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Show A6 Wednesday, February 6. 2008 Vernal Express tmgnaaiWKiwti Pi UNITY NEEDED OVER WATER ISSUES The famous saying goes, "In the West, whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over." Today many might say, "Water is for drinking; oil is for fighting over." But if our nation wants to guarantee its energy supplies and protect its economy, it needs to start spending an estimated $55 a barrel to develop the one trillion barrels of oil in U.S. oil shale deposits, rather than paying more than $90 a barrel for foreign oil. For the Uintah Basin to play its part, people here need to support higher Green River water allocations from state officials and the building of new dams and massive pumping projects to use that water. By securing more water and building the infrastructure to store and deliver it, the Basin can become a major center of economic and political power. Vernal could rival the largest Utah cities in size, and surpass them in influence. The groundwork for that type of cooperation was solidified last week at the 20th annual Uintah Basin Water Conference, where instead of arguing over how to divide existing allocations, stakeholders listened to ideas about bringing more water to the Basin. Engineers on a study prepared by CH2M Hill described how the Uintah County Water Conservancy District already has plans for a pumping station to deliver water from Flaming Gorge to the upper Uintah River. In combination with a new dam, and with the use of share exchanges, the project could delivery more water both to upstream and downstream users. UCWCD Manager Scott Ruppe warned though that state water officials are contemplating taking back 99,000 acre feet of allocated Green River water from our region that is wanted downstream, particularly by the booming St. George area. This move would come despite the Central Utah Project's original plan to divert 450,000 acre feet from the Green to replace water taken from our area to supply the Wasatch Front. Ruppe said state demographers are projecting the Basin will only grow at a pessimistic 1 percent annually, despite much higher recent growth rates. He noted that if oil shale development becomes a reality, the highest growth projections will be shattered. According to CH2M Hill engineer Jason Lilliwhite, though, standing up to outsiders won't be enough. Basin water users will need to be willing to swap shares, shift delivery sources, wheel and deal, and compromise for the sake of a better future. We agree. For the residents of the Uintah Basin to maintain our way of life and continue our economic growth we need to have more foresight than our leaders in Salt Lake City or Washington, D.C. We need to pass that foresight along, but we will also need to act on it here by adjusting our lives - in the way we use water, the way we finance government, the way we use land - so we'll be able to do what, in any case, we absolutely must. . E? O v ' "A : "j Lf ? ; r n :! 1K , ... J J ; ,, v . '" . rWV.. . '! I REMEMBER YOU 5AYING THAT YOU WERE 3UILDING A E3IG 3IKE KIT, BUT I DIDN'T EXPECT THIS! WEB OPINION POLL Each week the Vernal Express offers an online poll to its readers. To participate in the poll, visit www.vernal.com and click on the opinion link. Polls are not scientific and represent the opinions of voluntary Internet users. New polls are posted weekly and printed results represent voting as of Tuesday morning. If you have an idea for an opinion poll, e-mail it to editorvernal.com. 1 B Results for this week Uintah County officials propose constructing con-structing a $40 million public safety complex. Do you support a tax increase to pay the facility? a) Yes, with supplemental funding. (14) b) Yes, even without grant funds. (6) c) No, do not raise my taxes. (80) Question for next week Do you think the returns from Super' Tuesday's primary reflect the views of Utah's electorate? a) Yes. b) No. BERTHA BUTTERBEAN The problems of portable power 2i Dana Colovich Guest Writer Well, my kids gave me an iPod for Christmas. Christ-mas. (I have downloaded 61 songs, two podcasts, one audiobook, three TV shows and some text files.) With my cell phone, my iPod and my digital camera, I could possibly be described as a techno minimalist. Since there is a whole array of portable electronic devices such as laptops, notebooks, Bluetooths (or is plural Blu-eteeth?) Blu-eteeth?) Blackberrys (Blackberries?), (Black-berries?), and iPhones, that I don't own, or even know precisely what they do, I am not anything like a junkie. It's a good thing. Do you know how many connectors it takes to run the few that I have? I would hate to try keeping any more little black wires than I have now untangled and together with their devices. And don't try to kid me; "wireless" does not mean that a device comes without any. But worse than that, since all of these devices are portable, they all have batteries bat-teries that have to be charged using one or more of those little black wires. But putting put-ting the connectors aside, if I couldn't spell, I would think that "battery" is a four-letter word. It seems to me that batteries are the weak link in the universe. Think of it - my iPod could conceivably hold enough music mu-sic to play non-stop for more than a week, which seems over the topm considering I would have to charge its battery several times for it to play every piece. Suddenly, the thing is not so portable after all. You can't get too far away from its home computer or its cradle. My daughter's laptop does amazing things, but it needs to charge for two hours so she can use it for one. That seems upside down to me. And cell phones are more dysfunctional than that. Well actually they are incredible, but their batteries are weak (pun). They discharge even when you don't use them. Did cell phone engineers say to each other, "I know how we can make a portable phone, and if we try really hard, maybe we can make a battery that will stay charged for a whole day."? If I were one of those engineers, I would be pushing for a month, minimum. mini-mum. And if you think that digital cameras are going to be carefree, you are wrong. You have to worry about their batteries. Don't expect to pick up your camera after a week and find that it will make pictures. It might not even turn on. What good is a pocket-sized camera on vacation vaca-tion if you have to bring along a backpack full of batteries to run it? Electronics engineers try to get around the battery problem by installing bells, beeps, lights andbarsto warn you that your batteries are about to die, but before you can hook up the respirator, they're dead. Father Butterbean has a fairly new battery-powered drill with a lifetime warranty. war-ranty. Well, actually he is like most guys which means he has three of them. All of that is true except for one thing. He does have three drills and they all have at least one battery, and they all have warranties, but do any of them actually have power? Not enough to wind your watch. They need new batteries. He has called every tool supplier sup-plier in the Mountain West, checked E-bay and been to the Battery Store. (Yes, there is actually a store called the Battery Store. What does that tell you?) It seems that the battery for the drill with the lifetime warranty is out of print, so to speak. They don't make it anymore. Granted, they wouldn't need to make NtNL.lHEVtR WID BE BETTER ffl WIRE UPSET, V. PUBLIC FORUM - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR What is your opinion? The Vernal Express welcomes letters from its readers concerning any subject pertinent to the Uintah Basin. There are no restrictions on contents, if in good taste and not libelous or vindictive. Letters may be edited for grammar and style, length and content. All letters must be submitted submit-ted exclusively to the Vernal Express and bear the full name, signature, phone number and address of the writer or writers. Letters for the sole purpose of expressing thanks to individuals or groups will not be printed in this forum. Submissions may be mailed to 54 N. Vernal Ave., Vernal, UT 84078; faxed to 435-789-8690 or sent by e-mail to editorvernal.com The name or names of the persons submitting letters let-ters must appear on all published letters. Letters express the opinion of the writer or writers and are not necessarily the opinion of the Vernal Express. PUSH FOR EXPANSION OF RADIATION EXPOSURE ACT Northern Utah Down-winders Down-winders are wondering why they haven't heard from Utah's senators in response to letter urging them to join the Senators from Idaho and Montana in pushing for the expansion of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA). The letters, signed by 97 down winders and their families, were sent to Senators Sena-tors Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch in November. "They haven't hear a thing - not even a form letter," said Preston Truman, head of Downwinders. Last August, senators Mike Crapo, Larry Craig (R-Idaho), Max Baucus and Jon Tester (D-Montana) introduced in-troduced a bipartisan bill to expand federal compensation under RECA to downwinders in their states. After months of attempting to get Utah's Senators to sign on to the bill so that the entire state of Utah would be included, Idaho and Montana senators moved ahead without adding northern Utah. Rep. Jim Matheson, (D-Utah) and Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) in June requested hearings of the House Judiciary Committee on expanding the RECA. They were later joined by Rep. Bill Sali (R-Idaho) in their request. The movement to expand RECA continues to gain momentum as city and county officials, including the mayors of Salt lake City and Boise, sent letters in support of the Congressman's request. "To this date, downwinders downwind-ers in the bulk of the state of Utah are left out blowing in" the wind by the lack of . support from their Senators and Congressmen other than Matheson," said Truman. "Not only did Hatch and Bennett fail to sign on to the bill, but Utah Congressman, Chris Cannon, who is on the House Judiciary Committee, has yet to anything to represent repre-sent Utahns. To the down-winders down-winders of Utah who have suffered immensely from the fallout, this is unbelievable and no longer tolerable. We demand they act. We are all downwinders and no down-winders down-winders are more deserving of justice than others." The letters to Hatch and Bennett ask the senators why they have failed to represent their constituents and why sentaors from other western states are taking the lead on an issue that Hatch has claimed as his own. "Hatch continues to boast of being the father of RECA, but it looks like the he's just being a deadbeat dad, for those Utah downwinders like myself still not covered," said Tony Pickering, a down-winder down-winder and thyroid cancer victim from Springville. "Our senators owe it to their constituents to back us in rectifying this terrible ter-rible wrong that has ruined so many lives," said Salt Laker Bob Welti who signed their letter after losing his wife, Georgia, to lymphatic leukemia caused by radiation radia-tion exposure. "For me, it's not about the money. A lot of people were financially decimated by their illness. Fortunately, I had insurance. By expanding RECA we're trying to help a lot of people who were unjustly hurt." "The National Academies of Science said these areas received as much or more fallout than areas that are currently covered under RECA," Truman explained. "What's missing is not the science, but justice." The letter notes that Utah's senators are defying "the will of the people and our locally elected officials." In 2005, the Utah State Leg islature unanimously passed a resolution urging Congress to include all of Utah under RECA. Currently, only downwinders downwind-ers with specified cancers who lived in 22 rural counties in southern Utah, northern Arizona and eastern Nevada during certain years are eligible for compensation. Downwinderes have long said that the geographic designation designa-tion makes no sense, given how widespread the fallout from nuclear testing was. "We've known since the National Cancer Institute Study released in 1997 that virtually every county in the continental U.S. received some level of fallout from testing," said Salt Lake downwinder and playwright Mary Dickson, whose play about the downwidners, "Exposed," played to sold out houses in Salt Lake City recently. "Those finding were never taken into account by RECA. Fallout affected people in areas far beyond the counties currently covered. It's time that RECAreflected the realities of fallout exposure expo-sure rather than politically convenient boundaries." She said an increasing number of northern Utahns are becoming aware of their living history with fallout. Dickson says RECA expansion ex-pansion is about government accountability and responsibility, respon-sibility, not about money. "Downwinders in the West deserve equal treatment and we deserve that our representatives repre-sentatives make and effort to seek justice on our behalf. We know this is a difficult battle. But the memories of those who have died and the' plight of those who are still suffering deserve that a serious seri-ous effort be made." Signed, Preston Truman Mary Dickson a new one if the old one did the iob. But does anyone tell you this on your first foray into the world of portable power? The industry is probably prob-ably afraid thatyou will figure out that batteries are really just a very poor solution to the power problem. Does anyone besides me want to step on the Energizer Bunny? If someone ever finds a solution for the weak link of the universe and invents a battery with some real lasting power, I hope I am related to himher. Can you imagine? Move over Bill Gates. Tonight I called my daughter daugh-ter and said, "I'm writing about batteries this week. Doyou have any good battery stories?" She started to tell me one, but her phone died. EXPRESS YOURSELF ON VERNAL.COM Each week the Vernal Express prints a sample of reader comments posted to the previous week's headlines at the newspaper's news-paper's Web site. Not all comments are considered. Comments may be edited prior to printing. Flags lowered to mourn passing of LDS president Bill Schieck wrote: "This is a wonderful wonder-ful gesture to one of the great Americans of our time. It is something the entire United States . should adopt. " Jason Barton wrote: Well I am sure Americans Ameri-cans are not going to have a national holiday for President Hinckley Day.'But I am sure the Sate of Utah will soon have one- with pay to all the state employees. And I am sure all the liquor stores will be closed. Girls drop game against Bulldogs Jenny Hadlock wrote: The girls are getting better! Keep workin! Wild and Scenic Rivers plan draws public input Laura Jo West wrote: What a wonderful opportunity the Forest Service and the citizens of the Uintah Basin have to leave a legacy of protection pro-tection for the remarkable remark-able rivers of the Uinta Mountains. Val Evans needs to do some more research on the issues of water rights when it comes to designation of a river under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. Paranoia such as this may be warranted if it were based in any sort of facts. Val Evans wrote: It appears that the wild and scenic designation designa-tion of rivers on the Ashley Ash-ley National Forest, will in reality strip the local city and county governments govern-ments as well as the citizens of the local area totally out of and control of what has traditionally been their water rights. Certainly California and Arizona would want to control runoff from the High Uintas. They can and will, get more water; all of the water. Th e Basin Ba-sin residents should put up a migh ty fight to keep these greedy people away from this control. If we . don't, our posterity will someday soon wake up and really find out what a desert state actually is. Since when have we had to ask the selfish, opinionated, greedy environmentalists from another state (who may only seen pictures of the Uintas) be in charge of our water. Let's not give these wonderfully persuasive fanatics one ounce of control over the dams we have struggled to build in the High country. It cannot be too late to wrest control from their grasp; But it must be done at all costs. |