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Show Answers to Questions Introduction An example of my most recent organizational effort is included in the letter written to associates and members of a citizen group I helped form in Utah last July - Citizens for a Responsible CUP (Central Utah Project).*' Until I formed, with Trout Unlimited and member clubs of the Federation of Fly Fishermen in Utah, this CRCUP coalition group, there had been no orga- . nized opposition developed in the State to one of the most complex and environmentally disastrous water development projects in the country. The CUP is planned to utilize all new, high quality water from the magnificent streams flowing off the South Slopes of the Uinta Range in northeast Utah for the sole purpose of Utah's industrial, municipal and farm development in the Bonneville Basin (includes the Salt Lake Basin) in the western part of the State. It is a "Rube Goldberg" plan comprised of dams, mountain tunnels, open canals, aqueducts, and reservoir recreation developments, diking off two valuable marshes on Utah Lake to save water by evaporation which will be used for irrigation in exchange for transporting water from the Provo River on the west slopes of the Uinta Range. Its development involves the dewatering and/or total destruction of oufrfanding wild mountain trout streams along the entire south face of the Uinta Range as well as destruction and accumulating impacts on wildlife habitat associated with riparian ecosystems and wild National Forest lands. Flatwater reservoir fishing ultimately will replace stream fly fishing opportunities and the loss of some 319 miles of irreplaceable trout streams. The CUP was conceived when the demography in Utah was concentrated in this Basin and it ignores the impending energy/ mineral development and industrialization of northeast Utah, the water needs of the Ute Indians there, and the outstanding wildlife habitat and recreation resources there having national significance. The Ute Indians were pursuaded to "give up" 61,000 acre feet of their water from the South Slopes streams until the year 2,005 so that it could be transported, via. mountain tunnel, over to the Bonneville Basin. The Department of Interior is legally vulnerable for not quantifying Indian water needs as 1 agreed'to by Secretary Morton in 1973, and in cooperating with the Bureau of Reclamation and the State of Utah in this "Deferral Agreement". Under the Forest ,-Service Roadless Area Review II, carried out this past year, Utah citizens developed a proposal and boundary and justification for a 659,000 acre High Uintas Wilderness on the Uinta Range. These South Slopes streams and proposed reservoir developments abut the proposed wilderness and will affect the wild qualities still existing there. • * - * The CUP is economically indefensible, has an actual cost/ benefit ratio of $1 spent for .32 benefit - not the 1:1 ratio Bureau calculations show, which is required for authorization of projects by Congress. Utah is a Theocracy, and CUP development has been promoted in the best interests of utilizing public resources for the benefit of Utah's growing families and needed jobs for these. The Northern Utah media was silenced in the 1960's against discussing cost or environmental issues related to the CUP development; the State Fish & Game was silenced and hamstrung * Hot- t>**f*A^L ^ r ^ ^ L ^ . u 4 . |
