By Myrna Trauntvein
Times-News Correspondent
Representatives of the Utah Farm Bureau and the
Strawberry Water Users Association opposed a bill dealing
with Central Utah Project Water in statements issued
recently to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources
Committee.
CUP water has long been proposed for the Juab County
area but two of the members of Utah's delegation to
Washington D.C., Sen. Bob Bennett and Rep. Chris Cannon,
both R-Utah, are pushing identical bills in the Senate and
House which could change that.
Both Bennett and Cannon want to change some federal
spending caps to allow the CUP to shift water from
Strawberry Reservoir to Salt Lake County.
The remaining portion of the project would send water,
once intended for rural irrigators, if it were followed
unchanged. Those irrigators live in southern Utah County and
in eastern Juab County.
Strawberry Water Users represent some of those rural
water users who would be affected by the diverting of water
to the larger and more metropolitan area in Salt Lake
County.
Representatives of the two rural groups asked the
Senate to kill a bill that would allow the Central Utah
Project to divert water originally intended for those rural
irrigators to Salt Lake County.
"Solemn promises should be kept," said Robert W.
McMullin, president of the Strawberry Water Users
Association of Irrigators.
However, at the hearing, representatives of the rural
groups were told that some rural Utah County mayors and Juab
County commissioners had begrudgingly endorsed the bill in
earlier House hearings.
This was done in exchange for CUP promises that it
would work to find future water supplies for that area from
other sources.
"With improved infrastructure, the CUP can serve the
interests of all south Utah and east Juab County residents,
farm and city dweller alike," said McMullin. "We ask for
that opportunity."
At least some of the $125 million originally intended
for rural irrigators in southern Utah and eastern Juab
counties should be retained for irrigation water delivery,
said Booth Wallentine, chief executive officer of the Utah
Farm Bureau Federation.
He said the planned infrastructure, which is badly
needed to allow Utah Lake Drainage Basin farmers to conserve
and more efficiently use their limited water supplies,
should be preserved.
In 1992, Congress authorized spending up to $900
million to complete CUP. The Congressional authorization was
for projects the CUP now seeks to use the $125 million
for--projects once intended to help deliver water to
irrigators in Utah and Juab county--by reducing or
abandoning past plans.
In fact, the CUP board is seeking to use the funding
to deliver water to Salt Lake County.
Residents of those areas have been paying taxes to
develop CUP for several decades.
Both Wallentine and McMullin entered comments into the
record stating CUP officials should have been required to
conduct an environmental impact statement about the effects
of the planned water shift.
"The bill should be killed or delayed until that
happens," said McMullin.
The questions raised by Wallentine and McMullin raised
legal concerns about part of the 1992 CUP completion
law.
In the completion legislation passed in 1992,
responsibility for completing the project was taken from the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. That responsibility was then
awarded to the local Central Utah Water Conservancy
District.
Now the Justice Department is examining whether giving
a local board federal responsibilities of this type is
constitutional and whether such a local board can ensure
fair treatment of all potential consumers, said Bennett W.
Raley, Assistant Interior Secretary, Assistant Secretary for
Water and Science, in his testimony.
Raley did state that the Bush administration would
support Sen. Bennett's bill and the transferring of rural
water to Salt Lake County if some amendments are made to
better clarify spending limits and which projects have been
canceled.
Testimony at the hearing was also received from Sen.
Bennett.
"Utah is one of the fastest-growing states in the
country," said Sen. Bennett. "It is also one of the driest
in normal times and right now is not normal times. Our state
is in a drought where we are running at 5 percent of
normal."
Bennett said the fourth year of drought in Utah shows
the need for the water development his bill would allow.
Senate Bill, S.2475.IS, was introduced by Bennett
during the second session of the 107th Congress on May
8.
In the bill, Bennett is seeking: "To amend the Central
Utah Project Completion Act to clarify the responsibilities
of the Secretary of the Interior with respect to the Central
Utah Project, to redirect unexpended budget authority for
the Central Utah Project for wastewater treatment and reuse
and other purposes, to provide for prepayment of repayment
contracts for municipal and industrial water delivery
facilities, and to eliminate a deadline for such
prepayment."
The bill was read twice at its introduction and
referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural
Resources.
The latest major action was the hearing to amend the
Central Utah Project Completion Act. It was held on June 6
by the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
Subcommittee on Water and
Power.
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