Landowner determined to retain his Sand Wash property

ALTAMONT, Duchesne County — Jay Labrum had planned to spend his retirement years near the banks of Big Sand Wash Reservoir in the summer months. Instead he is living in a rented house and says his future is in "limbo" because his property near the lake is slated to be acquired to make room for a $34 million expansion of the reservoir.

"I wanted to live out there, I want to be by my family. . . . Now it looks like it isn't going to happen," said the Salt Lake man. "I don't know anybody who wants to stand in the way of progress, but don't step over the little person to get there when you don't have to."

For three years now Labrum has been trying to get an answer he can understand as to why he can't hold on to his land.

"It's been one excuse after another," said Labrum. "I said, 'Let me see the impact studies and the environmental studies,' and I haven't seen anything."

The size of the reservoir is being doubled, from 12,000 acre-feet to 24,000 acre-feet. The government is taking property that will be under water, has no access road or is close enough to the new banks of the reservoir to be a health or safety concern. Labrum contends his land doesn't fit any of those categories.

His land is far enough from the shore that the water level would have to rise 55 feet above the existing dam to affect his parcel.

Labrum said he wants to park a trailer on his land since the Duchesne County building ordinances prohibit a septic system on his land.

"I explained to (Sand Wash officials) I was not trying to be a hard holdout on this thing but I wanted them to convince me before they took my property by eminent domain that they needed the property."

Labrum isn't the only landowner who faces losing property to the reservoir. According to Kirk Beecher, project manager for the Central Utah Water Conservancy District's Uintah Basin Replacement Project at Sand Wash, about 70 percent of the Sand Wash property owners have agreed to sell. But he said that is only about 45 percent of the actual acres that have been declared essential to enlargement of the reservoir.

Those who have declined to sell to the government have "a gamut of different reasons" for not wanting to let go of their land, he said.

Labrum met with the water district's board of directors recently. After that meeting, he said, representatives from the district went to his property without him and followed up with a letter stating that sanitation issues remain a concern and also included a new reason his land had to be included.