OCR Text |
Show Jaek-Sfraws 3 By Jack Wallis The lid finally blew off concerning the ture boom activities in store for Uin-h Uin-h County. The week started with the announce-5nt announce-5nt that the Paraho Development rp. was moving its plans for an oil ale facility from Anvile Points in Col-ado Col-ado to its state-owned property in rtheastern Utah. Paraho announced that it is working an agreement with the Department Energy to start a $6.5 million contact con-tact for preparation and design of a Sodular oil shale retort. This retort uld be capable of producing between XX) to 10,000 barrels of shale oil a day & $ould cost between $150 to $200 million. If everything is approved the Paraho odular retort construction could start soon as 1981 and would involve about 0 construction workers. This would be e first above ground retorting techni-flie techni-flie for using crushed oil shale in Utah. yn top of the Paraho announcement jme the premature release by the Salt a ike Tribune of a population and im- let study being carried on by the Uin-h Uin-h Basin Energy Development Council .Elder the direction of Charles R. P !huck) Henderson in Vernal. 6 FThe Vernal energy office had planned officially releasing its study reports . a special state energy meeting IIP heduled in Vernal on January 31, but report leaked out, so the office of-ially of-ially released its study this week. The energy study forecasts that by 88 the Uintah Basin schools will be owded with an additional 7,580 Jdents and a total population of 60,000 rsons. By 1995 the Basin population is recast to reach over 95,000. The impact study is based on four oil ale developments now well along in e planning stages. These projects are I in southern Uintah County belonging Geokinetics, Paraho, Tosco and jhite River Shale. Added to this is the st 400 megawatt unit of the Moon 'ke power plant and the White River m and hydro power plant. Other oil shale, tar sands and the send se-nd unit power plant are expected to 5 ilow the first wave of development. To grow from the present population 33,140 to 95,000 in a period of 15 years )uld mean a 4,000 population increase ery year for the Basin. fr""What all these numbers add up to is 3f at things will never be the same again in the Basin. The growth will change the whole area life-style. With this kind of growth the impact will be felt by every kind of service and business. Already large business operations are looking over the area and plans are being drawn up for several mall-type shopping units. Prime business locations loca-tions are being scooped up and it appears ap-pears to be a game to see who is going to move first. The big question is how and when do we prepare for the population boom? If everything starts immediately the businesses will get here before they are needed and if they wait too long, the need may arrive before the additional services get set up. Where is the happy medium? Some may even say all this is just crying wolf, wolf, and that they will have to see it before they will believe that these developments are coming. About all we can say for sure is that the development is closer than it has ever been before that the the Basin had better plan for some growth changes.-We changes.-We hope that with planning and study everyone can benefit from the future prospects of growth and prosperity. The next ten years in the area are going go-ing to be interesting, to say the least. Super Bowl Sunday in the Uintah Basin area served by translator television televi-sion just about experienced a super calamity. Saturday afternoon the high winds knocked out the television power line on Tabby Mountain that serves almost the entire northeastern part of the state. Sunday morning the telephones began buzzing with the question ques-tion "When is the TV going to be back on?" and "Is someone working on it?" As the Super Bowl got closer and closer the panic grew, until the translator was finally back on the job about 11 a.m. What would have happened if the translator could not have been fixed by the kick-off time of the Super Bowl? We all depend on the services of others and if these services fail it is hard to remain composed and understanding, instead we let the worst in us come out. Well, the Basin survived the scare of the Super Bowl black-out, now if it can cope with this population thing, maybe we can still enjoy being small-town folks in a fast moving boom-town situation. situa-tion. We hope so. |