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Show ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF WATER DEVELOPMENT 5 CONSTRUCTION OF JORDAN AND SALT LAKE CITY CANAL During this same year ( 1879) actual construction of the " Jordan and Salt Lake City Canal" was commenced and was finally completed in 1882. During subsequent years it was improved and enlarged to a capacity of 150 cubic feet per second. It is an interesting fact that part of it was the canal commenced many years before for the purpose of conveying rock from Cottonwood for the Latter Day Saints' Temple. INCREASE IN POPULATION NECESSITATES MUNICIPAL RECOURSE TO MOUNTAIN STREAMS Between the years 1880 and 1888 there had been a relatively rapid rise in the population of Salt Lake City. In 1880 it was 20,000 and during the next eight years it had more than doubled. By this time it had become apparent that the water problem was not merely one affecting agriculture or gardens and trees and shrubbery, but of the actual sustenance of the people. Utah Lake water, while perfectly adequate to irrigation and in some respects superior for that purpose to mountain stream water, was not suitable to domestic use. The City's rights in City Creek and some other relatively small rights were not sufficient to actual necessities and already complaints of unlawful encroachments by the municipality were being received from farmers on Parleys and Emigration. THE FIRST " EXCHANGE AGREEMENT" This situation led to the making in 1888 of Salt Lake City's first " Exchange Agreement" between certain users of water from Emigration and almost all of those from Parleys; agreements by which the city acquired the right to take and use the waters of those creeks and by which it was required to give in exchange therefor " an equivalent quantity of water from the Jordan and Salt Lake City Canal." To utilize this Exchange the City built the Parley's low line conduit with a capacity of 26 second feet and the " Suicide Rock" reservoir near the mouth of the canyon. Most of the lands then irrigated from Parley's Creek and the canals taking water from it are now within the corporate limits of Salt Lake City. Hundreds of acres are nevertheless 6. The Jordan and Salt Lake Canal, constructed to bring the waters of Utah Lake and the Jordan River into Salt Lake City to augment the inadequate supplies from mountain streams. S. L. C. Eng. Dept. |
