Issues Paper, Central Utah Project

Page 88

Si. 26 of estimated costs at 7 percent capital costs could be as high as $31,000,000.* To suggest that the BR may be trying to build the CUP well before it is needed is not a charge made lightly. Not only does the M§I water supply and demand data suggest that this is the case, but BR past performance also warns of this possibility. The BR Weber Basin Project was built twenty-three years ago. It services the area just to the north of Salt Lake County. At the time it was built, it was projected that 50,000 af of mi water would be sold and that 150,000 af of agricultural water would be used. The project was also to protect the area in times of drought. Twenty-three years later, 30 percent of the M§I water remains to be sold to sub­contractors and one-third of the agricultural water goes unused The local part of the repayment of the federal investment can be met only because the Weber Basin Water Conservation Dis­trict can levy an ad valorem property tax to force all resi­dents to pay for the unneeded water. This, combined with urban growth and reevaluation of property values, has bailed out the project. In addition, the Weber Basin was not saved from drought by the project. In 1977, they sought and ob­tained $4,300,000 in federal emergency drought relief to move water from where the project stored it to where it could be Ibid. , p. 25, 1977 prices.