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Show THE COIiTJUIT'AND WATER SUFH.Y- s - " The effort of the News to show that there was opposition to the conduit last year, but that th same people who were opposed; to it last year are now exulting that the plans of the . late administration administra-tion have been carried out, is little less than disgraceful. dis-graceful. People objected to several things last year in relation to the getting of Cottonwood water. Among those objections were the following: The water rights which the Morris administration-represented as secured were secondary rights and worthless without securing the prior rights. The plan to secure more water from Utah lake involved threats of suits for damages against the city which will be pressed if the attempt is ever made to carry out the plan.'- - The compensation made the City Railroad company com-pany for its bogus water right was a direct steal from the city. The agreement made by the city to surrender its right to its water power in Parley's canyon for 'a non-transferable right to 50-horse-power from the wires of the railroad company was a piece of mingled graft and imbecility. ' --The exchange of water with the farmers giving from two to five inches of water from Utah lake for one inch from the Cottonwoods was a job which was a scandal and was done to protect "the Lord's own" at the sore expense of the city. The starting of the building of the conduit to influence the election before the plans or surveys , were approved was a mixture of deception and imbecility which was a fitting climax to the work of the Morris administration. That ,the present administration did the only business . thing that could be done strengthened the conduit as far as it had been built, cemented it so that it would hold water, covered it to make it safe, made a new survey, cutting out, the kinks of the old survey, and then with the approval of competent engineers went on and completed it, at a cost of several thousand dollars under the estimate, esti-mate, is a matter of congratulation. But the work will avail little unless the water rights which the Morris administration said were secured, but which never were, can still be bought. And then there will still be the matter of get-tang get-tang more Utah lake water without ruinous law-y law-y suits, which looks like an unsolvable problem, t The people did not object to getting Cottonwood Cotton-wood water, but with good reason they did object to the terms proposed and the skulking and grafting methods of the late administration. And though the work is about completed, still it grows more and more evident every day that it was not the best thing to do. The same money expended on mains, reservoirs and pumps, would have supplied ample water for sprinkling streets and lawns, factories and livery stables with water from within the city limits, leaving an ample supply of pure water for the use of 600,000 people. There would have been no idiotic exchanges with grasping grasp-ing farmers, no threats of damage suits- from the Utah lake canal companies, no grafting purchases of stock in a canal company, no buying of water rights, and no further complaint or fear of an insufficient water supply. On this question, of all newspapers, the Deseret News should pipe lowest. 2 |