SD • State upholds Spearfish transfer

JUNE 6, 2006 | The  South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources has upheld a planned water transfer from the  Homestake Mining Company to the city of Spearfish. The planned transfer had been challenged by property owners in the area, who said that Homestake had already abandoned teir water rights through non-use.
 The state concluded, however, that there was no evidence the water had not been used recently.
The transfer covers  the Maurice intake on Spearfish Creek.

Rapid City may get more water

APRIL 4, 2006 | A congressional proposal to expand Rapid City's access to a nearby federally-operated reservoir, stalled in Congress for years, cleared a House committee in late March with improved prospects it will link with a matching Senate proposal.
The Pactola Reservoir Reallocation Act of 2005, aimed at allowing Rapid City use of up to 90% of that reservoir, has had support from the state's congressional delegation, but has routinely failed in the House at the subcommittee level.
The law would put into effect an agreement already reached be3tween the Bureau of Reclamation and the Rapid Valley Conservancy District. [see the Rapid City Journal, April 4]

TX • Allegations of fraud blow up water talks

APRIL 22 | A massive water agreement reached in late March may have been sundered in mid-April when a water district official asked a city council - the two entities are parties to the agreement - " did the city enter into the contract in a fraudulent manner?”
The deal involves purchase of as much as 5.5 billion gallons (over the next two decades) by the city of Sugar from the Fort Bend County Water Control and Improvement District No. 1.
District board member Leon Anhaiser said the city is quietly challenging the district's rights to the water, and said the city is planning to ask the Texas Legislature for a measure which would allow it to annex and dissolve the water district.
City council members later said that they did have in mind the dissolution of the district, and felt compelled to negotiate with it. However, one said he understood that if the district were dissolved, the water rights would return to the state of Texas. [see Fort Bend Now, April 22.]

TAKING ON THE MEXICO CITY FORUM A guest opinion in the Cook County News Herald of Grand Marais, Minnesota, blasted the approach taken at the March Fourth World Water Forum in Mexico City which equated water rights with human rights.
"After the first day of the meeting, however, it became clear that the government and corporate agents were only interested in turning water management into a business opportunity, whereupon the NGOs and activists established an alternative forum intent on identifying access to clean water as a fundamental right . . . If we accept the position that water is a common good, and an inalienable right shared by all people, does that mean that folks in China or France have as much right to Lake Superior’s water as we do?
Perhaps we would be better served if we didn’t use the concept of human rights to justify our control of Lake Superior’s water, but rather, focused on Cibber’s observation that possession is eleven points in the law."