Almost every week this is the "What's on the city council's plate this week" review. I don't cover everything, so if you want the full rundown, read the packet and agenda yourself.

Water rights might not be exciting, but they're interesting. So, this week I'm going to blather about the city buying water rights out by Lake St. Clair. They're in the process of changing their pumping scheme out at the McCallister Creek site, moving from a spring to a well field, and that change might have some impact on surrounding water bodies. So (says the staff report):

The most recent model results predict that moving the water source from McAllister Springs to the McAllister Wellfield will result in significantly higher flows in McAllister Creek. At the same time, pumping at the wellfield may cause relatively small depletions of flow in other surface water bodies in the Nisqually and Deschutes Watersheds.

One of these surface water bodies is Lake St. Clair, approximately one mile south of the McAllister Wellfield. In order to offset any potential impact to Lake St. Clair and other water bodies, the City has been developing a mitigation plan as part of its water right application for the McAllister Wellfield.

 This purchase pretty much speaks for itself and looking at where and how our city gets water is interesting. This purchase isn't necessarily so we can get water from the Lake St. Clair area lakes, but so our impact on those lakes can be legally mitigated:

The surface water right held by the Schoepfer’s (certificate # S2-*10249CWRIS) authorizes withdrawal of 0.20 cubic feet per second for irrigation of 20 acres of land. The water right is from a small lake that is in continuity with Lake St. Clair and therefore valuable for mitigation. The water right has also been put to beneficial use in recent years.

Staff proposes to purchase the Schoepfer water right through a purchase price that is based on the number of acre-feet of water right successfully transferred by Department of Ecology, $3,000 per acre-foot, or$80,000, whichever is greater.This price is in line with other comparative sales of similar water rights in areas with few active water rights and growing municipal water demand. Staff estimates the transferable volume of the Schoepfer water right to be 27 acre-feet per year.