Issues Paper, Central Utah Project

Page 84

2 3 77. n+tZ u- Ground water remains an important source of additional water despite problems which would accompany further develop­ment of it.* If ground water is not developed because it will affect artesian well pressures and existing well depth, a huge renewable reservoir is being abandoned to protect minor and adjustable taps on it. Any benefit-cost analysis of such restriction would clearly indicate their irrationality. Al­though ground-water mining need not occur, it certainly can­not be eliminated entirely from consideration. The ground­water reservoir is a resource just as is coal, oil, or copper in the ground. After full analysis of the affects of such mining and its costs, mining might be judged rational. At this point, however, renewable ground-water supplies remain ^^^dsjCA-^ yet to be tapped. The BR, citing the level of pumping during the summer of 1977, suggests that ground-water users have already reached the limits of the renewable supply established by the USGS.** This is a very misleading argument. The ^7 summer of 1977 represented the peak of one of the most severe droughts that the Wasatch Front has seen. The increased pump- tvtf ing was not, as the BR suggests, due to the historical trend -**t&AA of agricultural water are diverted but not used. If the BR projected water use of 3.2 af/a and the NASA sattelite infrared photography estimate of irrigated acreage in 1972 of 28,000 acres are used, 205,400 af are diverted but not used (p. 34). In addi­tion, 65,000 af will be freed up by 1990 (p. 40), 23.5 percent of this total is 63,550 af to 43,500 af. *See the U.S. Geological Survey Studies of the Jordan Valley. Cited on pp. 42-43 of the "208 Study," op_^ cit. **BR, "Bonneville Unit: Alternative Plans," p. 4. <^*/t*_. fa\A