Questions for the Bureau of Reclamation about the Central Utah Project, 1978-1979

Page 3

3. f. If the Bonneville Unit is still justified on the basis of developing irrigation water, and part of this from saving evaporating water by diking Provo and Goshen Bays as an exchange for water for irrigating lands areound the Jordanelle Reservoir (really a paper exchange of water rights) what is the rationale for selling off water rights to already irrigated and irrigatable lands? What is the rationale for inundating already good farm lands under a Jordanelle Reservoir? What is gained by selling off water rights to farmable lands around Utah Lake and recovering farm lands from the diked Provo Bay which then has to be managed extensively by a costly drainage program? The Jordanelle- Provo River System being separated from the Bonneville Unit for purposes of EIS comment. 2. The Bureau of Reclamation has consistently maintained that the Bonneville Unit of the CUP, while made up of 6 systems, is one complete unit. It has maintained that the diking of Provo and Goshen Bays on Utah Lake is a necessary part of the Jordanelle-Provo River 1$ & I System since the water "saved" by evaporation permits water on the Provo River to be utilized for irrigation around the Jordanelle Reservoir. While 8,000 a f of water is to be released into Utah Lake from the Strawberry Collection System, no actual water is released then up into the Jordanelle-Provo River System. But the "saving" of 105,000 a f of water from reducing the size of Utah Lake, by diking, is a necessary planning part of the water then reserved in the proposed Jordanelle Reservoir for both irrigation around the Jordanelle and for transport to Salt Lake County for M & I use* Physically, there is no connection between the two Systems: they are tied together in the Bonneville Unit for purposes of economic justification and for coming up with a "viable" cost/ " benefit ratio. HOWEVER, the Bureau is now preparing an EIS (draft) on the Jordanelle- Provo River M & I System and is excluding the diking of Utah Lake. This is considered to be another and separate System for purposes of EIS preparation. At a meeting in early September in Salt Lake City with Bureau of Reclamation staff people - Harold Sersland and Debra Linke - their defense of this procedure was that the Sierra Club/NRDC versus Stamm suit of 197^ directed that the remaining systems in the Bonneville Unit have such EIS preparations made. The Bonneville Unit EIS was considered essentially a statement on the Straw­berry Collection System. ((1) Starvation Collection System, (2) Stran'berry Collection System, (30 Diamond Fork Power System, (4) Irrigation and Drainage System, (5) Municipal and Industrial Water System, (6) Bureau of Indian Affairs Activity.)