OCR Text |
Show A BAD MESS. The present city administration will not leave the water question on a very satisfactory basis. All through the spring and summer this journal urged that before anything else was attempted, there should be perfect arrangements made, all conflicting titles adjusted in a way that a clear showing could be made to the taxpayers of what could be accomplished with the $1,000,000 they voted to secure a sufficient water supply. But here in the last days of the year and of the present administration, the important rights on the Cottonwood Cot-tonwood have not been secured, Mill creek is under un-der negotiation, no work has been done on the canal, and though fairly promised, not a step has been taken to test the effectiveness of the plan to secure a great volume of water from the wells above Liberty park. The incoming administration administra-tion will have a complex problem on its hands. We do not see how any friend of the present administration ad-ministration can frame an endorsement of what has been accomplished, or the reason that neither the mayor nor any one of his advisers can today approximate what the cost will be to secure ;the needed rights on Cottonwood, or how much will be needed to make the canal perform the service which would be required of it were the work to bring pure waters into the city completed. And the danger of damage suits from the the canal companies, in case any more drafts are made upon Utah lake water, has not been in the least mitigated. miti-gated. In all fairness, no piece of municipal work where the money of the people was directly at stake has ever, in Utah, been carried on with more recklessness and more disregard for the interests of tax payers than has marked this whole business busi-ness since the money was voted. |