| OCR Text |
Show /ifC Board of County Commissioners of Salt Lake County April 3, 1978 Page eleven consumption. In Salt Lake City, for instance, treatment and transmission facilities must be designed with the knowledge that peak daily demands may be as much as three times the average daily rate, and peak hourly rates may approach ten times the average daily rate of consumption. A spectrum of approaches may be used to accomodate these demands. On one end of this spectrum, the purely physical approach, there is little emphasis on water management and nearly total dependence on structural solutions. Unfortunately, the structural solution involves expenditures of hundreds of millions of tax and water rate dollars. The other end of the spectrum emphasizes conservation, self discipline and management of the water resource. This approach involves costs in administration and regulation expenses. I believe the current approach being taken by water managers needlessly emphasizes the physical solution to meeting increasing demands. Consequently, needless expenditures of tax dollars are required at a time when tax dollars could be spent more efficiently for other pressing demands. My proposals would move us more toward the management end of the spectrum. The result would be fewer capital expenditures, greater public involvement, and more efficient utilization of our water resources. In summary, projection of unbounded new demands for water should not be the basis for the blind allocation of hundreds of millions of tax dollars. The increased demands for water which result from an expanding population are interrelated with other factors, e.g., urban density and agricultural requirements, which will have significant impacts on the total water requirements of Salt Lake County. Considering all of these factors together, by the year 2000 we will need as little as 25,000 additional acre feet of high quality water or perhaps as much as 75,000 acre feet. At the County's ultimate holding capacity, these figures might be increased by a factor of four. At the same time the demands of irrigation will eventually fall by between 100,000 and 300,000 acre feet per year. Industrial growth patterns will require additional water. As much as 15,000 acre feet may be needed by the year 2000 and 60,000 acre feet at the County's ultimate holding capacity. In total, with municipal and industrial demands expected to grow, and agricultural requirements expected to decrease, the net demands of Salt Lake County should show little change in the tuture. The main problem of the future will be the changing requirements in water quality as land is shifted from agricultural#to urban uses. Possible solutions to this problem are the topic of che next section of this report. |
