PRESS RELEASE

The State Engineer’s Office continues to move forward with the design and implementation of the agency’s IT Initiative. This effort will convert the agency’s business processes to an electronic (digital) system which will allow for the submittal and processing of water right applications in an electronic medium. The submission of applications and petitions in paper form will continue but upon receipt by the agency, will be immediately scanned into the new workflow management system.

All water rights records of the agency, both new and existing, will be stored in electronic form utilizing a state of the art document management system. This will allow citizens to perform water rights searches in their homes or offices via the internet.

The ultimate goal of the IT Initiative is to display and manage the water rights of the State in a Geographic Information System (GIS). These systems are dependent on being able to accurately locate water right features (wells, dams, diversion structures). As such, State Engineer Patrick Tyrrell has issued a new policy requiring the use of coordinates on new water right applications and petitions. The coordinates can be provided in one of three systems, Latitude/Longitude, Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM), and State Plane Coordinates. The policy is summarized as follows:

• Prior to issuing new surface water permits, the applicant will be required to provide coordinates on all points of diversion and dams (includes stock dams)
• All new Statements of Completion (UW-6) require coordinates for wells and springs
• The Board of Control requires coordinates for key features on all maps submitted to the board

The effective date of the new policy is April 1, 2006. Copies of the entire policy may be obtained from the State Engineer’s Office or may be viewed in Adobe Acrobat format here.