Letter to the Editor: Lake Powell Pipeline pros and cons may be moot if there’s no water source for it

July 12, 2018 Utah Channel 3

OPINION — A recent article came out in the St. George News painting a picture of the Lake Powell Pipeline. The article covered two points of view, those who think we need the water for growth, and those who think we can conserve enough, and don’t actually need the water. A major factor was missed by the article entirely. What if there isn’t actually enough water in the Colorado River System to guarantee that the Lake Powell Pipeline will even have enough water?

As we’re full in the swing of the 19th year of drought in the Colorado River Basin, the State of Utah should take a good hard look at what’s going on with our largest river system and scrap this idea before we’ve wasted over a billion hard earned dollars.

The Colorado River System is approaching crisis. We are in a new era of increasing dryness. You can feel it, you can see it, you can measure it, there are fires around the west. It is due to increasing global temperatures, it might vary from year to year, but drought is predicted to persist.

The levels of Lake Mead and Lake Powell are low, so low, that we barely have a year in reserve for the 35 million people already relying on that water. This is forcing the Bureau of Reclamation to instigate new negotiations on Drought Contingency Plans in the Colorado River Basin. Farmers are taking cuts all over the Western Slope.

This is a problem, because while other states are scrambling to lower their water use, the State of Utah is busy trying to develop literally every last drop of our allocation (based on river flows that we’ll likely rarely see again).

The Northern Ute and Navajo have large amounts of federally reserved water rights (that have yet to be agreed upon or developed) dating back to the creation of the reservations and thus much stronger rights to the water than most users. The negotiation is slow when working with sovereign tribal nations, especially because the U.S. and Utah have broken their trust countless times, but that does not mean we should rush ahead as a state and develop all the water before these negotiations are finished.

At the very least, we should wait and ensure that the original inhabitants of this state, many of whom haul water and have no public water systems, have access to sufficient water before unnecessarily dumping it on developers in St. George.

The water right for the Lake Powell Pipeline has a junior priority date to all the other major water developments that the State of Utah is simultaneously pursuing, but senior rights to about 10,000 other water rights already held by families, businesses, and entire communities relying on the water to live in Eastern Utah. As shortages come, and they will come, those junior rights will get axed.

The state of Utah should make the call now, extinguish the water right for the Lake Powell Pipeline, it shouldn’t even really exist given this past decade’s river flows, and support the Utahns that already rely on the same water for survival. I’m speaking of water rights in Hanksville, Emery, Green River, Moab, Blanding, Escalante, Roosevelt, Castle Valley, and many many more.

The federal government isn’t going to come in and tell Utah what to do; it’s up to us to manage the resources that we have with justice and foresight. But as the water diminishes in the river we share, we will be making cuts, along with all the other western water users, like it or not.

Submitted by SARAH STOCK, Moab, Utah.

Letters to the Editor are not the product of St. George News, its editors, staff or news contributors. The matters stated and opinions given are the responsibility of the person submitting them. They do not reflect the product or opinion of St. George News and are given only light edit for technical style and formatting..

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