Governor should protect the Bear River

If someone approached you and asked if you would front the money for their pet project, what would be your first questions? Would you want to know how the project benefits you? Would you want to know if the project was really necessary? Utah taxpayers should be asking these same questions of Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and our Legislature as they plan a project that would use hundreds of millions of our tax dollars to dam the Bear River.

Water suppliers are proposing massive diversions that will send Bear River water south to support over-watered lawns along the Wasatch Front, and they're asking taxpayers statewide to foot the bill.

Funding proposals circulated by Gov.Huntsman's Water Delivery Financing Task Force and the Legislature are fundamentally unfair. The task force proposes to tax the entire state to deliver water to a small portion of the state. Large parts of the state — such as everyone living in Salt Lake City — will never see a drop of water from the proposed projects but will be stuck paying for them. That bears repeating — no one in Salt Lake City will receive water, no one in Utah County, no one in Tooele, no one in Vernal, Moab . . . the list goes on. But you will all pay the price in your tax bill for decades to come.

Northern Utah residents — the people giving up their water — are also unlikely to see any water from this project. Although Cache and Box Elder County hold Bear River water rights, the current project proposals contain no funds for delivering water to these rural communities.

In addition, rural communities are likely to find the cost of Bear River water prohibitively expensive at approximately $2,000 an acre-foot. Even if communities can stomach that bill, treating Bear River water will require investing millions of dollars in advanced treatment technologies, such as reverse osmosis. Northern Utah residents are being sold down the river — they'll give up water, subsidize the cost of sending that water south to the Wasatch Front with their tax dollars and end up with nothing but the bill.

According to the state's own numbers, Bear River development is not needed. Even in 2050, the state's water supply predictions show Weber and Davis Counties will have a healthy surplus of water. The same predictions show a very small shortfall for Salt Lake County — about 15,000 acre-feet. This amount of water is readily available through increased water conservation efforts or by accessing even a small percentage of the 85,000 acre-feet of agricultural water the state says will come available by 2050 as Salt Lake County agricultural lands become residential areas.

Bear River development would reduce the average annual outflow of the Bear by 18 percent. In a low water year, the diversions would take as much as 70 percent of the river's flow. The Bear River provides approximately 60 percent of the surface water inflow to the Great Salt Lake every year. Because the Great Salt Lake is so shallow, relatively small changes in inflow result in enormous changes in lake area. These changes create radical problems for the lake, wetland habitat and the birds that rely on the habitat.

Damming the Bear River is simply unnecessary, but Gov. Huntsman and the Legislature are pushing this boondoggle through for a few special interests. Now is the time to tell our governor to rein in his task force and the Legislature and encourage common sense and cheaper alternatives to dams, such as conservation. Ask the governor to protect the hardworking Bear River and your pocketbook. Ask your questions now or be stuck with the bill for someone else's pet project.

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Merritt Frey is executive director of the Utah Rivers Council.