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Show 96 allowed Utah's cities, towns, businesses, and farmers to group together to finance increasing complex water projects. These institutions enhanced the state's ability to attract outside dollars for water development and to organize the water users more efficiently throughout the state. Water Development Motivations The impetuous for water development in Utah has, in some sense, remained unchanged from the earliest days. In others, it has changed radically. The underlying goal for most of the water development in Utah has been to provide water resources to those areas where it was needed for some type of human consumption or use that would benefit the citizens of the state. As the technical abilities of the water developers increased, the projects became more complex. Motives remained substantially unchanged, however, in the sense that human needs were being met. Yet motivations also changed radically in that the focus or purpose of development shifted from settlement/ colonization ( building communities and extending control) to profit/ loss decisionmaking ( building sources of income), and finally to provide for a broad spectrum of urban, industrial, and agricultural needs. The earliest Utah settlers did not analyze many different projects, and built only those which were most necessary. Rather, they were concerned with immediate survival. This remained true for each of the successive colonizing groups which were sent to open new areas for the six decades following the first settlement In such situations, water development was judged against the yardstick of subsistence, not the gauge of profitability. Only as the society gained a strong foothold in the new environment and their technical skills increased, could the profit motive come to predominate. This change resulted in the 1880 legislation that opened the way for private profit oriented development Motivation for water development in Utah, for the most part, has not come from the investment or speculative sectors of the economy. Utah's water development projects have mostly been motivated by a need to meet the increasing demands by agriculture, industry, and municipalities. Further, the citizens and political leaders of the state, from even the earliest days of settlement, seem to have been motivated by a desire to in some sense develop the water resources of the state to their fullest potential. This development effort was directed at supporting the growth ( or geographical expansion in the case of Utah's colonization efforts) of the economy and population. Common Determinants of Water Development Policy All of the legislation establishing territorial and state courts, commissions, boards, and offices concerned with water administration, development, and management has included the injunction to seek the full or beneficial use of the water resources. Quite literally, the common motivation which has served as a thread of continuity throughout all the time periods studied in this paper is that all the water resources which the state's citizens could claim and develop should be put to beneficial use simply because the water resources were available. This philosophy of maximum beneficial use has functioned as standard for the society. This goal was the cornerstone of the foundation upon which the territory and the state built their policies. |