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Show PART II DEVELOPMENTS IN WATER ADMINISTRATION AND MANAGEMENT, 1890 THROUGH 1947 CHAPTER IV THE FORCES OF CHANGE No period in the history of Utah water administration produced institutional developments of greater importance than did the first few years after statehood was achieved in 1896. Fundamental policy changes, institutional structures, and administrative innovations were effected that put the state of Utah squarely in the water management business. It would be gratifying to report that it was a time of unmarred progress, but such was not the case. Indeed, Utah's policymakers were slow to undertake change. When they did they were often halfhearted about it, with the result that a number of adaptations had to be made in the system. To fully understand the changes in Utah's water administration, certain developments at the federal level and the impacts of the water policy of neighboring states need to be examined briefly. In the years immediately before 1896, events in Utah and the nation set the stage and direction for change. As we have seen in earlier chapters, the pioneers had developed a grassroots system of water administration that often functioned almost independently of the laws passed by the legislature. Irrigators during the territory's last years were relatively well- served by pioneer water customs and institutions. Most managed their own affairs and were content in the main with arrangements they had made at the local level and with the decrees and rulings set down by church courts and local moderators. Not only did pioneer custom still meet the needs of many, but Utahns had been preoccupied with settling the long and cankered Mormon problem. Unlike some neighboring states where water development had occupied the best minds, Utah had struggled to settle questions of marital relations and the involvement of the church in affairs of state. By 1890 Utah was losing its claim to water management leadership. After statehood, lawmakers had to hurry to keep up with developments elsewhere. Indeed, the fact that water policy was adapted at all was due to three major sets of outside development. In considering the corporate efforts to develop the Bear River Canals Project, the impact that speculative corporate development ( first allowed in California and Colorado) had upon Utah was already recognized. At least as important as private capital in promoting changes in Utah's water administration were natural resource management developments at the national level and policy developments in neighboring states. As satisfied as Utah's small irrigators may have been and as preoccupied with the Mormon problem as policymakers may have been, changes in each of the above mentioned arenas attracted Utah attention, setting patterns that the new state could not ignore. At the national level, land and water policy came together in the decades before 1902, prompted by an awareness of the requirements of development of the arid West. An early step in this process was the Desert Land Act. Passed in 1877, the act was an effort to tie a means of |
