Enhanced Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer ground-water rights transfer spreadsheet. Version 3.1 user's manual

The purpose of this spreadsheet and accompanying programs is to provide water users and managers with a common tool for the analysis of hydrologic impacts of groundwater right transfers within the Eastern Snake River Plain aquifer on gains and losses of the Snake River. The analysis describes how hydrologic impact (not necessarily injury) varies over time in eleven reaches of the Snake River defined by gaging stations and major spring locations: 1) Ashton to Rexburg, 2) Heise to Shelley, 3) Shelley to Near Blackfoot, 4) Near Blackfoot to Neeley, 5) Neeley to Minidoka, 6) Devil’s Washbowl to Buhl, 7) Buhl to Thousand Springs, 8) Thousand Springs, 9) Thousand Springs to Malad, 10) Malad, and 11) Malad to Bancroft. These reaches have been identified as hydraulically connected with the aquifer through previous modeling studies. This tool is based on the enhanced Snake River Plain Aquifer Model. The spreadsheet is intended for comparison of hydrologic impacts from existing uses with those that would result from a ground-water right transfer. A transfer may require that the use under the water right be limited in quantity so that the estimated impacts do not exceed those resulting from continuing the current water use. The spreadsheet allows users to experiment with the rate of use in a proposed transfer in order to achieve the desired balance of impacts between continued pumping at an existing location (or locations) to pumping at a proposed transfer site. What's new in Version 3.1: Version 3.1 of the Water Rights Transfer Tool has been updated to use Version 1.1 of the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer Model (ESPAM), the most recent version of the groundwater model on the eastern Snake River Plain. The basic functionality of the Transfer Tool has not been modified. When running the Transfer Tool, the user is no longer warned that old ‘well’ files exist. The old files are deleted prior to running the tool. Additionally, a definition of which months are included in Spring, Summer and Winter has been added. Some cosmetic changes were made to the graphics and several graphs were added to enhance tool use. Additionally, a Transfer Summary worksheet was added for use in reporting the transfer results to IDWR. The user’s manual has been updated to describe all of these changes