Reservoirs filling after wet winter, but projects such as Lake Powell Pipeline still needed

Utah Division of Water Resources director Dennis Strong had two words for state lawmakers Wednesday before briefing them on a pipeline project that would impact Lake Powell.

"Reservoirs work," Strong told the Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Interim Committee.

Strong gave the committee a report on how well the state overall is doing after an above-average snow season. Areas throughout the entire state, except for the Escalante River basin in southern Utah, are average or above for the current water year, which started last October. As a result, many of the state's reservoirs are refilling this year from runoff.

But in recent years Utah has suffered from below-normal precipitation, Strong said. Despite that bleak water history, Lake Powell is expected to be 62 percent full, or up 30 feet, by this time next year, he predicted. That's in part due to snowfall and runoff coming from mountains in Colorado, he noted.

Last month Strong said southwestern Utah may see water shortages as soon as 2012 and that the option should be explored of tapping into Lake Powell with a 139-mile pipeline that leads to the Sand Hollow Reservoir in Washington County. Strong told lawmakers this week that the soonest licensing would take place is 2012, with construction possibly starting in 2015 and water actually being delivered through the pipeline from Lake Powell by 2020.

Critics of the pipeline want to shelve the idea and explore smart-growth initiatives and concentrate more on conservation.

---

E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com