Unmitigated Growth in Park City

 

This is an Ai article I created in less than 5 minutes.  It is not telling us anything that we don’t already know.  But it is prescient in cutting to the chase through all the noise.  It is alarming in how good it is and how it ends with Tom Clyde's mantra of regional cooperation.  Not surprising since it uses the Park Record and the Wall Street Journal as  it's sources.  It is an example of Ai ability and our inability to recognize and prioritize problems and basic solutions.  It is not rocket science, well maybe a little bit. 

The point is that when we cut through all the personalities and politics, private interest and preconceived bias, we can usually agree what needs to be done and how to do it.  We just need a computer to tell us sometimes, with its apparent veracity and infallibility.  But we need people to enact and enable these solutions, who can cut thru the nuance and the quantum connections of everything.  In the end it’s all about the people.

 

Boom, Burden, and the Choices Ahead

Park City’s transformation from a quiet silver‑mining town into one of America’s most in‑demand mountain destinations is a textbook example of rapid, tourism‑driven growth. The city now hosts world‑class ski resorts, the Sundance Film Festival, luxury real‑estate development, and millions of annual visitors — all of which have brought wealth and jobs but also profound social, economic, and environmental stresses.

What growth looks like: numbers that matter

- Park City’s housing stock is heavily weighted toward seasonal and second‑home use: recent local reporting cites roughly 8,585 total housing units in the city, with only about a third occupied as primary residences and a large majority classified as seasonal or vacant. This skew toward non‑primary homes concentrates ownership and reduces the supply available to the workforce

 

- Visitor volumes and resort demand have surged. Conservative counts reported by local and national outlets put annual visitors in the millions; resort skier visits across Park City Mountain, Deer Valley, and nearby facilities reached record levels in recent seasons. Those tourism flows underpin the local economy while driving demand for short‑term lodging and real estate.

- Home prices have escalated into the luxury bracket. Reporting shows dramatic price growth in recent years — with median single‑family sale prices rising steeply and luxury listings reaching multi‑million‑dollar levels — pushing many local workers and middle‑income households out of the market.

- At the same time, regional population dynamics are complex: Summit County’s growth peaked in the early 2020s and showed signs of decline or stagnation in 2022–2023, even as jobs and visitor numbers remained high — a sign that housing supply and affordability are reshaping who can live and work in the area.

Drivers of unmitigated growth

- Tourism and festivals: Reputational assets like Deer Valley, Park City Mountain, and Sundance create a persistent demand for overnight stays and luxury hospitality, which rewards owners of second homes and short‑term rental operators.

- Second‑home buyers and investors: High‑net‑worth purchasers seeking vacation homes or investment properties have bid up prices, making year‑round residency unaffordable for many residents and converting housing into seasonal inventory.
- Short‑term rentals: Platforms such as Airbnb and VRBO have enabled owners to monetize units more lucratively as nightly rentals than as long‑term housing, reducing rental availability for workers. Local reporting and surveys increasingly link short‑term rentals to rent inflation and vacancy patterns.

- Regional spillover and amenity migration: As Park City and its resorts have become more expensive, development pressure has moved into neighboring towns (Heber, Midway, Kamas), driving growth across the mountain corridor and creating new infrastructure and traffic burdens.

Consequences: social, economic, and environmental

- Workforce displacement and service‑labor shortages: Businesses report difficulty recruiting and retaining employees because affordable long‑term housing is scarce; many workers commute from outside the city, lengthening traffic and eroding community cohesion.

- Housing scarcity and affordability erosion: Deed‑restricted affordable units remain a fraction of total housing. Park City and Summit County have set targets (for example, the city’s goal to add roughly 800 deed‑restricted workforce units by mid‑decade), but current production lags need.

- Infrastructure and traffic stress: Seasonal spikes in population generate congestion on mountain roads and strain transit systems, while regional growth increases daily commuter traffic into Park City.

- Environmental pressures: More development and more visitors mean greater water demand, higher wildfire risk in the wildland‑urban interface, and impacts to wildlife corridors and mountain ecosystems unless growth is carefully sited and governed.

- Community character and equity: The increase in luxury development and the prevalence of non‑resident ownership shifts local politics, real‑estate markets, and the sense of an affordable, year‑round mountain community.

Policy responses and their limits

Local governments and nonprofits have pursued a mix of strategies:

- Deed‑restricted housing programs and production targets (the city’s 800‑unit goal is the best‑known benchmark).

- Regulatory approaches to short‑term rentals and incentives for long‑term occupancy (though state rules and market forces limit how far municipalities can go).

- Regional planning and infrastructure investments intended to manage traffic and direct growth to appropriate nodes (e.g., Kimball Junction).

However, several constraints blunt these efforts: limited developable land in the mountain terrain, high construction and labor costs, the profitability of short‑term rentals versus long‑term leases, and political resistance to density in some neighborhoods. The result is a managed but still rapid expansion that often falls short of protecting affordability, the environment, and a year‑round community fabric.

What mitigation would actually require

- Scale affordable housing production well beyond current targets, including public investment, land banking, and stronger inclusionary zoning tied to major resort and commercial approvals.

- Rework rules and enforcement around short‑term rentals so that a fair share of housing remains for long‑term residents (while balancing visitor economy needs).

- Encourage year‑round economic diversification and living‑wage employment tied to housing commitments from large employers (resorts, hospitality groups, large developers).

- Invest in regional transit and road improvements coordinated across Summit and Wasatch counties to reduce commuter dependency and congestion.

- Protect environmental assets through tight land‑use controls in sensitive areas, conservation easements, and water/wildfire resiliency planning.

- Pursue regional cooperation: growth pressures.

Quantum Geek Leap

No, this is not another unsolicited harangue on water or waste, traffic or development, growth or greed, but a refreshing new version of ‘Better Living Thru Chemistry’.  Artificial Intelligence (Ai) is the latest rage, but Quantum Mechanics has been around for more than 100 years.  Ever since Heisenberg postulated with his matrix, and the wave-particle nature of light, that you can’t know position or probability at the same time, we found out that the act of observation actually changes everything. Einstein famously countered with his thought that God does not play dice with the universe.  He was relatively wrong.  This was another great breakthrough in how we see the Universe.  Energy and very little matter are not continuous but occurred in interval bursts called ‘quanta’.  Hence the name.  Electrons jump from different, discrete, orbital clouds, giving off signature radiation of both particles and waves that were not predictable or observable.

We live our lives in personal quantum intervals, performing in bursts and resting when tired.  We rest the uphill ski and leg as we shred, walk, run or cycle.  Sisters and sorority girls cycle at the same time.  We appreciate the pause in music and the negative space in art.   Rivers run in alternating rapid-pool sequences and waves in the ocean come in on 8-13 second intervals.  Water morphs differently when observed.

Quantum extrapolations predicted alternative universes with folds in the fabric of the space-time continuum and begged for new mathematics beyond Newtonian Calculus to solve for the practical results we desperately wanted.  And so we applied it to lasers, transistors and quantum computers.  How cool is that.  

Quantum computers are not binary but use quantum particles called qubits and photons to solve for an infinite range of solutions almost instantaneously.  This may be a great assistance to Ai and Crypto Mining in sensing new phenomena and performing critical matrix operations for better communication and security.  The photons involved, that carry the electromagnetic force enabling all chemistry and biology, use fiber optics rather than copper wire to transmit, uninterrupted, faster than the speed of light, without the heat byproduct that requires so much energy and cooling water.  Even our old fiber-optic internet network can be repurposed to create a future quantum network.  Once again for every problem we create, we find a solution in another dimension and direction.  Necessity is the mother. 

Not only that, but the instantaneous entanglement or influence at great distance, implies a holistic aspect of the universe where all things are connected non-locally and influence each other.  This gives new meaning to John Muir's theory that all things in nature are ‘inextricably hitched’.  This challenges the deterministic, isolationist and reductionist view that we are independent entities and even the religious view that we have independent consciousness and free will.  Our passive self-awareness and subjective experiences are not from our own individual brains but are a part of the universal consciousness that we actively co-create.  We are all one consciousness in the universe, and our actions and observations influence and are influenced by everything else, instantly across great distance.  

This gets beyond the deterministic, predictable, touchy-feely physics and math we are all used to and accept.  It merges mind and matter, cosmos and consciousness.  We live life magically connected to each other where there is a collective-consciousness and there are no coincidences.  We marvel at our interconnected synchronicity and serendipitous meetings with people we have just been thinking about, or find better words and thoughts than the words and thoughts we have been blindly searching for. This to me is a quantum leap in our human development, much like fire, agriculture, the wheel, the a-bomb, the industrial revolution, the information age, the internet, cell phones, Ai, Crypto, shaped skis and suspension e-bikes.  

We also wonder at the similarities of the geometry of the atom and the universe, though the universe is deterministic and Newtonian predictable, while the atom is Heisenberg random and probabilistic.  Are we just an atom on a hair, on a mite, on a dog (god), in a world, in a solar system, galaxy and universe just like our own.  There is so much to know and so much to learn that we should keep our minds open to these universal theories that magically connect physics and math, Karma and luck, Deja Vu and premonitions, accidence and coincidences, philosophy and metaphysics, ghosts and spirits, religion and God.   Amen.

Nostalgic Beauty

I had a cabin in the Catskills one autumn weekend.  The sun was low, and the leaves were brilliant but there was that touch of bittersweet melancholy in the air that comes with autumn.  I met a young woman named Natalie, serving beer at a Halloween festival, who was nostalgically beautiful.  She was cute as a Pumpkin, so I had to tell her so.  I am getting into that habit lately of trying to be spontaneously and positively honest without being creepy.  It’s a fine line and once you cross it there is no going back.  What else do I have to lose at this age.  She had long auburn hair with sparkly green eyes, freckles galore, a slim but sturdy carriage and she looked at me skeptically a fist.  But she ultimately took it well and thanked me graciously for the compliment, chatting me up for a short while.  Sometimes strangers can be more honest and interesting, open and receptive, for a while at least.  For a minute, I was not irrelevant or invisible.

She told me she was a student at Oneonta and was headed back to school soon with her boyfriend after Fall Break.  I shared ‘that was very cool because I had an Annie Hall type friend there, many years ago, almost as cute as her'.  We met on an Olmstead bridge in Central Park and went to a concert at the Woolman skating rink.  We went back to our respective schools, at the end of summer, with a spark in our eyes and a pain in our hearts that faded with every mile and every day.   Absence makes the heart grow fonder, of somebody else.     

But I hitch-hiked from South Bend to New York over several days to see her, for fall break.  We went to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown one afternoon and played in the leaves while listening to Billy Joel and Rita Coolidge, drinking cheap beer.  We slept in a corn field under a borrowed blanket and were in love with being in love. I emphatically did not want to go back to school, and I almost didn’t. 

'Whatever happened to her' ?

‘It didn’t work out but I still see her every ten years or so and would see her again, real soon.  The timing was not right.  ‘When’ you meet people counts as much as how, what, where or why, or perhaps our time was just up'. 

'Why' ?

'Maybe we knew it and split before it got bad and there was no going back'. When to let go, without actually giving up, is hard to know.'

'Was it you or her' ?

'We both didn't think we were good enough for each other.  You are never as good or as bad as you think you are.'

'Do you miss that gal who got away' ?

‘Some people are destined to be with you for a minute, or an hour, a day, week, month, year or lifetime.  The past is done, the future will take care of itself, so just live in the present.'

It is like some people are better looking further away than up close – the Monet affect.  Some other people have their space-time limit and then move on – the Heisenberg affect.  I have had some dear friends and lovers for a weekend, a season, a semester and a decade and Heisenberg didn’t make me love them any more or less or any longer.  There are also potential people that I missed, for some reason, that had a zero-relationship-lifespan with me or even negative because of what should of or could of happened.  For that I am deeply sorry.  You only regret the people you haven’t known. 

‘I will see my old friend next week and wondered if she will still be fun and funny, cute and cuddly.

'Good luck with that’, 

'Beauty and strength are an accident of youth and what matters is the personality, character and soul, that stay with us'.  

'Make you own bliss, when you find what its is, one tiny step at a time'.

'You too, thanks'.

'Good talking'.

She nodded and smiled, losing interest as she walked away dismissively, yet so attractively.  Our time was up. 

 

Cormac McCarthy

Passenger and Stella Maris

Most great writers approach their golden years with such skill, discipline and so much to say that they keep writing, just for fun of it, to tell great stories or to just show off.  Steinbeck did.  Falkner did, Harrison did.  Earnest Hemingway cold not and it drove him to suicide.    After critical success, and the confidence it can bring, these writers unleash their formidable talents and just let it fly.  The book or the story is just the structural vehicle for the prose and the wisdom they have to share.  The privilege of their success is to be able to spin yarns of style and grace, unfettered by the pressure to produce and succeed. 

Cormac McCarthy wrote such epic early stories as Blood Meridian, The Road, No Country for Old Men, and the All the Pretty Horses trilogy.  His spare and poetic prose, without much punctuation, can make a story out of nothing, but when he has a story to tell, watch out.  You will want to keep reading for the zingers on every page and paragraph.  Hell, every death dealing sentence he writes is a zinger, reminiscent of early Hemingway and latter Falkner.  As Lucas Opgenorth writes:

Until Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy wrote in relative obscurity. With the novel’s publication, he came to be known as a leading figure in American fiction, with his stature still continuing to grow. McCarthy’s novels tend to be dark, dealing with themes of death and violence, but Blood Meridian, according to critic Harold Bloom, is an achievement unlike anything that he wrote before or after. Opacity and a resistance to interpretation dominate the novel, which tells a fictionalized account of a gang of scalpers in the American Southwest around the middle of the nineteenth century the early stages of America’s westward expansion. McCarthy’s writing is as descriptive of the beauty and power of the novel’s landscape as it is of the frequent and grotesque violence enacted by and upon the novel’s characters. The result is a literary portrait of the insignificance of man in the face of nature, the passage of time, and the ungovernable force of violence.

Cormac often makes his classic literature seem subtle and sublime. The reading is almost impressionistic, train of thought and better done in morning light since it is too dense and dark to read at night.  The story is not that important, and it doesn’t matter what he writes, it is how he writes it and what he says on, and in-between, every line. 

Cormac did some of his best writing in his last two books Passenger and Stella Maris, that were released within six weeks of each other in 2022 and before his death in 2023.  They follow Bobby and Alicia Western, two siblings whose father helped develop the atomic bomb, for better or worse.  Bobby is the tortured loner in Passenger, running from generational guilt and lovers loss  Alicia is the tormented but brilliant little sister staying voluntarily at the Stella Maris mental institution.  She is being interviewed by her psychiatrist and her friendly hallucinations for the entire second book, in a format that seems gimmicky at first, but genuine in the end. 

McCarthy was such a big book collector and hobby mathematician and physicist, mechanic and biologist, that his characters are brilliant and troubled, intense and thoughtful.  Characters talk inquisitively about Quantum Quarks, that are all energy but no mass, figuring it out as they go along, and as Cormac writes it. He expounds knowingly on the math and physics of the new science of Hawking and Heisenberg, Feynman and Einstein with the practicality of Fermi and Oppenheimer.

The dialogue is terse and tense, without the parenthetical he-said she-said interruptions of punctuation and qualifiers.  The conversation is snappy and smart, taut and true, almost the way people wish they could really talk.  But the discourse, unrestrained by punctuation, is so easy to read that we assume these are all fast-paced conversations without the natural pauses for thinking and emoting.  Segments on science interconnect effortlessly with nostalgic sections with grandma and grandpa, flirtatious scenes with a waitress and transsexuals, that merge the initial scientific dissertation with the real-people story. 

We write what we know, and everything is at least subconsciously autobiographical, so what else could Cormac write.  These siblings share a guilt-ridden platonic love. Their care for each other unsuccessfully nurtures beautiful Alicia through her hallucinations and suicide attempts.  The hallucinations and fictional caricatures are a little tiresome but the structural parts of these books is strong enough to hold them up.   The stories are bigger than life and almost believable but the story telling is top shelf, out of this world and neatly consistent with Cormac’s professional voice and artistic touch.  A philosopher recommended the first book to me, a psychologist recommended the second.  I will pass them on to my math, physics, psychology and writer friends.  There is something for everyone.  In the end, it is not what you say but how you say it.

Reboot

Winter is here finally and I am prepared.  I wear my hair long as a natural neck-gator and my winter beard is thick for my facial-igloo on powder days.  I have started wearing T-shirts these days as the first step of winter layering, allowing me to acclimate and assimilate outside and turn the heat down a notch inside and sleep cool.  I bought a new pair of winter slip on snow-loafers and my feet have grown a full size since the last new ones, ten years ago.  I am not 15 anymore but my feet, nose and ears keep growing, along with my belly.  My ski boots have amazingly kept pace, getting stretched and packed down from years of sloshing. 

I even bought a new pair of skis since it has been 10 years since I found the last ones in the wrapper for $100.  This time it cost $200 but I blame that on inflation and, of course, Joe Biden.  I liked the green Zebra graphics, camber, shape and flex as much as the price.  I like them long for cruising or pow and thin under foot so I can step on them and turn.  When I brought them home I found out they were good, popular all mountain skis and ‘playful’.  Like me.  I am frugal but not stupid, safety is my priority, so I bought the best and lightest 400-gram, purple Euro AT bindings for $900 dollars.  They said it was the tariffs, so I blame The Donald. 

But it’s been more than a few long years for me with minimal skiing.  First there was Covid for a few years, then we went south for a few winters.  Then my head, heart, eyes, shoulders and lungs went south on me for a few years.  Then it became so corporate and crowded that all I would do is go up there and yell at people.  It takes me 5 minutes to drive to the resort and if it takes 7, I am furious. Perhaps it was me and I needed some time off to recoup, recharge and reinvent.  It wasn’t so bad since I found other cool things to do.  I wrapped up my career as a hydrologist with a few legacy projects and now I want to be a writer, when I grow up.  But skiing is what I love and have dedicated my life too.  Its time for a second chance.

I missed skiing.  That first run of the year when you remember how fun it really is to go fast outside, on the hills, in the woods, in the cold sun.  The feel of bottomless powder blowing over your head and making I a three-dimensional sport and not just a frictionless plane.  The joy of meeting friends on the mountain on a Sunday morning for group shredding, laughing and lunch.  Coffee breaks in the morning with the boys on a Tuesday when no one is around.  Skiing backwards with kids and getting them to appreciate this carefree and social, athletic and natural endeavor and lifestyle.  Skiing in storms so wicked it tears at your face and vision, or snow falling so soft and silent that you can’t hear yourself think, or days so cold that trees crack and your spit freezes before it hits the ground.  The last run of the year on corn, so soft it borders on mashed potatoes, in tee shirts, with lathered sunscreen and tattered brimmed hats.

So, with all the new lifts and gondolas there is the new me.  No longer rising before first light and charging up early after all my research and chores, I will sleep until I wake and saunter up at ten o twelve.  Traffic will be defeated, and parking will re-open with people leaving already.  It wont be first shots or face shots or frozen corduroy, but it will be calm, kinder and gentler like it used to be.  The sun will be up, the air will be warmer, the masses already in the back bowls, leaving the rest of the mountain to me and mine.  After a few fast fresh and athletic runs, I can stop for coffee, a beer or lunch and schmooze with some friends or work the room.  Then a few social runs after lunch before the light fades and the lack of will, effort and ability prevail.  Then home before the crush for a dog walk, a nap in my long-johns and a cocktail before dinner.  This is my quest, this is my test, no matter how small, no matter how tall.  Be like the Marines: adapt, adjust, improvise, overcome and show resilience and resourcefulness.  Semper Fi.  Make It so.  Let it be. I don't know, whatever, never mind.

Keep Park City cheap, cool and kind. 

O.M.G.

 

Oh. My. Gosh. My wife and I were riding above the Deer Valley East Village on the great Skyridge, Jordanelle trails the other day, and we saw the size, scope and scale of the Mayflower development.  It is not just the Extell and Deer Valley stuff but there are developments above and below the Jordanelle Parkway and housing all around that big, beautiful, empty lake that are just getting started and won’t quit anytime soon.  This is not just 7 new chairlifts and a gondola, doubling the skiing at Deer Valley, but there are no less than 8 Linden Cranes over there, raising buildings that will make the new Hyatt appear miniscule.  My wife asked, ‘where will the deer go’ and I thought, ‘on the Logo’. 

There are already 4-5 holes built for thepractice  Tiger Woods golf course that will extend to the lake and be surrounded by golf trophy homes that make Glenwild and Promontory seem puny.   This golf course is supposed to save us water, like the new resort is going to help traffic, just like the copious snowmaking water for the low, southeast facing slopes, pumped from Jordanelle will save us electricity.  Not to worry, it was 70 degrees in mid-November and any successful snowmaking was at least two weeks away in our new climate of warmth and drought.

I was initially, reluctantly optimistic, making the best of this and looking forward to skiing the additional terrain at Deer Valley.  But I think the word is out and people will come in droves to explore this new skiing with the old Deer Valley experience.  There are parking lots there but they are full of extra chairlift parts and construction materials.  The classic DV parking lot shuttle will have to loop out to Heber and Midway to gather all the new millionaire customers.  I entertained visions of the Mayflower exit backup to Quinn's Junction and the I-80 to U-40 exit ramp back up to Jeremy Ranch, making a perfect circle of gridlock in our precious valley.

But here I am again, fretting the hypotheticals when the resorts might entice us to carpool with cookies and coffee, or impose paid parking so expensive that all day users will park in Coalville, Morgan, Sandy and Bountiful for the bus trip up.  The local, satellite parking lot locations for day users start to make more sense with gondolas from Richardson’s Flat to Snow Park and Ecker Hill to 9990 to keep everyone but the residents and day workers off our roads.  This new development is all in Wasatch County, predicated originally on easy approval and 100 tax free rooms for military officers.   There must be a master plan and intense coordination and communication between all the regulating entities and stakeholders, as Tom Clyde continually espouses.   Otherwise, this is just insanity.I fear that this is just another pivot point for the Park City area, like the opening of PC, DV, 2002 Olympics or the Vail buyout, one that will put us over the top and off the charts in attraction and popularity.  Couple this timing with the 2034 Olympic Feaver and we have an inflection on our development curve that looks more like a lightning bolt than a roller coaster.  We always said we didn’t want to become another Aspen but now we are becoming another Vail.  We are building another freeway ski resort and it is not Vail that is doing it.  It is the kinder and gentler DV.  It is us. 

I don’t pretend that I have all, or any, of the answers but we need to get ahead of this before it is too late.  The time for action is yesterday, the time for study and debate is long past.  We know what is happening and we know many of the solutions, low hanging fruit and easy fixes.  This has happened here and in other places before and we don’t need to reinvent the wheel to solve these issues.  Our enemy is delay, inaction or analysis paralysis.  Let’s do something, right or wrong.  We must discover, iteratively, erroneously and decorously, what works for us.  OMG, let’s do it now, before it is too late.

Bluff Utah, it’s not Moab.

             In attempt to do something ‘different’ in the middle of November, we went south to Bluff.  We are somewhat limited with ‘different’ in Utah, with only Moab and St George on the busy end, Torrey and Kanab in the obscure middle and Cisco and Grafton on the quiet side.  With only 200 people in Bluff, half of them Navajo, no place to eat or drink mid-week and a main street so empty that you could shoot a man, and no one would see, it is the essence of catatonic chill. 

            After a round of golf with our dog in Price on the way down, and a harried pit stop in metropolitan Moab we were happy to leave the maddening throngs and huddled masses behind.  We made the mistake of going thru Provo City and Utah County where they tease you with reverse traffic light timing for more stopping and imitation freeway entrances to entice you behind the most trucks possible for the slog up Soldier Summit.  Indian Canyon was off limits and has been under construction for the past five decades to build two short passing lanes for the infinite oil trucks lining up at 5 mph over the 15% grade.  

We arrived in Bluff under a spectacular purple setting sun and obscured rising Beaver Moon and quickly found our cabin since there was only one choice on Main Street.  The nights are 16 hours long this time of year and we couldn’t camp, read or play rummy for that long in our van so we treated ourselves to the lap of luxury in a comfortably complete pine box cabin with coffee, heat and a TV.  We are being kind to ourselves lately since our ‘Wealth Manager’ told us to spend more money, but we are cautious because we are Park City rich, with nothing but house, and you can’t eat equity.  

There are two resort hotels, one in East Bluff and one in West Bluff, and like America there was little middle class in between.  The parenthetical Pueblo type resorts on either end of town wouldn’t take dogs, and we don’t go anywhere without Eva, so we settled for something simple but new, compact and clean.  Centrally located across the street from the LDS Fort Bluff theme park and next to the river bike path entrance we were Downtown-Charlie Brown.

Surrounded by BLM land, Grand Staircase, Valley of the Gods, Monument Valley and Bears Ears National Monuments, there are purportedly over 100,000 Native American ruins and rock art installations in this area including Grand Gulch and the San Juan River, which was the Park Avenue for the Ancient Ones.  With the southern end of the prosaically named Coxcomb dominating the landscape from Kanab to Lake Powell, there is a Native site of some sort up every canyon which lends itself to endless bike and hike adventures.  This feature may be an extension of the Cockscomb in Arizona because these formations sometimes dip underground and pop up in the strangest of places, with the strangest of names, like Mollie’s Nipple, Brigham’s Unit or Cave 7. 

The point is that there is infinite geography to explore down there and a lifetime to do it.  In one canyon, there was an extravagant royal apartment complex perfectly intact in the middle of a 500 foot shear wall and a Michelangelo, museum quality petroglyph of Wilt Chamberlin, the Alta insignia and an upside-down chairlift going backwards, peppered by a few token bullet holes.   The next canyon had several ground level rooms and granaries for the secure or lazy middle-class serfs and a couple of amateur handprints, spirals and chickens on the wall.  None of these are located on any map or indicated with any BLM signs, since they are doing more with less these days and want to protect these sights from rampant tourism and unethical collectors.

Some nice Nomad campers, who live in the canyons but move every 14 days, gave us the lay of the land and some good guidance that became confused or forgotten immediately but pointed us in the right direction.  From there on it was easy to make it up as we went along and find cool stuff.  My wife would explore several canyons each day while I would rest and relax with the dog after one or two ruins, in the cool van or cabin, taking notes and naps or reading books and maps in the solace that I had nothing to prove.  We seldom encountered any other hikers either in the cool of the morning or low winter sun of the afternoon.  I suspect I gets as hot as Moab here but there is no need for reservations or any effort to beat the rush or high season.

Bluff does not get a lot of traffic or business, and they don’t seem to care.  With a Chamber of Commerce or marketing manager they could turn this place into another red rock Disney land of conspicuous consumption, but I get the sense that they don’t want to.  There is an attempt at a river trail from town through the sandy Bosque Cottonwoods to the river raft boat launch area, but it is only rough graded and there is a large portion that fell off into the river.  While we were there they held a Marathon from Blanding that had more volunteers than runners and more cones than competitors, but they were nice people with free bananas and 80’s music there all day. 

We were so enchanted that we stayed an extra day into the weekend and a killer Coffee house, Navajo breakfast and Pork House rib place opened mostly for the locals.  They were mostly friendly folks except for some multigenerational natives that have perfected the one-word answer that almost sounds like another question.  None-the-less we had fun playing in the country and exploring the towns funky sandstone castles and modern palaces, undeterred and undisturbed by other thrill seekers adrenaline hounds and athletic adventurists.  Go there soon, before it becomes another Moab. 

Keep Bluff kind, keep Bluff cool, don't tell your friends.

 

Groundwater Change

When you run out of surface water you stop farming and build a dam or a canal.  When you run out of groundwater you dig a deeper well and get a bigger pump.  Out of sight, out of mind.  There-in lies the problem.  Groundwater in the west, especially in the basin fill aquifers of Utah and the Great Basin, is generally on the decline.  Historically replenished by the deep snowpack high in the surrounding mountains, these aquifers are declining from over pumping beyond the sustainable yield of the natural snowmelt recharge.   As the water level in these underground sponges declines we start pumping ancient water from previous ice ages and from the ancestral Rockies 50-300 million years ago.  This is one time water that is not coming back.   This needs to change.

We complain about all the change in Park City but what if we didn’t change.  Cities and economies are like swimming sharks, if they stop swimming they die.  We don’t want to go backwards.  It is easier to balance a glass of wine on a bowling bowl than it is for a place to remain the same, stationary, or sustainable.   So, we take all the change and growth, development and upgrades, as we morph into something new, and hopefully better. Unfortunately, that takes water.  Even though we have money and pump half of our water over Promontory, from the Weber river, we are still mining local groundwater that was snow 500 years ago on the Wasatch and 16,000 years ago on the Uintas.  We are deficit spending, and we just can’t print more water like we do money and keep the change.

The more than 1000 miles of mine tunnels under our town, longer than the NYC subway system, acts as a huge underdrain, further lowering the historical ground water levels.  With the modern change from mining and agricultural water use to municipal use by people, the changing demand has warranted a new 100 million dollar mine-water treatment plant to augment the exaction of our regional groundwater by wells. Municipal wells in the Park City area therefore withdraw water from consolidated rocks, such as the fractured and faulted, Keetley volcanics, Weber quartzite, Park City limestone and Navajo/Nugget sandstone.  These rock formations are locally broken into separate block formations that can inhibit or isolate water flow and withdrawal, which can make finding reliable water difficult.  Park City’s ground water is geologically compartmentalized and better on the east side, but recharge is not meeting demand for a sustainable yield.  Because of the low capacity for bedrock ground water storage, the hydrological system is very dependent on the amount of annual precipitation and is therefore sensitive to prolonged drought and climate change.  Less than normal precipitation, or overuse, can result in substantial groundwater level decline, both in the bedrock (affecting municipal wells), and in the basin fill (affecting stream flow), producing anecdotal and visible change. 

The Colorado River and the Great Salt Lake are suffering likewise, partially because of our inability to limit groundwater usage in these basins that have a conjugate effect on surface water deliveries.  Both The Lake and The River are shrinking from overuse of surface and ground water.  Many agricultural water users in Utah have Supplemental Water Rights that allow them to take surface or groundwater, whichever is more prevalent or convenient.  The State of Utah has regulated surface water use since 1903 and groundwater use since 1935, but both have been systematically overallocated on paper, relying on priority dates rather than regulatory restraint.  The Sate Engineer tried to rescue the worst over-pumped and overallocated groundwater basins in Utah, back to sustainability, at the turn of this century but the legislature, in their infinite wisdom, insisted that we give water users 100 years to comply with reductions.  California has only been regulating groundwater since it got scarce 10 years ago, but they give their water users a similar ridiculous time frame to achieve compliance and sustainability.  In Texas, the biggest pump wins and they won’t change.  They are not thinking of the future and the children, land subsidence or aquifer health, it is just mindless “Drill Baby Drill.”

Over pumping can cause the collapse of the aquifer and subsidence of surrounding surface lands but the practice is relatively new and is not confined locally.  Since the development of submersible well pumps for oil in the 1920’s and perfection of their application for water in the 1960’s these aquifer wells, and their surface telltale crop circles, have proliferated across the western United States.  The Ogallala aquifer is 175,000 square miles and 500 feet thick and extends from South Dakota to New Mexico and from Texas to Wyoming.  It is being depleted 2-3 times as fast as it is recharging and could be gone by 2100.  By then agriculture in the Great Plains could be radically changed with the old, imported cattle that require imported feed and water, replaced by the historical residents, the American Buffalo, Bison-Bison.  These Bison are the only living creature uniquely suited to live in that harsh climate, that spans 150 degrees F, and the limited surface water vegetation complex.  That might be a welcomed change.

We cannot continue this selfish mining of historical, ancient groundwater. which can be a metaphor for how we treat all of our Natural Resources, using them up until they are gone.  To leave it up to the private sector, the profit motive, or human nature does not work in maintaining a sustainable yield and public welfare.  Locally we need to empower the State Engineer to step in and regulate this public resource for the common good.  She (Tereasa Wilhelmsen, PE) is doing her job, for she would be blamed if we run out of water, but her hands are tied by the shortsighted capitalistic, male, Mormon, developer dominated legislature.  This is not socialism, it is the law, written to promote fair, sustainable growth and wise, conservative use for the public benefit.  What is out of sight cannot be out of mind.  Nationally and globally, we need to see our shortsighted abuse of water and our natural resources and change our ways.  Think globally, conserve locally.  

Word Power Personified.

 Melancholy is the word that comes to mind. Bittersweet.  I felt melancholic the day after our graduation, and melancholic the day after our reunion. Glad, both days, to have spent so much time together, sad that it was over, and that life would move on with or without these people. Or perhaps it was just another hangover. 

What started on a lonely windswept corner of Jones Beach, with whales breaching in the background, and ended on an empty Jericho Turnpike corner, waiting for an Uber under a halogen streetlight, our reunion was nothing short of transplended, uplifting and transmogrifying. From Brother Tom, Chis, Carla and John Westerman’s opening words of wisdoms to Fearsome Mike Fees ‘Fear Not” Bible statistics, correctly prophesied only by John Fucillo's Jeopardy juxtaposition, with a little fence jumping in between, the tone and the vibe were set.  Then from Jim Rice's succinct and sincere prayer at Meribah to Doctor Gerry's wise decision not to sing, the days and nights were filled with nostalgia and recognition, revisionist history and amnesic reconstruction. Stories at Meribah reflected courage and bacchanalia, physically impaired and snow infringed driving, poor choices, capers and carrying on. While the names have remained the same, the faces have changed from the years of yearning, months of moderation, weeks of wisdom, days of diligence, hours of honor, minutes of mediocrity, and seconds of sobriety.

Reunion MVP Steve Schneider surprised us all with his health, presence and a bucket list as long as both arms. Bill Joyce was still humble, courageous and curious, while Fitz is still hungry and ambulatory. Greg O'Keefe is still the pleasure machine with his sweet grammar school wife, Janet and Mike Corsello is the candy man that can still take you to Willy Wonkas and back.  Jimmy Finn was the quiet flux-capacitor genius, while Kleczk’s was still the class clown, effortlessly weaving stories, extemporaneously, like George Carlin or Johnny Carson. Herc, for once, had Uni in his shadow and Brian Rogan was unrecognizable to himself, except for his infectious laugh and kind blue eyes.  Quiet Colin Carroll was the clear MIP with harrowing stories of submarines and nuking, road trips and puking. Reardon supplied the outline of our times while Sampson offered superior storyteller.  Special guests Louise and Maryanne boiled our collective testosterone once more, which was quickly quelled by our beautiful and beatific wives who, once again, endured our old stories of false bravado and true grit.

In the end, it was an experience of brotherhood and fraternity, returning us to the place and people who made us who we are. We have all iteratively improved and excelled, through small and large decisions, shaping our personality and character through discipline and effort, courage and calamities, to build the people we are now, and form the legacy of our lives. We were all very close for a short time, a very long time ago, but the ties that bind are strong and resilient, from people and places forgiven but not forgotten. May the promise to stay friends and keep in touch be kept, with miles to go before we sleep. We will need each other now more than ever, now that we truly realize that there is strength in our unity.

 

Matt Lindon

2025 WATER YEAR – A Race to the Bottom

Well, another year has come and gone with a weird winter of early drought, three midseason rain events (up to 10,000 feet) and two premature snowmelt runoff cycles, followed by a desperate spring, a desiccated summer, and a dehydrated fall.  Ground cover and Maple/Aspen colors were surprisingly bright considering the drought, with the orange blob in The Cities Bonanza Flats standing out above all again, before I was closed for Moose mating, traffic concerns or just to let the grove rest. 

We received only 13.81 inches of precipitation or 61 percent of average, at the NWS Snyderville gage in my backyard, with a whopping 70 percent of our precipitation coming as snow.  With only one month above average, February, the water year started off slowly and then petered out altogether.  This was the driest year, along with 2020, in 85 years, since the dirty 30’s, according to the extrapolated PRISM database.  If you don’t think the climate is changing, then you don’t get out much or are not paying attention.

So, what does I look like for the great Salt Lake and the Colorado River, the two poster boys of water in the west along with the Klamath that has Native Americans and Salmon fighting with our farmers and people.   I have not seen the local usage charts they usually show on TV because water use has been elevated to embarrassing levels.  Utah’s reservoir levels are showing a drastic decline. Since June 1, the state has drawn down reservoirs at double the normal rate.

In August 2025, the Great Salt Lake is at a historically scary, low level of 4191.3 dropping nearly 2 feet this year already, towards the record-low point of a catastrophic 4188.5, reached in 2022, due to increased demand for water and a very dry summer. Another 2-foot drop is expected by the end of the calendar year.  Peak level in 1986 was 4211.5 before they started pumping it out to the west desert for evaporation.  The average level is 4202 feet.  State officials were particularly concerned about the approaching seasonal low this fall, which could further expose the lakebed, increase air quality issues from dust, harm the ecosystem, and negatively impact the brine shrimp fishing industry. A warm, dry winter is forecast, raising alarm among advocates as significant snowfall is crucial for the lake's recovery.  

In 2022 they made some progress in addressing this issue, including fasting and praying, but then we had a big winer and it was put on the back burner behind gerrymandering, abortion and gun rights.  They had talked about paying farmers not to grow but they need 8 million acre-feet (MAF) to get the lake to a reasonable level of 4198 but that proved too expensive.  They could give all Water Rights holders a 10-20% haircut for the Public Welfare, natural stream environment and recreational opportunities stipulated in the law but that would be political suicide and probably not enough water.  The Utah River Council is suing the State for ignoring Public Welfare and they have precedence in the Mono Lake lawsuit where LA had to give water back to the lake for the public good.  The new plan is to dry up the North half of the lake and drain the water to the south end to submerge the toxic dust, but the north end has all the wildlife and bird migration areas.

The Colorado River flow in 2025 is predicted to be below average, with forecasts from August 2025 indicating the most probable unregulated inflow to Lake Powell will be around 50% of the long-term average.  Early 2025 forecasts showed potential inflow of 81% normal, but dry conditions have since reduced these projections. The typical 25-50 foot, or 2-3 MAF, annual spring bump in Lake Powell level was barely 5 feet, or 1 MAF, this year at elevation 3550.  Lake elevation is predicted to drop to 3520 by next spring’s runoff, only 30 feet or a bad year above the minimum Power Pool elevation, and only 150 feet or 5 MAF, or a bad decade above Dead Pool outlet level. 

There are contractual adjustments that could be made or additional releases from upstream reservoirs like Flaming George to postpone the catastrophe, but it seems inevitable to me.  The overall trend for The River is one of decreasing inflow due to drought and rising temperatures.  Climate Change, ground water depletion and increasing demand, overallocation and disagreements between the upper and lower basin states have plagued The River for years.  Renegotiation of the Colorado River Compact of 1922 is expected next year that should address a river that has been flowing 5 MAF a year lately instead of the 17 MAF originally assumed.  The low-level outlet plumbing at Glen Canyon should be enlarged immediately to maintain some control of flows in the Grand Canyon and allow for compliance with the Colorado Compact of 2022.   All we can do about it is to pray for snow, stop growing grass and reduce fossil fuels.    It is The Tragedy of the Commons vs Game Theory when competing for limited resources.  Cooperation and community are the answers. 

Follow the Water – 4 - Utah – Incidents and Accidents, Threats and Allegations

 

The frantic cry we always hear in the water business is that there is too much ‘paper’ water out there and not enough ‘wet’ water.  That means that there are more prescribed Water Rights than there is actual water for people to use.  That is ideally rectified by the priority system of ‘first in time first in right’ where if you have a senior right you get your water and if you have a later priority date, or junior right, you are out of luck.  That theoretically takes care of drought and Climate Change or long-term drought as the deniers like to call it.  But does it really?  Utah gets about 50 million acre-feet of precipitation from the sky each year, the question is what do we wan to do with it.

When it hits the fan, it is better to be at the top of the ditch with a municipal right and a shovel than anything else.  When push comes to shove, water for people or municipal water usually takes precedence, as it should, and then comes agricultural water and finally industrial uses.  And when ground water runs out you just dig a deeper well and get a bigger pump.  Priority problem solved?  And what about all the billions of dollars the State has paid for the Central Utah Project (CUP) infrastructure to bring Colorado River water from the Uinta mountains to the Wasatch front, or for that matter, the billions they want to spend bringing water from Lake Powell to Saint George, when both those uses have a later, or junior priority date. 

Now that all the free water has been distributed for our mutual beneficial use, and water is more of a commodity to be bought and sold, how do priority dates change with the change of use and location.  Water Rights with early or senior priority dates are much more valuable because they are much less likely to be shut off in a drought.  Is that maximizing beneficial use and fair to all concerned?  Water is also supposed to be distributed by The State Engineer, Teresa Wilhelmsen PE and her Division of Water Rights, for the most beneficial use with respect to the Public Welfare, natural stream riparian environment and recreational opportunities.  That is harder to define than drought or Climate Change.

But our biggest issue now is the vanishing amount of water in the Great Salt Lake and the Colorado River.  Inflow into the lake has been shrinking since Bringham Young took his first drink and upstream use has exploded.  In the 60’s they feared the lake was declining so fast that it would all but disappear.  In the 80’s, during the last bonanza snowpacks before Climate Change kicked in, the lake grew to historical levels flooding railroads, highways, farms and fields.  The Union Pacific railroad told our Governor Norman Bangerter to get control of his lake, or they would leave.  So, Norm ordered some pumps the size of my house and pumped the lake out in the west desert to evaporate.  Problem solved?  But then Climate Change and long-term drought kicked in as snowpack runoff supply decreased, and upstream demand increased.  You can imagine what that does to the price of water. The lake shrank and toxic dust from the exposed lakebed began to blow into Salt Lake and our little Vatican City.  That is bad for Public Welfare. 

Unfortunately, keeping water in a stream or lake for fish, or aesthetics, the environment or just for the fun of it does not constitute a beneficial use so dedicating water to the lake is tricky.  The State Engineer could theoretically give every upstream Water Right holder a 10-20 percent ‘haircut’ on their water right and put that water into the lake but that would be political suicide, and Teresa wants to keep her job.  It would be hard to identify all that saved water all the way to the lake when junior Water Right holders would love to use it, even with the haircut. 

Friends of the lake are suing the state saying that it is not in the best Public Welfare to dry up the lake and create toxic dust storms.  They might have a point since the Friends of Mono Lake sued California for drying up their lake and won on the Public Welfare argument.  But what the State of Utah decided to do, in their infinite wisdom and generosity, is develop funding mechanisms to pay people for their water and let it run to the lake. They would need about 8-million-acre feet* to stabilize the lake at a good level and it started to snow again the next winter, so they have put that project on the back burner.   Tragedy narrowly averted.  Until his year when the drought returned.

The Colorado River is a different story, but the same. There is not enough water.  Or it is being used for the wrong things.  Or they don’t accurately model the conjunctive effect of the depleted groundwater on surface water flows.  The River was divided on paper among all the contiguous states when it supposedly ran 17 million acer feet a year, but then they found it only runs 13.  Recently it has been running 10 and lately only 5-million-acre feet a year.  Utah gets about 10% of whatever it flows and although we do not use all our share yet, there is already much more paper Water Rights allocated for its use, not to mention what we might owe to the Native Americans who have the first priority date of 10,000 years BC. 

The states are now fighting, suing and renegotiating their paper agreements on an ever-decreasing pool of wet water.  There is an exaggerated farmer mentality going on where they each want to use it before they lose it and put it to beneficial use before the next guy.  Things like the Lake Powell Pipeline to Saint George. That will physically make it harder for them to take it away.  So, stay tuned while the paper water, that no one can drink, catches up to the wet water, that no one can afford, for the benefit of all.  In the meantime, keep conserving, eat less meat and play less golf, grow a brown lawn and stop burning stuff. 

 

 

*An acre-foot is one acre (43,560 sqft) or approximately a football field, covered in one foot of water.  That is about 326,000 gallons or enough for 2-4 families per year, depending on the family and year.