Show UTAH LAKE it Is impracticable and cannot be bone THE ONLY WAY TO USE IT AS A RESERVOIR and thai its to cut down the outlet alie jordan river the following communication from secretary 0 J hollister of the salt lake chamber of commerce to the tri buns is of peculiar interest to the people of this county I 1 suppose I 1 am as responsible as anybody for the talk about raising utah lake and I 1 now wish to recant and for the following reasons the lake cant be raised without also correspondingly raisins the banks of the streams which feed it and this H practically impracticable the lake cant be raised without overflowing a largo area of good land or constructing a dike around three fourths of its border the first ia impracticable because it would not only ruin a carpe area of good land but would double alit surface exposed to evaporation and evaporation is one of the drains on our water supply which it is very important to guard against the is impracticable because no dike could be made that would stand the drive of ice at certain seasons on the southeastern shore it is said to pile up sometimes doity feet high under strong winds the only way to make use of the lake as a reservoir is to cut down the outlet the jordan at its head so that in the irrigating season alio lake may be drawn down say three feet after the season is over abut the gates and allme it to fill up again to its natural stage might be lowered more th ui three feet but it should never be lowered sufficiently to materially interfere with the fish I 1 think I 1 dont know what its average depth is but it seems to me eliat its level might be reduced as much as three feet by the end of august without injuring or interfering not even its fine trout How howmann many cubic feet of water would this add to the river jordan for the sixty days of july and august in drawing it down its area square miles would of course bo reduced I 1 dont know how much but say that lowering it by one foot would reduce its area by twenty square miles a second foot and a third foot each the same would be one foot over miles one foot over 02 and ono foot over 72 square miles this gives cubic feet of water to be drawn oft in sixty days in th e sixta days there are seconds divide the former by the latter and we have 1484 if there is no mistake as to reduction of surface area by the drawing off of the water we should have a flow of 1484 cubic feet per second for sixty days through july and august if one foot will will serve acres we have here sufficient water to serve acres for an irrigating season of sixty days enough water flows into jordan valley direct from alie wasatch to serve acres and the natural inflow into utah lake to wit the water now derived from the jordan above the entrance of the little cottonwood would perhaps serve acres additional here then is water enough to servo about acres a body of land ten miles wide and thirty milea long and that id a good deal moie land than there is between the wasatch and ander the level of utah lake drawn three feet below its normal stage unless it be carried north to bountiful and centerville Cent erville and around the point at garfield into thoele tooele valley I 1 should like to be shown any error in aliis calculation if their be any or any as option that vitiates it materially all or vrho or what would be injured if it were carried out of course there can be nothing in the suggestion that ouden should ampro the provo river or that salt lake should appropriate the weber water ia property in thia part of the world as much as land is and the latter can be appropriated by those to whom it does not belong as vell as the former 0 J H SALT LAKE july 13 |