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Show The common concepts of what should be included in a water right may be at considerable variance with these scientific concepts. Many people feel that control of ground water should involve a guarantee of pressure in flowing wells, and a comparable guarantee of a certain water level in pumped wells, and that wells should be cut off in reverse order of priority when necessary to maintain these pressures and water levels. Such control, however, would nullify one of the natural advantages of a ground- water reservoir, just as maintenance of a constant level in a surface reservoir would make the reservoir nothing more than a wide place in an unregulated stream. As already pointed out, effective reservoir operation, for ground water as well as surface water, requires that the reservoir be filled in times of surplus, and then drawn down to meet the water needs in times when the inflow ( or recharge) is at a minimum. An administrator could maintain constant water levels in wells only by restricting the withdrawals from the reservoir during periods when the need for water is greatest. So far only one state, Nevada, has recognized in its statutes the basic fact that pumping from a well causes lowering of water levels. The law instructs the State Engineer to take into account the local economic situation in ruling on cases of reported interference between wells. In Utah, a justice of the State Supreme Court has said° I do not think we should hold, in view of our overarching water policy, that at this stage of our knowledge of the distribution and inventory of underground water resources prior users gain a vested right in a means of diversion of water. This must be left flexible. Prior appropriators by first tapping the basin might reap the benefit of a static head sufficient to bring the water diverted to the surface, but to require all subsequent appropriators to preserve this means of bringing water to the surface would be to require them to preserve the static head, and thereby prevent the widest use of that underground water, or introduce impractical problems of allocating among numerous subsequent appropriators the amount of impairment each caused to the static head of a prior user or users. It is very doubtful that Utah can guarantee the maintaining of pressures in individual wells as water development increases. Shallow wells, for in- - 18- |