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Show 6. knowing about and anticipating CUP water development impending on the Uintas as the key watershed area in the State, there has been no systematic and adequate quantification of instream flow requirements on all Uinta Range streams for purposes of protecting the total ecosysteas; and why there has been no successful mitigation of some kind and satisfactory methods of determining the basis for mitigation for lost stream resources on the Uintas; and how, after a long and bitter fight on the part of conservationists to have the Stateline Dam on the North Slopes E. Fork Smiths Fork River moved to a northern site in order to protect an oustanding wetland riverine fly fishing area at China Meadows, this past summer this area is more or less destroyed by road widening, destruction of the picturesque wooden bridge, and the installation at the last minute of a large parking area to disguise the mess left from allowing the Bureau of Reclamation use of this road in this area to carry rip-rap to the dam which was moved north in the first place to preserve the area.,Even the Forest Service lower echelon staffs were sick at this developments I would like to be informed as to whether, in fact, the Forest Service does see that land and water resources which belong-to the public, are interrelated, and are an integral part of the Multiple Use Resource concept, and does plan to apply every possible, available law and regulation existing today to defend and advocate for these most important ecosystems - the Uinta Range streams. Under the Carter Administration policy and orders and directives, the separation, .st*//, of responsibility by each Agency in the management and protection and preservation of public resources Is intolerable. There is no question in the minds of many of us, that, had the Forest Service and the Secretary of Agriculture taken a far stronger position in the past in defending and fighting for the stream resources for which it is responsible in Utah, that this long drawn out effort on the part of a few die-hards, both in and out of the agencies, would have been resolved before this time., These resources do not belong to Utah*; they belong to the nation. Their destruction must not take place because Utah isn't willing to move up into the 20th Century in water management. It is unfair to present to the public a Land Management Plan for very valuable public resources, based on an assumption of the development of a water project having overriding accumulating impacts, when available obligations for protecting these resources have not been understood or exercised by the Agency responsible to the public for their management. I look forward to a reply to this communication and consider it a response to be included in the High Uintas Land Management Plan and Draft EISo Two points: I realize that the Land Management" Plan may have been underway prior to the Water Policy, Executive Orders, and Administrative Directives. Response to this could have been an addendum in the Plan. , Former Interior Secretary Rogers Morton stated •* ©nit* "Hit vsoJr&t |
