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Show 27 Other ordinances divided water according to the amount " available in proportion to the quantity of land" or " such manner and quantities as shall be just." 13 Until at least 1880, newcomers were often given resources even in the larger cities. As Thomas puts it, the issue was not whether one " had worked for the water but did he need it, and would the dividing with him actually and seriously injure someone else." 14 As it was in the informal irrigation companies, upkeep was handled by a labor tax that fell directly upon water users plus a cash assessment to purchase equipment and pay water masters. As long as farmers represented a substantial proportion of the citizens, city councils worked well as agencies of irrigation administration. Later, as industry and need for culinary water became more important, Salt Lake City and Ogden got out of the direct management of irrigation systems. However, both still held substantial water rights and traded for others as quality, ability to deliver, and other factors required. Even when Thomas wrote in the early 1920s, the farmer controlled city councils of American Fork and Provo were still very much involved in direct administration of irrigation. The role of the territorial government in management of culinary water was always indirect at best. On the other hand, cities elaborated their charge in furnishing water to cope with a mounting need for culinary and industrial water of high quality. A factor for all municipalities was the question of contamination. This was accentuated after 1885 by overgrazing in watersheds adjacent to cities. In 1892 the so- called " Seven Mile Limit" law was passed restricting grazing in city watersheds. 15 Because customary use was often well established, it was a law often more honored in the breach than in fact. While more acute than most, Salt Lake City's contamination problems and the solutions that developed are instructive. Upwards of a half million sheep were trailed along present Twenty- first South Street and through Emigration and Parley's canyons each spring and fall. Ultimately, the creation of the Wasatch and the Salt Lake forest reserves and application of Forest Service regulations brought the issue under control. City fathers who represented the livestock interests protested. 16 With stock- fouled water an increasing issue, Wasatch Front cities worked to develop safe and efficient domestic water systems. In the larger municipalities, city engineers were among those most directly involved in Utah's emerging patterns of water administration. In an effort to give some form to the shift of cities from managers of irrigation water to those of broader interests, attention will here be paid to the development of culinary water in Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County. During the last third of the 19th century, wells, ponds, springs, streams, and canals were utilized. From earliest settlement water had always had its culinary duties. In some communities custom and law provided for " dipping hours." Coupled with statutes making it mandatory to keep all livestock off the public domain and pastures through which ditches ran during the night, dipping hours were usually restricted to the early morning when it was hoped water would be at 13Ibid. p 111. 14ibid. State of Utah, Council and House Journals of the Thirtieth Session of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Utah, 1892 ( Salt Lake City: Press of Irrigation Age, 1892), p 820. See Charles S. Peterson and Linda E. Speth, " A History of the Wasatch- Cache National Forest," Submitted to die Wasatch Cache National Forest September 25, 1980, pp 40- 42. |