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Show -Jioradol River (Continued) . the total construction Cnt 1 1 be paid. It is believed bill gureau of Reclamation W the storage projects are ' iLnn the river, and revenue v' bu) novver begins to come in, ' frfj jii always be available i? fnd ,hje source to finance the H 'truction of all participating f; ProjeCIS'aDParent that only I " v, construction of the Cen-' Cen-' ""Pmah project can the state make use of her share of ever-ers of the river. :J let's see what the pro-, pro-, or'ill do for us, and also ;: grnvimyat tt wil1 cost- A meeting was called in Roosevelt, Roos-evelt, Sept. 9, by State Engineer Engin-eer Harold A. Linke. for the i purpose of presenting to the people of this state the plans Drawn up by the Bureau of Reclamation Rec-lamation for control of the Colorado Colo-rado river, known as the Colorado Colo-rado River Storage and Central Utah projects, t h e latter of which is the one and only project pro-ject Utah has, whereby the state can make use of its share of Colorado river water as allocated al-located to Utah by the" Upper Colorado River compact. About 125 men present from Duchesne and Uintah counties heard these two projects pretty well outlined and explained in rough detail, with well prepared maps as illustrations. Without maps, it is not so ?Sy.u 0 exP!ain the intricacies oi the two projects. We will say nothing more of the storage stor-age project, except that we are satisfied it will complete the job it was planned to do, especially es-pecially as it affects the development de-velopment of Utah. i i 1 How will the Central Utah project accomplish its aims? During each year there will be taken fiom our water sheds about double the amount of water we are now using in the j Uintah Basin'. This water, once (placed in the enlarged Strawberry Straw-berry reservoir, will be dropped 2,900 feet to the Utah valley, I generating on its way an enormous enorm-ous amount of power as it pours into the valley from the mountains moun-tains above. It will then be used to farm land, and for industrial in-dustrial and culinary purposes throughout the central part of the state. We might add that this procedure pro-cedure will not interrupt the water rights of anyone in the Basin. Remember we are using far less than half of the water o iffinating within the Basin. The water taken from the shet's will be made available by using all our surplus waters, plus a sizable portion of the waters we are now using: the latter amount to be replaced from storage water on the Green at no cost to us. In addition, from this source, there will be brought an ample amount of water for productive Basin lands not now in use, as well as water to round out a full season supply for lands now only partially watered. This diversion will be accomplished ac-complished by the building of aqueducts and tunnels beginning begin-ning on the headwaters of Brush creek, north of Vernal, and tapping all streams west at about 8,000 feet, or above the elevation tsi the Moon Lake dam, catching about three-fourths three-fourths of the water we are now using on our lands. As a means of replacing these waters, it is 'proposed to tap Green river at an elevation about 1,000 feet lower, and divert di-vert this water west to cover not only the lands where "water has been taken, but all other Basin lands worthy of irrigation, irriga-tion, including those near La-point, La-point, all Ouray valley lands. Blue Bench, Leland Bench, and numerous other small tracts. And remember, from this source, we will be assured a full season's supply every year, drawn from a reservoir of several sev-eral million acre-feet of water. 1 I Going further into the Central Cen-tral Utah, this prpject is planned plan-ned to be constructed in two units. The first phase, as it effects us here in the Basin, consists of taking all surplus waters from all streams west of, and including. includ-ing. Rock Creek, and diverting it to Strawberry reservoir and through power plants to the central part of the state. Other features of the first phase are the building of a reservoir on the Strawberry river, west of Duchesne, for the purpose of controlling flood waters and providing a regulated flow for the use of all lands that can be taken care of there. Second, the building of the Upalco reservoir, north of Upal-co, Upal-co, will be for the purpose of furnishing a supplemental water supply to lands now served by the Moon Lake Water Users association, as-sociation, and also to make available a culinary water supply sup-ply to all communities from Al-tonah Al-tonah to Myton and Roosevelt. This scheme, which can be financed fi-nanced under a long-time plan, will be economically feasible and desirable for all concerned. Next, there are the Stanaker reservoir, near Vernal, and the Tysak, or Jensen project, north of Jensen. These Include all the local projects that have requested request-ed investigation by the Bureau of Reclamation. Now, as we have said, all this investigation has been done by the Bureau at the request of the people of the Upper Basin Ba-sin states, with money made available through the efforts of your representatives, and those of other states, on the various boards. These reports, to be finished soon, will have to be started down the rough road of federal approval, and the help of everyone every-one in the Basin, the State of Utah, and the other Upper Basin Ba-sin states will be necessary to ram these reports through. An additional number of meetings will be held throughout through-out the area for the purpose of lining up popular support, which o f course, means convincing the people that the planned projects pro-jects are worthy of their support. sup-port. The Bureau's investigations are about completed; their reports re-ports are ready to be submitted submit-ted to the Department of the' Interior and to Congress. It is up to each of us to help get federal approval of. these reports, re-ports, and then get the money from Congress to commence building for the future. |