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Show 8 Cooperative Groups and Projects The experience of Utah's first pioneers was useful in determining a method of water administration. Water supplies were developed and delivery systems were built by communities, whether entire towns worked together ( as some did on the Virgin or Santa Clara rivers) or joined in neighborhood groups to develop tiny drainage systems ( as farmers at Midway or on Daniel's Creek in Heber Valley did). 19 In pioneering situations, water decisions and administration were handled mainly by the personal efforts of local church leaders. These leaders, usually the ward bishops or the stake presidents, took the initiative in project development and water administration. It was such figures who worked with general church authorities to plan water development and with surveyors to lay out development patterns. They were the ones who, in an effort to coordinate resource distribution, population, and the costs of development, figured out land allotments and assigned land and water rights as settlers arrived. They mobilized the effort of construction, working through repeated failures to keep a work force on the project by means of church calls, promotion in the Deseret News, exploitation of family connections, and through endless rounds of local meetings in which divergent interests were accommodated and unified. 20 Even more important were the customs and values that pertained to the rank- and- file pioneers. For them contributing labor on the developing system was often the medium through which water rights were established. This in turn became the most crucial element in transforming a portion of the public domain into usable ( semi- private) property. For each of them community was necessary for survival. In each was a strong sense of the public weal ( or at least a desire to cooperatively build the kingdom). 21 Where pioneering in water development was concerned, the method was cooperative, the aim was community development. Building the kingdom called for self- restraint and personal sacrifice. Through joint effort settlers brought water to fields that would have been beyond the most heroic individual effort. These experiences prepared new groups for the challenges of water administration that lay beyond initial settlement. Pioneers also developed cooperative water distribution systems. Within a short time the first water master had been appointed at Salt Lake City. 22 Soon water masters for each of the city's nineteen wards worked to coordinate delivery through ditches that lined city streets, delivering water for gardens and domestic purposes. Elsewhere water masters, informal mutual irrigation companies, and a variety of other service agencies looked after a system's interests and coordinated routine upkeep and emergency repairs. To accommodate the ideal of maximum service to the community from water resources, the institution of the water turn was developed. Rather than affording a constant flow, water rights were translated into " streams" or " heads" of water delivered to successive individual landowners 19 Craig Woods Fuller, " Development of Irrigation in Wasatch County," ( Thesis, Utah State University, Logan, Utah 1973), pp 83- 87. 20 Leonard J. Arlington, Great Basin Kingdom, pp 53 and 92. " ibid., p 45. 22 George Thomas, Institutions Under Irrigation, pp 99- 110. |
