Tag Archive for: water

Utah Geological Survey

Cache Valley Aquifer Storage and Recovery-Site Assessment for Millville City, Cache County, Utah

OFR-636 Cache Valley Aquifer, Cache County, Millville City

By: Paul Inkenbrandt

The City of Millville, located in a prime location for aquifer storage and recovery (ASR), is having issues with elevated nitrate in the Glenridge well, a public water supply sourced from the Cache Valley principal aquifer. To alleviate high nitrate, the city performed an initial injection and pumping test using the Glenridge well. Millville injected water from Garr Spring, another public water supply source of which they own water rights, into the Glenridge well for one week at a rate of 500 gallons per minute. They then pumped the well while monitoring geochemistry to determine the effects on the Cache Valley principal aquifer system. The pre-injection nitrate concentration in the Glenridge well was 7.65 mg/l nitrate as nitrogen, and the nitrate concentration after pumping more than 172% of the volume of water injected was 6.52 mg/l nitrate as nitrogen. There is likely some dispersion of the injected spring water via advection in the aquifer.

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Utah Geological Survey
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Study: Nevada withdrawals would hurt Snake Valley springs

A small team of our geologists have been working in Snake Valley to determine future effects the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s proposal to tap Snake Valley aquifers could have on ranchers and fragile desert ecosystems. Check out this Salt Lake Tribune article for more information on the matter.

sltrib.com

For years, Snake Valley ranchers and environmentalists have complained Las Vegas’ designs on rural groundwater would wreck their livelihoods and dry up fragile desert ecosystems in Utah’s West Desert.

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Utah Geological Survey

Found! Hidden Ocean Locked Up Deep in Earth's Mantle

Could water be found in minerals from Earth’s mantle? New research shows a possibility.

livescience.com

Deep within the Earth’s rocky mantle lies oceans’ worth of water locked up in a type of mineral called ringwoodite, new research shows.

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Utah Geological Survey

SAGA OF SNAKE VALLEY: BATTLING OVER UTAH WATER

KCSG.com

Dean Baker, a rancher and activist for the protection of water rights in west-central Utah’s Snake Valley, could become wealthy by selling his property to the Southern Nevada Water Authority. The principal communities in the Snake Valley, from north to south, are Callao, Trout Creek, Partoun, EskDale, Baker, and Garrison.

“People don’t understand me,” Baker said, referring to his refusal to sell.

What makes Baker’s property valuable is that it is a coveted water source. But after 55 years of ranching, Baker isn’t ready to give up his home or see his agriculture and livestock suffer because of underground pumping.

According to the Great Basin Water Network, the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA), the water agency for Las Vegas and Henderson, Nev., proposes to pump up to 200,000 acre-feet annually from eastern Nevada and western Utah and send it through 300 miles of pipeline to support larger cities. This comes to about 65 billion gallons of water per year.

Ecologists and hydrologists estimate the water table will drop as much as 100 feet in the first 10 years of the pipeline, killing the current vegetation and wiping out the wildlife and livelihoods of the rural communities including the Snake, Spring, Cave, Dry Lake and Delamar valleys.

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