OCR Text |
Show as well as later appropriators are put to increasing cost for their water supplies. The interests of each water user, obviously, are best served if no further development occurs after he has established his supply. However, so long as there is increasing population, increasing industrial and agricultural development, and increasing use of water, society cannot limit itself to the status quo. The state may, therefore, find itself in conflict with some of its citizens holding long- established water rights, because the state must also consider the rights of future citizens to develop water supplies, so long as there is unappropriated water. The scientific concept of ground- water reservoirs is that nature maintains an essential balance between recharge and discharge; as the rate of recharge rises or falls, the storage in the reservoir increases or decreases until the natural discharge ( by springs, evapotranspiration, and seepage to streams) again balances the recharge. With every modification by man to develop and use water, there are necessarily changes toward a new equilibrium on the part of nature. The water produced by wells is not " new" water, but is merely water that has been diverted from its natural course. If a well had not taken it, the water would have continued until it discharged naturally into streams, or springs, or by evaporation from areas of high water table, or by transpiration by native vegetation. The taking of ground water through wells is comparable to the diversion of surface water from streams, except that it is easier to trace the course that stream water would have followed if it had not been diverted. It is a necessary corollary that every well may be expected to modify the natural movement of ground- water- it may reduce the quantity of water available to salt grass or greasewood or willow, or to a shallow- water area subject to evaporation; it may reduce the flow of a spring, or the discharge to a stream fed in part by ground water. It may also reduce the water level and therefore the discharge of other wells in the vicinity. - 17- |