Moab • Four separate groups including the Bureau of Land Management have protested a water right change application for a forthcoming development on Kane Creek Boulevard.
The application with the Utah Division of Water Rights aims to change the use of a large water right from irrigation and stock watering to municipal use, and draw the water from groundwater wells rather than the Colorado River, which is the current point of diversion.
The water right is listed as 1.86 cubic feet per second or about 423 acre-feet.
But protests from a local community group, a nonprofit and a business allege that the right itself ought to be forfeited “due to an extended period of nonuse.” Per state code a water right that hasn’t been used for seven years is subject to forfeiture.
Bob Phillips, the former director of the Moab Mosquito Abatement District, declared in one of the protests that between 1994 and 2016, he witnessed little to no use of the water right. At the time, the right was mainly slated for irrigation, stock water and campsites.
“Except for one small personal garden watered from a well or spring, I never saw anyone attempt to irrigate or grow anything anywhere on the property,” Phillips said in a press release from Kane Creek Development Watch.
That group, which formed this year to oppose the 580-unit development intended for the Colorado River corridor along Kane Creek Boulevard, filed a protest March 27 through Clyde Snow & Sessions, a Salt Lake City-based law firm.
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