project relined 1,300 feet of the canal and was extended 300 feet further that originally planned. He also mentioned that there is a right of way problem at one area of the canal and the district would like to see about moving their right of way back to avoid rocks sloughing off the hill into the canal.
Humphrey also gave the current water report. Johansen moved to keep the allotment at 70 percent for next year. The motion passed unanimously.
In other business, the district approved the minutes from the April 2 meeting, the financial statement and voucher statement and the auditor’s report.