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Show Planning Board Holds Meeting The planning meeting held in the west ward church at Beaver April 13 brought together a group ! of prominent Utah people and local citizens. Visitors from outside the county were William Peterson, director di-rector of the extension service; W. W. Owens, assistant director for agriculture; Miss Myrtle Davidson, I assistant director for home economics; econo-mics; T. H. Humpherys, state engineer; G. S. Quate, state coordinator co-ordinator of the soil conservation service; J. Howard Maughn, land , planning specialist of the U. S. I D. A.; Dr. 0. J. Wheatley, exten- sion economist, and two members of the state planning board, Mrs. Lottie Kimball from Kanosh and Wilford Day from Parowan. The morning session was spent in hearing reports from committees commit-tees of the county planning board. The state engineer, T. H. Humpherys, Humph-erys, discussed the results of surveys sur-veys made on reservoir sites in Beaver county. He stated that Beaver county was formerly a place of prosperous farms due to the abundance of water in the (Continued on last page) Planning Meeting (Continued from first page) earlier days. With the expansion in farmland and population has come a serious water deficiency. He stated that the greatest obstacle ob-stacle to the future welfare of the county is a lack of adequate irrigation irri-gation water. In the afternoon meeting talks were given by the other visitors. Miss Myrtle Davidson stated that women should take a more active part In weed control. She main-jtained main-jtained that many noxious weeds , had been planted in flower seeds. She stressed a greater need for caution on the highways to reduce the tremendous increase in automobile auto-mobile accidents. Wilford Day urged greater participation par-ticipation of business people ,in county planning activities. He maintained that their welfare depends de-pends on the prosperity of our farms, something which is of major concern to the planning board. Director Paterson, in an enlightening en-lightening talk, said the Brookings Institute had determined that from 2 to 3 acres of land per capita were necessary to buy food and clothing for an individual. In Utah we have only about 2.3 acres per capita. He mentioned the large percentage of small farms in the state and said that 8133 of the slightly more than 30,000 farms in Utah had farm security loans totaling $4,580,000. These loans are made only to farmers whose financial standings are not good enough to obtain local credit. In addition, he said, the state has about $800 invested in the education educa-tion of each high school graduate. After this amount has been spent most of the students must go elsewhere else-where to spend the productive period of their lives because of a lack of locaT opportunities. Nobody, No-body, he said, can long afford to pay all the expenses and allow someone else to reap the benefits of the investment. Director Peterson Peter-son stressed the need for a greater farm income and more local opportunities oppor-tunities for our youth. About the last of May or early in June, Director Peterson will return re-turn to the county to investigate with local people the feasability of building a reservoir at Three creek under the water facilities program. |