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Show Jf Citizens for a Responsible Central Utah Project RE: YOUR GROUP JOINING OUR COALITION Board of Director* Dorothy Harvey, co-chairperson F red Reimherr. co-chairperson Beth Duncan David Freed Karl Heidenreich Peter Hovingh David littlefield Dave McCormick Barbara Policn lames Talley Hartt Wixom Supporting Organizations •Utah Council, Trout Unlimited •Rocky Mountian Council of the Federation of Fly Fishermen • Utah Member Clubs of the Federation of Fly Fishermen •Sfonefly Society of the Wastach Salt Lake City. Utah •Order of the Royal Coachman Pleasant Grove Utah • Utah Audubon 727 6th Ave. Salt Lake City, Utah 84103 Brent Blackwelder Environmental Policy Center 317 Pennsylvania, S.E. Washington, D.C. Dear Mr> Blackwelder: The Citizens for a Responsible CUP group was formed in July of 1978 for purposes of developing focus on concerns of Trout Unlimited of Utah, member clubs of the Federation of Fly Fishermen of Utah, the National Audubon Society, the Utah Fisheries Society, and other citizens about the Central Utah Project. Concerns about widespread destruction of trout streams on the Uinta Mountain Range, diking off two wetlands on the unique warm water Utah Lake, and disruption of their ecosystems, have festered for twenty years. Unhappily, development policies of the State of Utah and effective propaganda efforts by the water developers have prevented open public discussion of important issues in this federal water development., a one to three billion dollar Bureau of Reclamation Project These issues, which are coming into concrete focus now,deal not. only with enviromental impacts but with costs, and questionable Bureau of Reclamation methods of calculating economic feasibility and cost/ benefit ratios, but also with reports on water quality and quantity. Conclusions of these reports recommend efficient and updated water management by the State and conservation measures as viable alternatives to the more costly federally developed water. Purposes, then, of the CRCUP coalition are broad-based. They include seeking non-structural alternatives for water supply and compliance with the Administration Water Policy and existing legislation in the pursuit of answers to western water management. They include, also, questions of what the nation's taxpaying public is "getting" and "losing" as well as inequitable taxation procedures and taxation wihhout representation in Utah. Achievements of these purposes will not be easy. It involves new ways of looking at water as a resource. It involves a change of attitude whereby unlimited quantities of new, high quality trout stream waters are considered the answer for industry, irrigation and municipalities. It involves a change of values wherein 40% of the federally developed high quality stream water would be used to water Salt Lake County lawns. While our mission is profound in scope, its immediate direction is brought to bear on stopping the CUP at this time. Federally developed water is premature - until the State modernizes its opportunities for water supply. It seems to us to be an unconscienable act to destroy irreplaceable and unique aquatic and terrestrial wildlife and recreation resources in such public demand today. |
