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Show 110 ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF WATER DEVELOPMENT too large a supply available to the use and disposal of this community but rather the contrary, and since the Deer Creek Division is over- subscribed, consideration has been given and action has been taken toward the enlargement of the Provo River Project to include a development long in the view of the Bureau of Reclamation. PROPOSED ENLARGEMENT OF PROVO RIVER PROJECT The development referred to requires the driving of the eight mile Rock Creek tunnel by which may be tapped the waters of Rock Creek, a tributary of the Duchesne River. By this, approximately 40,000 acre feet of new water can be made available to use through the Deer Creek and associated facilities at a cost now roughly estimated at $ 5,000,000. Recent events and the probabilities arising out of the national emergency, as well as the renewed optimism and energy now manifest, seem to direct this or any other additional water development. Proposed Enlargement of General Concern But entirely aside from the purely local interest, if that can be taken as separated from the interest of the state as a whole, there exists a very good reason lor putting to beneficial use in Utah, as soon as may be, all possible of the waters of the Duchesne River and its tributaries. Under the terms of the " Colorado River Compact," the " Upper Basin" states, including the State of Utah, were allotted " the exclusive beneficial consumptive use of 7,500,000 acre feet of water per annum" from the Colorado River system, but so far there is no project except the Provo River, in any view not remote, by which 135. Even the salty waters of Great Salt Lake, pictured below, have been eyed in Utah's perennial search for new sources of supply. A project has been developed and some day may be constructed to create a body of usable fresh water by diking off a portion of the lake at the point of inflow of the Weber River. L. Clyde Anderson |