That was the message from attorney Steven Clyde to the Legislature's Water Issues Task Force that took over the Washington County Commission Chambers in St. George on Thursday night to hear public comments on the possibility of relinquishing water rights in order to protect the state's aquifers.

State officials up until the 1960s over-allocated the rights to the precious underground commodity that for decades has been used by farmers and ranchers to make a living in a state that except for Nevada receives the least amount of precipitation than any other state in the country.

Among the vexing questions the task force faces are how to decide whose rights are taken away and if the state is obligated to compensate a person for taking back what was just a "right" to begin with, but is traded, rented, leased and sold in the market place like real property.

Clyde, who has practiced water law for 30 years, said it would be unfair now for the state to all of a sudden withdraw rights granted to agriculture users, many of whom have gone into debt expanding their operations, expecting the state will make good on its word.

Clyde said the shrinking aquifer under the area around Milford in Beaver County is a real concern for farmers who have implemented conservation measures and are quick to identify water abusers.

But under Utah water law, you use your right or run the chance of losing it.

"People conserve [water] and they're threatened with nonuse," Clyde told the task force, which will make recommendations at a later date to the Legislature's Natural Resource Committee on how to handle the volatile issue.

Earlier on Thursday, the task force met in Beryl Junction with members of the Escalante Valley Water Users Association, who draw from a subterranean reservoir in western Iron County to grow enormous, green fields of alfalfa in an otherwise barren land.

State engineer Jerry Olds, who heads the task force, used charts and graphs to illustrate to skeptical water users how what is being pumped out is greater than what is going back in through natural recharge.

LaDel Laub, director of the water users group, had his own visual aids to question the veracity of the state's contentions.

He said the area's economy is contingent on current water use levels, and that hay products grown in the area and sold out of state bring millions of dollars into Utah's economy.

Take water out of agriculture and the land just dries up, causing huge dust storms that can bury houses like snow in the summer, said Laub.

The group visited one such house Thursday that was nearly covered with blown sand. The group visited other sites where the land has subsided from a drop in the aquifer.

Chandler Whitelaw, whose family has been farming in the Escalante Valley, since the 1940s was on the tour and summed up the frustration of many users.

"The problem is the state over-allocated the water rights," he said. "Now they want us to pay the price for its early negligence."

mhavnes@sltrib.com