June 15, 2022 |
The State Engineer’s Office has supplied the Town of Saratoga with a letter of record stating that the municipal water wellfield will not be subject to administration during any “call” on the river.
A call is a period of regulation in the North Platte River when senior water rights take precedence over junior, or newer, water rights.
Town Public Works Director Jon Winter told council last week that he had received the anticipated letter exempting the town’s wells from administration.
Pictured above: File photo of the Upper North Platte River. Photo by Bigfoot 99.
The letter from the SEO is dated May 18, 2022. In the letter, State Engineer Brandon Gebhart states that as long as the wellfield remains the same in the future, the Town of Saratoga should not have to replace junior water diverted during a period of administration.
The issue came to light in April when Gebhart put a call on the river to protect the 1904 priority right of Pathfinder Reservoir in anticipation of lower than average runoff from snowmelt. The town was required under the call to replenish or purchase water pumped from its wells during the period of the regulation, which ran from April 7 to May 1.
The town protested the call. Officials used a Level II water study done in 2007 analyzing the North Park aquifer northeast of Town to argue that the three production wells located there are not connected hydrologically to the North Platte River.
Because the wells are not connected directly to the river, they should be off-limits to the administration of water rights, officials reasoned.
The Level II study acknowledges that “the groundwater in the wellfield area is generally moving towards the North Platte River.” Because of distance and the geology of the aquifer, however, the depletion of surface water in the river is not immediate or even in a direct one-to-one correlation to the pumping of groundwater from the wells. The study further states that because of the lag time, “it would likely be many decades before each unit of wellfield production were matched by a unit of stream depletion.”
In his letter to the town, the state engineer referred to the Level II study and said, “I agree that due to the lag time between the wellfield and stream depletion, the wellfield would not have a meaningful impact on the river during priority Administration on the North Platte River.”
Gebhart added that “the Town of Saratoga is not required to replace any water depleted from these wells during administration.” He thanked the town for its assistance and cooperation in providing the engineering study to help clarify Saratoga’s claim of exemption.
Winter explained what it all means for the Town.
Saratoga has pumped water from the aquifer through three production wells for its municipal supply since 2009. Prior to the development of the wellfield, the municipal water supply came directly from the North Platte River through a water-treatment plant near the center of town.
