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Show Rains Out West Create Problem Confusion reigns in the Confusion Confu-sion range through an irrigation paradox that has developed at the Lake Creek reservoir, which generally gen-erally is a limited source of irrigation irri-gation water in one of the driest j sections ofthe west, according to a feature story ' in Sunday's Salt Lake' Tribune. As a result of nature's little pranks, ranchers in the vicinity of Garrison face the loss of crops through inundation in the season when drouth is devastating agricultural agri-cultural areas in the middle west Garrison, while actually lying within Millard county and close to the Nevada state line, has more contact with Beaver county than with Millard, being located on state highway 21. Harry C. Jensen, WPA engineer for Utah, said the Lake Creek reservoir was casually constructed by an unnamed engineer in 1898 Something happened (the state engineer's office is devoid of the records), and the dam, an earth fill structure, never was completed. As a result, the surface of the 60-foot 60-foot "spillway" was six inches above the level of the remainder of the reservoir. When a state highway was constructed con-structed from Milford to Garrison a part of the spillway was utilized as roadbed, on the theory that the reservoir was far too large for the drainage from the Confusion range and would never be filled. No filings ever were made, and no records were kept concerning the Lake Creek reservoir. The small body of water, spreading thinly over its limited bed, . won sporadic fame when it substituted for the Platte river in James Cruz's pioneer epic, "The Covered Wagon." The huge reservoir with its limited lim-ited water supply was not taken very seriously by its custodians, and when a stem to a control gate broke 20 years ago, no measures were taken to replace it. A yoke was fastened to the gate in the reservoir outlet, and a chain attached, at-tached, by. means of which the gate could be elevated four or five inches, sufficient for a discharge of five or six second feet of water. In the. fall, when the water supply sup-ply was exhausted, the gate was pummeled to a closed position with sledgehammers, WPA officials said. But the picture changed this summer. Floods, violent ones, occurred oc-curred above- and below the reservoir. res-ervoir. The floods below the dam filled a two and a half mile willow wil-low grown canal with debris. The floods above filled the reservoir res-ervoir to a point within five feet of its crest and increased the water I level 12 feet higher than the old-I old-I est resident had ever seen it. The reservoir, in ordinary times, holds from four to six thousand acre j feet, according to estimates of j water users, and there is from i four to five times more water at i present than has ever before been retained. i A plethora of water, however, is not an undisguised blessing, according ac-cording to Garrison residents After 13 years of drouth, Garrison Garri-son ranchers were enjoying a wet summer, and the best crops in several decades. The dam, however, how-ever, backing water for more than five miles, already has inundated several bumper crops of hay. The ranchers on upper Lake creek their lands well watered by abundant abun-dant rains, are permitting the entire en-tire flow of water to enter the reservoir. The reservoir waters are slowly creeping up the remaining remain-ing five feet toward the crest of the dam. The outlet control gate is opened to its full capacity. The channel downstream is so choked witr willows that it cannot carry more than a few second feet without inundating Garrison's best crops in years, the officials said. The state highway, which bordered bor-dered the reservoir above its previous pre-vious highest water level, is inundated in-undated at several points. To untangle un-tangle nature's practical joke from the Confusion mountains, the state road commission is arranging to blast a spillway through its roadbed road-bed at the. dam, and permit release of the impounded water. The creek channel will be cleaned clean-ed of willows and widened by W P A workers to carry away the increased volume of the reservoir that finally filled this season for the first time in 38 years, WPA ! officials said. |