A brief newspaper item from the Helena Independent Record [thanks to Brown and Caldwell's Rocky Mountain Water News] caught my eye this week. The headline read: Montana to Reconsider Rural Water Rules.
The story byAP reporter Matthew Brown begins:
Montana officials said Wednesday they will rewrite a rule that allowed tens of thousands of rural homes to be built without water permits, but it was unclear what impact the proposal would have on development.
Rural homes can be built in Montana without a water permit if they have their own well. But ranchers and conservation groups say aquifers can be strained beyond capacity by such exemptions.
There’s no limit on how many exemptions can be issued, and more than 70,000 have been granted for new homes in the last four decades.
Exempt wells are generally synonymous with domestic wells, although they can include stock and other low-capacity wells. They usually are allowed to pump something like 5000 gpd (about 5 acre-feet per year) or less and don't normally require a permitted water right (Utah is the exception in the West).
Here in Oregon domestic-use exempt wells are allowed to pump 15,000 gpd, around 16 acre-feet per year. Whether it's 5,000 or 15,000 gpd, that is plenty of water for a single-family dwelling (no commerical use); 1,000 gpd should be more than adequate.
Water managers and others in the West and elsewhere are concerned about exempt wells; there are over a million (my gut feeling says it's much higher than this) of these wells in the West alone. That may seem like a lot of water being pumped but no one really knows how much water these wells actually use because they are not generally metered. They can also be distributed over a wide area, mitigating their effects on streams and other wells.
Regulators not only worry about the effects of these wells, but also about being inundated with permit applications in the event the wells are more closely regulated.
Developers are increasingly using exempt wells to provide water for subdivisions. No doubt Montana was thinking of this when it decided to review regulations. Recall the third paragraph in Brown's stiory:
There’s no limit on how many exemptions can be issued, and more than 70,000 have been granted for new homes in the last four decades.
Jared Diamond broached this issue in the Bitterroot Valley (near Missoula) - see pages 49-53 in Collapse.
Exempt wells are very important to rural users, who worry that their needs may be lumped in along with the those of the developers. I can readily sympathize with the former but less so with the latter.
Something does need to be done, but the path is not easy. This issue evokes arguments of water rights, personal property rights, 'making me pay for my own water' (it's generally not your water), over-regulation, urban vs. rural, etc.
Montana could be on the verge of a big step; I suspect a lot of eyes are focused on Big Sky country.
Here is an article from theNew York Times about exempt wells in Montana.
And we're still awaiting the decision on the Bounds appeal in New Mexico.
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For more information read Nathan Bracken's excellent report, Exempt Well Issues in the West. It summarizes the situation in each state, lists current and potential problems, and suggests some solutions. Some colleagues of mine - Todd Jarvis (OR), Mike Barber (WA), Gretchen Rupp (MT), and John Tracy (ID) - are planning on convening a conference on exempt wells. The tentative date is mid-May 2011, likely in Washington State.I will provide more information as it becomes available.
I've posted quite a bit on this issue - just search the site on 'exempt well' and the posts will come up.
"The biggest troublemaker you'll probably ever have to deal with, watches you from the mirror every morning." -- Unknown
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