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Show Available Water Sets Limit on Utah Growth Utah's immediate water problem is not water itself, but the cost of placing high quality water where and when it is needed, according to Utah Foundation, the private nonprofit research agency. However, in the long run, water is the critical factor that can place an ultimate limit on growth in the state. "No water development project is an 'alternative' to another in the sense that a choice is offered among projects," the Foundation notes in a research report released this week. "Each project supplements the others and in the final analysis the value of each can be measured in time the number of years it can add to the time that healthy growth can continue." The critical nature of the balance between water supply and demand is illustrated by the situation now existing in Salt Lake Valley. A study being jointly conducted by the Salt Lake Metropolitan Water District, Salt Lake County Water Conservancy District, and the U.S. Geological Survey indicates that supply and demand are currently very near equilibrium. Projections based on current per-capita water use and the most recent projections of population growth indicate that it will be necessary to develop an additional annual supply of 38,000 acre-feet of water by the year 2000 to preserve the balance between supply and demand. "Similar water supply problems, in varying degrees of intensity, are found throughout the state, and are expected to be intensified by the development of Utah's energy resources," the Foundation points out. The largest potential source of water development in Utah is the central Utah Project, largest of the participating projects of the four-state (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming) Colorado River Storage Project. Approximately 40 percent of Utah's entitlement to water from the Colorado River System is still undeveloped, and could be developed through the CUP. Utah's full share of Colorado River water may be as much as 1.4 million acre-feet a year. The CUP's Bonneville unit, which is designed to bring water from the Uintah Basin to the valleys west of the Wasatch Mountains, is a little more thar one-fifth complete, but several key units are much farther advanced and can be completed at relatively low cost. While some opposition to the Bonneville unit exists, water officials believe it would be uneconomic to abandon it now. The project has been adequately funded in recent years and construction is proceeding. A major hurdle still to be surmounted is the Jordanelle project, a part of the Bonneville unit that will provide direct benefit to Salt Lake and Utah counties. Because the project (Continued on Page 8) Available Water Sets Limit on Utah Growth ( Continued from Page 1 ) will provide water for municipal use rather than for irrigation, its repayment costs are subject to the impact of inflation. The current estimated unit cost of water from Jor-danelle is four to six times as high as originally estimated and could go even higher. An election may have to be held to approve a new and higher repayment contract. "Water officials are not certain how the voters will react to the higher cost, but the Director of the State's Division of Water Resources believes the outcome would depend on how well the voters understand the issues," the Foundation says. "Once the repayment contract is paid out, the water for all future time would be virtually free, the only cost then being for operation and maintenance of the system." |