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Show ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF WATER DEVELOPMENT 29 the 1928- 29 Water Advisory Board report except for the emergency of 1930- 1931, or afterwards in spite of it, by those then charged with responsibility will never be known, for another circumstance also of common occurrence intervened. By the election of that year they were relieved of that responsibility. A new mayor was elected, Louis Marcus, who became head of the Department of Public Affairs and Finance; George D. Keyser was elected and became Commissioner of Water Supply and Waterworks, and a new City Engineer and City Attorney were appointed. What this new administration would have done except for the continued pressure of necessity and except for the culmination of work done over a long period by two outside agencies is also something which cannot be known. The fact is, however, that necessity did continue to press and still does, and the fact is also that two outside agencies, the Utah Water Storage Commission, under the leadership of William R. Wallace, and the United States Bureau of Reclamation, then under the direction of Dr. Elwood Mead, about this time brought to a conclusion work of profound significance to the water problem of this community, and the fact is that that administration together with those agencies, aided and encouraged by various public- spirited citizens and the public press, did initiate action which it seems probable will settle for all time the problem of water supply for Salt Lake City. They brought about the creation of the Metropolitan Water District of Salt Lake City and thus insured the construction of the Provo River Project of the Bureau of Reclamation. RECAPITULATION OF UTAH LAKE HISTORY It seems to us that it will be more helpful toward complete understanding, if, before going into the field of activity just mentioned, we give something additional of the Utah Lake history and then of other water activities from 1932 to the present. We have already related how the Utah Lake and Jordan River development was suggested in 1864; how the Jordan and Salt Lake City Canal was commenced in 1879 and ultimately completed with a capacity of 150 cubic feet of water per second, but we have said very little, and that only incidentally, concerning the extent of the actual use of the water supply thus made available, but rather we have merely told how some part of it was utilized by way of exchange in the acquisition of a municipal supply from the various mountain streams. In 1900 action of a predecessor of the Utah Power and Light Company precipitated litigation wTiich, with immaterial exceptions, involved all the then Salt Lake Valley users of Utah Lake and Jordan River. This resulted in what is known as " The Morse Decree." That decree established the right of the City and " Associated Canal Companies" to take from the river water to the full capacity of their respective canals. It established also their right to treat Utah Lake as a storage reservoir and to hold its waters for future use " to the extent to which, in their judgment, their interests may require." |