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Powell pipeline could include hydropower

4 years to get a permit? Talk about incompetance.

Not incompetance but Government Red Tape and inefficency as usual.

Five hundred million dollars? Abundant potable water in Southern Utah will increase land values by billions of dollars. Making hydro is just a bonus. Seems like a decent return on investment to me.

The Enviromental goups will try to stop this project. They do not want any new electricity being develop from any source. That's why they push wind mills, they produce very little power.

Leave it to the environmental extremists to speak out against developing clean sources of power generation. Shouldn't environmentalists support clean power generation? I wonder if these environmental extremists are more interested in pushing their agenda (stopping all development) rather than doing what is best for the environment.

We need the Lake Powell Pipeline, and any hydro electic it can produce.

We also need the NAWAPA project, proposed in the 60's google NAWAPA and write your elected officials.

We have the capacity to plan for global warming and need to do so IMMEDIATELY!!!! Time to quit wasting our money fighting for oil and start spending it on projects that will provide returns for future generations.

What is so misleading about this and other news stories about the pipeline is the actual cost. According to the water districts own budget, the pipeline construction alone (this doesn't include land acquisition, rights of way etc.) will be over $850 million (if it comes in on budget which we know it won't), then you have the service debt to repay, leaving a total debt of $1.7 BILLION! The entire debt will have to be repaid by the residents of Washington County and we haven't even started to discuss whether there will be any water in Lake Powell to pipe.

The taxes that will have to be jacked from the residents of the three county area "benefiting" from the pipeline breaks down to over $25,000 per household, and the more recent estimates for construction are over a billion dollars. No one who calls themselves a conservative can justify placing such a huge tax burden on such a small population, even if a few developers and large landowners would profit. The power generated would be needed to pump the water uphill, the three power plants have previously been presented as being needed to pump water through the pipeline.

So, let me see ... will the hydroelectric plants generate enough electricity to fund the PUMPING stations needed to get the water to St. George? Or not? Oh well, let's all fall into line behind the developers' wish list, like we're expected to do!

$500 million is a very old estimate - the most recent estimate is $1.2 billion, as others have mentioned.

Utahns claim to be conservative. Well, if that's true, where is the effort to get this pipeline constructed by private enterprise instead of by taxing everyone? If this is a viable project that will result in profit for many, then there ought to be private financing available. If not - if it's just another pork barrel make-work project, like the construction of the dam itself was half a century ago - then it will have to be funded through a classically liberal tax grab scheme.

If power is the issue, I vote for nuclear. But this issue seems to be water for a desert. It is about as smart as building on a sea shore and then complaining when the storms erode your front yard and bring down your house. Hasn't the recent drought taught us anything? Build closer to water... it is not smart to bring it to the builder. Someone will pay dearly sooner or later. And when it happens, we will all be expected to chip in and help out financially.

For those of you who think it's the 'environmental extremists' who are trying to oppose the pipeline, do a little investigating first. The organization that is spearheading the opposition is about SMART growth/development. They are NOT ANTI-growth/development. There IS a difference.