Comments about ‘Save the June sucker, save Utah Lake?’

$50 Million dollars for trash fish. You watch when the June sucker is flourishing in Utah Lake and the carp are endangered we will be spending $50 Billion dollars to bring them back.

I guess no one spent $50 million dollars to keep the dinosaurs from going extinct. Maybe the June sucker is really a dinosaur? Wait, I didn't say that because we'll be spending another $100 million dollars to make sure they aren't.

About the only suckers in this story are the American people who have shelled out $57 M over the past 10 years to prevent normal evolution.

Good article. I hope the lake can be restored.

Bobkjar: Except the problems with the lake aren't the result of "normal evolution." Man's involvement skewed things and we're trying our pitiful best to get things back to how they were, to how they should be. It will be wonderful in a few years to see this lake, reclaimed from the toxic sludge pond it had become, regain some of it's previous pristine beauty. You know - the kind it beauty it had initially naturally evolved.

Get rid of the June sucker, and we'll save Utah Lake!

Great story. We use Utah Lake all the time for boating and water skiing. I love that people think it is a dirty lake. It keeps the crowds down. It is a great water skiing lake and I'm happy to see the carp being removed.

The June Sucker is exactly what the lake needs to continue its improvement. They aren't bottom feeders so they don't stir up the sediment like carp do.

Some of the uneducated still think it is a trash fish but it obviously isn't. They also think it is natural to have carp there but it obviously isn't.

It is great to see organizations working together to improve the lake. I'm so glad the attitude is changing and the old timers are becoming a minority in their way of thinking.

Utah lake is a jewel in Utah County. It just needs a little more polishing and we will continue to see it shine for many years to come.

Thanks to everyone involved.

And for those complaining about the money, property values will more than make up for it when they rise dramatically as the restoration continues.

You guys realize that the $50 million will generate monetary benefits for Utah Valley, right?

Or is it too hard to think rationally about Federal programs and environmental issues?

An easy solution is to follow the pattern used at Strawberry. Use Rotenone to kill off all the fish in the lake, then replant with the June Sucker, Bonneville cutthroat. Because, who's to say that the carp will ever be fully removed this way. They won't. The lake is perfect for them, and it didn't take too many of them in the beginning to infest the lake. You'll never get them all by netting them. Plus we're talking a few million to kill of the lake and replace them, or a lifetime of fighting the carp.

Hooray for research and the implementation of programs that are informed by REAL, VERIFIABLE, fact that is gleaned from research.

The hyperbole of an ill informed and paranoid citizenry has been a historical problem of the past that seems to be diminishing (at least on this issue).

This is a case when the federal government is exactly the right institution to intervene and implement a program that will benefit everyone! I am glad that some of my federal taxes are going to such a worthy cause. KEEP GOING and thanks for the article.

More eco-welfare.

A similar program to restore the Colorado squawfish to the Colorado river has been ongoing for twenty years and has cost tens of millions of dollars. The program "works" only because every year water flows are manipulated, desireable species are stocked and undesireables removed. This must continue in perpetuity. So it will be too with regards to Utah Lake.

Even if it were successful, the environmentalists would fight delisting the June suckers just as they have fought delisting grizzly bears and wolves. Why? because once the species are delisted the eco-welfare that so many environmentalists depend on goes away.

Utah needs to learn from California's devastating Delta smelt controversy. Many, many farming communities and thousands of middle-class families, let alone the larger economy that buys their products, have been severely hurt by purposefully and wrongfully limited access to northern California's abundant water supplies as a result. Don't let the purported threat of extinction of a fish become a propaganda tool for anti-population growth activists who pose as saviors of the environment, which they will use to emotionally exploit, subvert, establish, or otherwise control your community development policies. Supporting projects such as this one will likely lead to the same thing, if it is happening already.

What is the base source of the project funding? I don't know, but I'm just asking the question. Follow the money.

Very interesting and informative article. I was particularly interested by the statement that of the 13 native species of fish in the lake, only 2 remain today. It got me reading more about the project, and the other fish that used to fill these waters. One of those other species was unique to Utah Lake (the Utah Lake Sculpin) went extinct in the 1930's.

I'm not an environmental nut or anything, but I do feel like it's a shame what the (well-intentioned) introduction of carp into the lake has done. As one who looks out on the lake every day, I look forward to a time when it achieves something like its former beauty. Makes me wonder if the Bonneville cutthroat trout might someday make a return?

That would take a lot of rotenone for Utah lake.

Can someone more informed than I tell us if that would work?

I went up to schofield after they did it there and the results were incredible.

Dead carp everywhere on the entire shoreline.

Anyone?

If we are going to get serious about saving Utah Lake, we need to begin by stopping 39,000 acre-feet of water (12.7 Billion gallons) being drained from Utah Lake by a well known illegal water duty.

A water duty is the amount of water the Utah Division of Water Rights allows to be used for a certain activity like irrigation.

Irrigated land in Utah County has a water duty of 4 acre-feet to the acre (2.12 acre-feet of depletable water + 1.88 acre-feet of non-depletable water to carry the water to the field = 4 acre-feet to the acre.

Irrigated land in Salt Lake County has a water duty of 5 acre-feet to the acre (2.12 acre-feet of depletable water + 2.88 acre-feet of non-depletable water to carry the water to the field = 5 acre-feet of the acre.

The extra 1 acre-foot of water puts an extra 39,000 acre-feet water demand on Utah Lake which directly impacts Utah County public supply sells.

In the Utah Lake and Jordan River drainage, that is an extra 125,000 acre-feet illegal demand for water.

Carp are not native to the lake and thus this is not normal adaptation of species. The carp need to go so the health of the lake can return.

Red Smith, just how is that an "illegal" demand for water? First, your numbers don't add up, and second, you haven't actually given any facts that support "illegal" activity. Try again.