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Show . . Salt Lake City, Utah February 29, 1972 $m i Meadows a casualty projects threaten to destroy Uinta s By BILL MARLING j Chronicle Staff ,te China Meadows are scattered like a hmdful of green velvet coins among the wests of aspen and lodgepole pine on the U north slope of the Uinta Mountains in ; uah Each of the half dozen meadows is swarated by a blue band of forest, and connected by the wandering course of the last Fork of Smith's Fork. In the quick, (Wight stretches of the stream, rainbow, ' feook and cutthroat trout hang in the i w(ent like kites on a breeze, and in some lends beaver dams create little estuaries. In the spring, when the asters and columbine and sego lily are out, an occasional oc-casional journeying black bear or lion mountain crosses the meadows. With the fist light snow of fall, the elk and moose tome down to the bullrushes at the streams edge to forage. But the blades of spades and caterpillars nil quickly cut the forest floor and . v. ; - - ,' ' I - V..; ... w - . . -Mi C -' ". , fV.i - "..".vow ---.-.-if:; ?"v, - ' - - ' I 1 ' - - . ; : t r6, . . , F v.:': , iftw"'.f,.' . .''. . ; J . : . '' ..' . .' S ! entire 10,000 acres at 3450 an acre (which is nearly twice I heir marketable value). If it did buy their lands, the government could create a sizeable first-rate recreation area. The supposed fishing and recreation industry in-dustry to be created is another one of the Bureau of Reclamation's illusory benefits. China Meadows is in Utah and requires a Utah fishing permit. Local fishermen, who live in Wyoming, would have to purchase a costly non-resident permit The preponderance of fishermen would have to come from the Wasatch f ront in Utah and would require overnight camping facilities. Rut China Meadows Dam would not only flood the existing campground, it also inundates the site where the lores! Service plans to construct 1')8 family units. The reservoir would leave no feasible sites for an extensive campground development. develop-ment. Would fishermen even tome to China Meadows? There are already nearly two dozen reservoirs in Utah for use by fishermen of the Wasatch I rout area. Another doen are in the planning. Over 1,000 lakes in the high Uintas provide excellent natural fishing. What would the quality of the fishing her The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources says only fingerlings would be planted in the reservoir, providing a poor to moderate fishery. Because the reservoir is at an (continued on page d I leadow grasses if the plans ot the bureau -I I ii Reclamation are carried out here. The ill hman Project of the bureau calls for J jnstruction of a China Meadows Dam, i I thichwill flood 372 acres-all of China H I tadows. The bureau proposes to begin I fc spring. a I The Lyman Project is authorized by the I Colorado River Storage Act of 1956. V I Oninally the project was to regulate flows g I al Black's Fork and East Fork of the Smiths e I :ote rivers (a tributary of the Green River) (. I ior irrigation purposes. But the bureau says & I other project purposes which have s I ineloped include maintenance of fish I and wildlife resources and provision for lfl I ideational water-oriented recreation." W I 1st means general tourist development. 1 K I dam, which will be 109 feet high, will !p I " a reservoir capacity of 13,200 acre -qIJ l 'W Ten thousand acre feet per year of s Utah water will be used to irrigate OlJII WO acres of ranchland in Uinta County, vo Insufficient local rainfall is cited by LHy bureau as a reason creating the need I "the dam. The China Meadows Dam in I bination with the already constructed .1 'eks Cabin Dam on Blacks Fork will HI iiportedly remedy this situation. U ! tost of the China Meadows dam alone iH now $5.1 million, though.it was U taatedby the bureau at $4.7 million in ; ! 'draft statement. In recent years bureau j o Ws have averaged three times the 'j "writ they were estimated to cost. This seem to cast suspicion upon the -nent benefit-cost ratio of 1.17 to 1, a which was arrived at by specious omics according to expert observers. According to the bureau irrigation will increase feed supplies and thus stabilize local livestock production. But according to a 1909 agriculture census only eight percent of the private land in the area is . irrigated for crops, and only a little more is fit. The 2S8 "farms" in Uinta County have an average size of 3,422 jcres they are cattle ranches. Not only has the locale declined in population compared to the national average, but service industries, trade and transportation have become more important occupations in the hamlets of Lyman, Mountain View and Fort Bridger. Does Uinta County really need the Lyman Project? The bureau argues that increased recreational use of the Uintas' north slope, as facilitated by the Lyman Project, will create jobs. By inundating one of the best hunting and trout fishing areas in Utah and constructing better access roads, a boat launching ramp, recreation facilities and extensive campground facilities, they plan to create a traveler and tourist industry, in fact, to stabilize the local economy. The environmental impact of this relatively small project, as outlined by the Bureau of Reclamation's Environmental Impact Statement, will be staggering. To construct the China Meadows Dam and a secondary retaining dike will require 1 300 000 cubic yards of earth and rockti It-Pipelines It-Pipelines will require excavation and back filling. Over 4,000 cubic yards of riprap material (small gravel) for the spillway will be ob-.ained from the reservoir basin or quarried near the Meeks Cabin Dam. The bureau is considering obtaining its source of concrete aggregate in an area on Smiths Fork that would require the stripping of topsoil, trees and vegetation. The access roads will be widened, relocated and completely paved, cutting at least 30 acres from functional wildlife habitation. During the three years the dam will be in construction, con-struction, waste waters, mud and the increased turbidity of the stream will drastically reduce, if not eliminate, fishing in the East Fork. China Meadows will be lost as a summer grazing area for cattle, and as a winter forage area for the only remaining moose herd in Utah (300 head). In addition more than 'SO acres of full grown timber forest and 13 family campground camp-ground units will be lost when the dam is built. Does the China Meadows Dam of the Lyman Project begin to sound like an ill-considered ill-considered venture? A check of the facts, costs and complications suggests that it has been another Bureau of Reclamation boondoggle since its inception. Between the time the Lyman Project was approved by Congress and the time the Definite Project Plan was published by the bureau, the project was immensely altered. China Meadows Dam was not even in the original plan. The entire project was redesigned, rede-signed, re-evaluated, and new acreage added. In the implementation of the new plan, the bureau first constructed the lower Meeks Cabin Dam and then argued that this dam would be ineffective without the China Meadows Dam. At the present time, however, only 70 percent of the irrigation storage in Meeks Cabin Dam has been subscribed. This leaves 9,000 acre feet unused in the reservoir. Then there will be China Meadows with 13,200 acre feet. Will it be used? Of the estimated $5.1 million costs of the China Meadows Reservoir, approximately $500 000 will be repaid by the water users, with no interest charges. Taxpayers across the nation will foot the remaining $4.5 million as well as the wilderness and recreation losses. Since roughly 60 families will receive irrigation benefits from the reservoir this becomes a direct interest-free interest-free subsidy of $90,000 per family. For the amount of money the government investing in-vesting in the project, it could buy the ASUU presidential candidates will clash in a debate Tuesday at noon in the Union East Ballroom. Participating will be Todd Hayes and Max Goff of United We Stand ' and Duane Moss and Norm Albiston of the Make it Happen party. Tuesday at 8 p.m. KUED will telecast a rap session with the candidates. Listeners will be able to call in and ask the candidates any questions. The phone number is 581-6625. OnlyJingeHir Even fishing will be poor (from page 1) elevation of 9,300 feet, it will be open to fishermen only three months a year. During July and August when the reservoir is at low pool due to irrigation demands, fishermen will have to trudge across 50 yards or so of mud to get to the water's edge. Downstream fishing will decrease due to the fluctuation in flows. The Forest Service predicts that by 1975 losses to recreation and fishery will amount to near $66,000 per year; the bureau however optimistically calculates an increase to 17,000 man-days of fishing per year. Are there alternatives to this project? Of course. But they are not being considered. The environmental en-vironmental impact statement issued by the bureau treats only a couple of alternative construction con-struction schemes and assigns them poor benefit-cost ratios without detailing the expenses. Some more feasible small scale irrigation schemes advanced by opponents of the China Meadows Dam are not treated at all. The alternative of abandonment is brought up, but dismissed because more than $1 million has already been spent in planning. Non-development, the bureau says, would place an "economic burden" on local farmers. The Environmental Impact Statement, which is now required by law of every federal project, is more or less a placebo for the public. The Bureau of Reclamation views it as a new sort of public relations effort, and they provide cursory compliance. The law also requires, under the National Environmental Policy Act (and later made explicit by President Nixon on March 5, 1970), that full consideration of environmental factors be aired at public meetings. The only public meeting about the China Meadows Dam took place Oct. 13, 1971, in Mountain View, Wyo., a hamlet of 600 people. The meeting was completely com-pletely unpublicized and provided no opportunity for recreational users of the area, much less Utahns, to attend and testify. However, at the meeting David Crandall of the bureau said that if sufficient interest Wa ! another meetinu it """ ,. Id. Maleu1 representing over 600 mem . the Wasatch Mountain ru' Salt Lake City, requested ? meeting in Salt Lake N ' David Raskin, representing 600 members of the Sierra ri also requested the nr " meeting. Six months ft " meeting, specified by law ' f been held. yldW'hno; it The China Meadows Dam (,, Lyman Project has been a st bureaucratic waste and f bcozelry from its " ?hlT ? Pr,k barrd'p The flooding of China Meado will irretrievably destroy V!( :,f mountain meadows. This ' permanent loss, not so eL, dismissed when visualized as J. of an unending chain of ,., disasters. At the rate at which the Bureat,f ' Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers are claming, diverting and impounding the natural fn streams of the West, there may ,( soon be no free flowing waters ;',tri left. That would be a disasterous it . loss. ' i-i. . I |