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Show community If Utah's drouth continues for another month or two, consequences could be pretty bad. There's little question about it, and although residents of Grand County, by and large, are used to dry conditions, there could be some adverse effects. Moab City is being hard pressed to complete the connection of a major new water source to their culinary system. The project will be extremely expensive, and even if work begins within the week, high-need demands by homeowners and new landscapers will undoubtedly beat the completion date. Even with the large water rate increase to be imposed by the Moab City Council, there is little question that demands this summer will break all records. Ranchers and farmers in Grand County, although representing only a small fraction of the economic base according to tax-base figures released recently by the Utah Foundation, will have some problems with irrigation water and livestock forage. If Grand County's request to Gov. Scott M. Matheson this week for "drouth relief status" is approved, however, lower feed bills, low-interest loans and other federal benefits may ease the pressure. Grand County (including the City of Moab) i3 really in pretty good shape, compared to other portions of Utah. San Juan County's two largest communities, Monticello and Blanding, are going to have a tough time keeping water taps flowing this summer, since most of their water comes from snowpack on the Abajo Mountains. It's ironic that in San Juan, a county which has had probably the highest per-capita assessed valuation in Utah for many years, more has not been done to assure culinary water systems for major communities that would withstand some extremely dry years. It's no more ironic, however, than feelings of many Moab City officials, over the years, that they really didn't need to get involved in the Mill Creek Water Project, since they had already developed a good water system for the community independent of Mill Creek waters. It is easy to see, at this point, that any really adequate future for Moab Valley (including the City), where it pertains to sufficient culinary and industrial water to do the job, will depend on the careful utilization of water from Mill Creek. Tieing in the Corbin Well this summer is fine, and absolutely necessary. But work must continue to proceed from that point, to assure the ultimate answering of future water needs. And that means getting wholeheartedly behind the Mill Creek development. -sjt-- The latest bombshell from the Jimmy Carter camp on off-road vehicles has all of Southeastern Utah upset again, and lends more weight to the feeling of many that good pi' Jimmy just doesn't like the West. Probably more likely than a simple dislike for Western States, is the likelihood that the new President has surrounded himself with hard-core environmentalists environmental-ists who believe that the only way to protect the land from being scarred, abused, ransacked and littered is to close it off to the public completely. And that feeling doesn't take into account at all, the thousands of REAL environmentalists who live here and who visit here, who use and enjoy the land without damaging its aesthetic values and that includes, in most instances, the use of off-road vehicles. There are people who use off-road vehicles for digging up hillsides, hill-climbing contests, and for running down wildlife, and this sort of abuse must be stopped. But the majority of people who use these vehicles do so to get away from it all, and to take the land away from everyone by denying the use of such vehicles violates the spirit of the land itself. My family has owned a four-wheel drive vehicle of one type or another for the better part of twenty years. We do it because we don't like being stuck. And that can happen on many of what we Southeastern Utuhns class as "established roads," even though they might not even qualify for horseback riding in Virginia or Georgia. President Carter ought to take a page out of the Kennedy book. The Kennedy brothers were easterners, no doubt. But they took the time to get well acquainted with tli- West, and learned about its magnetism and its charm along with its problems. Come out and let us show it like it is, Jimmy. Don't take the word of those Hiirvurd types who are lii'.eririg in your ear. |