Before the Town of Castle Valley was incorporated, residents gained their water rights by direct application to the state of Utah, drawing from a set of historic water rights ceded to the developer from the McCormick Ranch. Each resident was required to "prove up" those rights directly to the state.

In 1990 the certificated McCormick water rights were passed to the Town of Castle Valley, and the Town began to lease portions of these water rights to residents upon request.

In late 2005/ early 2006 the State Division of Water Rights indicated that, as part of a statewide effort, water rights in Castle Valley would be adjudicated, i.e. the state would verify actual uses and present these water rights to the courts as valid.

However, the Division indicated that they would be raising questions about the validity of the unused portion of Town's historic water rights. The Town believed then and believes now that the State's position is not correct, and that the Town should continue to hold those rights.

In 2005, the Division suspended the ability of the Town to lease out its water rights to new residents. Since that time any citizen seeking a water right in the Town of Castle Valley must apply directly to the Division for what is called a "domestic allocation" water right. Contact information is below. Ultimately, individual citizens must prove up the use of this water right within five years.

To apply for a water right in the Town of Castle Valley, contact:

In May 2007 the state completed its survey, and citizens with Town water rights were asked to sign off on what the state had measured as being in use. Based on this process, Town signed off on the list of water rights in use. The Town, however, did not sign off on the State's listing of our unused water rights as "disallowed".

The State's adjudication recommendations are expected to go before the courts in 2008. The Town remains committed to attempting to keep our historic rights but cannot predict the outcome of this issue.

We will regularly update this portion of the website as the situation unfolds.

Watershed Protection

The General Plan of the Town of Castle Valley states the following to be our Goal with regard to water: To maintain or enhance water quality and quantity in the Castle Valley watershed by improving our knowledge, developing policies, and taking action as needed.

The source of well water for Town residents, depending on location, is either the valley-fill aquifer or, for those who live closer to Porcupine Rim, the Cutler formation aquifer. The latter tends to have significantly more solids and salts in it, and it impacts the quality of valley-fill aquifer in the lower part of the Valley.

The quality of the water varies in different parts of the Town. The Utah Division of Water Quality has officially classified the water quality based on a classification system focused primarily on total dissolved solids (see Water Classification Map).

The Valley-fill aquifer is fed from a large watershed in the La Sal Mountains whose boundaries were defined by the Federal Environmental Protection Agency in 2001 (see Watershed Map) when it declared the watershed to be a sole source aquifer. This means that the aquifer system is the sole and principle source of drinking water for the residents of the Town and that contamination of this aquifer system would be detrimental to the health and safety of the town residents.

In 1996, the Town passed a Watershed Protection Ordinance. The Town is committed to working with private landowners, agencies and authorities that own property in the Town's watershed to protect water quality and quantity. The Town also tries to use the EPA sole source aquifer designation as much as possible in these interactions.

At this point, there are no good firm estimates of the Valley's overall water capacity, i.e. size of aquifer, quantity of recharge, amount of usage. The Town now has six monitoring wells for measuring water quality changes over time. Obvious potential hazards include: herbicides/ pesticides, septic discharge, poor agriculture and livestock practices, organic chemicals from fuel storage/ cars, etc. In the Town General Plan, there is a commitment to address potential hazards by using education, incentives and/or regulation.

A number of publications regarding what we know and don't know about our watershed and its process are gathered in the Town Building and are available to the public.

In 2006, Alice Drogin formed a Watershed Protection Group, which is the latest in a series of groups and task forces which have looked into how to best protect the quality and availability of Castle Valley's water. This group is working on a draft Water Protection Plan to strengthen and add to elements of the Watershed Protection Ordinance passed in 1996.