Water Rights

The Central Water Conservancy District (CUWCD) owns or has an interest in many water rights that give CUWCD the right to divert water from river systems, store the water in reservoirs, or pump water from the ground. These water rights allow the District to have the right to use the water from a water source and supply that water to the public. Water rights are allocated by priority and are commonly referred to as “first in time, first in right.” The water rights that the District has ownership of or an interest in, come from a large variety of sources and priorities in order to maintain resiliency and provide water to the public.

One of the main sources of water supply is in the Colorado River Basin where CUWCD collects water from a series of streams and rivers tributary and on the Strawberry and Duchesne rivers. CUWCD stores the collected water in Strawberry and Starvation reservoirs. That water is then released for stream flows, municipal, industrial, and agricultural use. Strawberry Reservoir can have releases across the basin divide to the Wasatch Front area, whereas Starvation Reservoir provides a portion of its water to the Uintah Basin while offsetting impacts of the Wasatch Front diversions.

The Provo River and are other key water sources where CUWCD has water rights. Jordanelle Reservoir, which provides a key water supply for municipal, industrial, and agricultural uses on the Wasatch Front and in Wasatch County, has a right to store up to 300,000 acre-feet. As an added resiliency to the system, CUWCD also owns senior-priority, storage-water rights, and diverts and stores Colorado River water in Utah Lake that is used to supply water to the junior-priority Jordanelle Reservoir.

In addition to the Central Utah Project, CUWCD has a non-federal water project called the Central Water Project that supplies water to Salt Lake County and northern Utah County. This project has a combination of surface and groundwater sources. The surface sources come from Provo River, run-of-the-river, water rights and storage water in Utah Lake. In addition to the surface rights, the District has acquired from the old Geneva Steel and Geneva Nitrogen sites the water rights that were used in those industrial processes and has drilled several deep wells in the Vineyard area.

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