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Water Rights Sales
and Transfers
April 4,2012
Salt Lake City, UT
Lorman Education Services
For more information click
Water Environment Association of Utah
Annual Conference
April 17, 2012
St. George, UT
For more information click
American Water Resources Association
Utah Section
Annual Conference
May 8, 2012
Salt Lake City, UT For more information click
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| To view more information about water law in Utah, visit our water blog at | | |
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Contact Us
If you have any questions or if you would like to see something discussed in the future, please let us know by sending an e-mail to info@smithlawonline.com
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Smith Hartvigsen, PLLC
is located in the
Walker Center at:
175 So. Main St., Ste. 300,
Salt Lake City, UT 84111 |
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Greetings!
Welcome to the 2012 Special Edition Spring Issue of Water and the Law. We have prepared this edition in order to notify you of an important water funding opportunity through the EPA. The application deadline is April 9th. We are also pleased to announce a major innovation in water rights research. We hope you will find this special edition of our newsletter to be helpful and informative. As always, we welcome your feedback. If you have questions or comments, please reply to this e-mail or call us at 801-413-1600.
Craig Smith David Hartvigsen Matt Jensen Rick Rathbun Bryan Bryner Jeff Gittins |
Smith Hartvigsen Announces WaterAnalyticsTM
A Powerful New Research Tool to Better Serve Our Clients
By J. Craig Smith and David B. Hartvigsen
Many aspects of water law have not changed for decades. It's not unusual to use and rely on Supreme Court decisions 75 years old or older in a water case. However, there is something new and exciting for water users and water professionals. A powerful new research tool has just been unveiled with unprecedented research and visualization capabilities in dealing with water right analyses or legal disputes associated with water right complexities. In addition, it provides an impressive and inexpensive way for us to help our clients monitor and protect their water rights against possible encroachments by others. We are pleased to announce that Smith Hartvigsen is the first firm in Utah to subscribe to this new tool called "WaterAnalytics." Developed by Utah-based Tranera LLC, WaterAnalytics is a proprietary, customizable, and intuitive research tool that gives unprecedented access to, and analysis of, water right records and data and then visually presenting the results in a map-based format that is simply not available otherwise.
By analyzing the available data with advanced, proprietary data and mapping algorithms, WaterAnalytics gives Smith Hartvigsen the freedom to expand or narrow extensive search parameters to capture all relevant data and tailor research to specific goals of our clients, a capability that is not available with the current research techniques of sifting through paper or electronic water right files. This software dramatically condenses the amount of time historically needed to do research while at the same time greatly expanding the types of research that can be done, generating in mere minutes comprehensive reports with more accuracy and relevance to our clients.
One of the most exciting capabilities we now have is that we can offer clients an accurate and inexpensive way to protect your water rights. Although the Utah Division of Water Rights currently offers a great email service that allows subscribers to watch activity on water rights specifically listed by the subscriber, until now, there has been no practical way to watch for activity in a specific area by unknown water right holders. WaterAnalytics gives us, and therefore our clients, a very easy way to do that. Reports on such activities can be generated on a regular and timely basis and then emailed (or mailed) to clients for a quick and visual report on all new activity in any given area or areas of concern to our clients. We look forward to exploring the benefits of such reports with each one of you.
"WaterAnalytics will do for water right analysis what companies like WestLaw� and LexisNexis� did for legal research," according to Jesse Lassley, President and Founder of Tranera, and we think he's right. Utah is the first state for which the software has been released. However, we understand from Aaron Reiter, Tranera's Sales & Marketing Director, that the 17 other western "prior appropriation" states will follow shortly. This is an exciting development for our firm and for the water community in general. Smith Hartvigsen is pleased to be at the leading edge of this new technology to better serve our clients and the water community.
For more information on what WaterAnalytics will allow us to do for you, please contact us at 801-413-1600, toll free at 877-825-2064, or by email at jcsmith@smithlawonline.com or david@smithlawonline.com. |
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EPA Makes Funds Available to Drinking Water and Wastewater Training Programs
The Washington State Department of Health's Office of Drinking Water recently conducted a survey of small drinking water systems in Washington state. The survey revealed that many systems believed they had adequate technical capacity but had no ability to provide water during a power outage, many systems had no annual budget, many systems had no financial reserves or reserve accounts, and some systems were borrowing money every year to break even. Although we are unaware of a similar survey having been conducted in Utah, the condition of small drinking water and wastewater systems in Utah is likely similar.
To help remedy these problems prevalent throughout the United States, EPA will be awarding up to $15 million this summer to entities that provide training and technical assistance to small drinking water and wastewater systems (those that serve less than 10,000 individuals customers). Eligible applicants are nonprofit organizations and universities that have or will establish training and technical assistance programs. Small drinking water and wastewater systems in Utah have benefited from having active organizations that provide such training and technical assistance. If you are a member of an organization or association, or have benefited from the training provided by these organizations, please contact your organization to encourage it to take advantage of this opportunity to receive funding from the EPA. More information about the EPA's program can be found at http://water.epa.gov/grants_funding/sdwa/smallsystemsrfa.cfm. Applications must be submitted by April 9, 2012.
If you operate a small drinking water or wastewater system, we recommend you review the technical, management, and financial health of your system and, if needed, seek help from professionals or the training and assistance programs offered by the many nonprofit organizations, associations, and universities throughout the state.
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