Sewage treatment plants may gain water-stream rights

The Legislature's Water Issues Task Force laid the groundwork Thursday for a bill that would give sewage treatment plants the ability to purchase water rights to maintain stream flows.

Another bill to allow anglers to lease in-stream flow rights, promoted by the group Trout Unlimited, is already in the pipeline.

Until now, Utah law has recognized only two purposes for water rights covering flows left in streams and rivers: to propagate fish and for recreation. That would change under the bills under consideration.

Walt Baker, director of the Utah Division of Water Quality, testified in support of recognizing authorized in-stream flows as a beneficial use of water. That would give them the same validity as a water right for consumptive use.

Baker cited an old saying that the "solution to pollution is dilution." That means if effluent from a water treatment plant mixes with enough water, it can become diluted enough to meet water standards.

Under the proposal, downstream from a mixing zone water is to be usable for other purposes.

If "water thugs," in Baker's phrase, illegally divert water upstream from a treatment plant, that may not leave enough in the stream for proper dilution. Although the state has been cracking down on illegal appropriations, the proposal would add a weapon to its arsenal.

A treatment plant with a senior in-stream flow water right could take a violator to court.

In addition, some treatment plants are reaching the limits of affordable technology in cleaning up their effluent. If they could make use of their own in-stream flow rights to dilute the effluent, presumably they would meet the standards more easily.

The amount of discharge a plant is allowed to make is driven by how much water is in the stream. Regulators base a plant's limits on calculations designed to protect water quality. If little water is flowing past the plant, the amount of discharge is more limited. That could place severe constraints on some plants where the population is growing rapidly.

If a plant owned the water rights and could ensure that more water is flowing in the stream, it could release more of its treated effluent without harming water quality.

Some plants are running up against the limits of affordable treatment technology. Treating effluent more vigorously may be too costly, unless the goal is to produce water of drinking- water quality — not the usual purpose of a sewage treatment plant.