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. 

Traffic Flows Like Water

 With apologies to my old roommates and City leaders, Bruce and Candy Erickson, the roads leading to Park City are an embarrassment.  They were of the school that said ‘if you do not build       big roads, people will not drive here’.  I’m a water-guy but traffic flows like water, for politics and money.  I’m here to tell you that they all still drive here, in droves.  Winter, spring, summer and fall, morning noon and night, 224 and 248 are packed with service workers, skiers, students, commuters, tourists and us.  It is time to abandon the old idea that these byways are gardens or parkways or sidewalks or bike paths, they are roads that should move people from what generates them to what attracts them.  Roads are not deterrents or tools, like water and housing, for politicians to limit growth, development or desire.  That is what political spine is for. 

It doesn’t take a half billion dollars of new infrastructure to fix this.  Let’s wisely use the roads we have.  We could do it now with two buckets of paint and restripe the pinch points.  Get the 15-foot planters and islands out of the medians of these roads and get rid of the 20-foot-wide bike lane - shoulders on both sides.  These are highways and not botanical gardens.  Let bikers ride on the bike paths.  Put artistically painted and architecturally aesthetic, flexible divider walls, taller than our oncoming headlights, in the middle to separate traffic and maximize capacity.  Then we can have 4 uninterrupted lanes from Kamas to the Bonanza and Kimball Junction to Deer Valley and Main Street.  From there traffic can split to the various attractions.

 

There can be bus lanes and shoulders or emergency access and snow storage as needed.  Stop messing around with County Ubers and Apps or traffic circles and competing bus systems and just repaint the damn roads.  We cannot afford the luxury of all these unused lanes, medians and shoulders. In Boston, for example, during rush hour everyone drives on the shoulders.   In Aspen they built a mini-Glenwood Canyon to get people up-valley.  In New York they stopped building new roads in the 60’s and maximized the roads they have.  Sometimes, as Freud said, ‘a cigar is a cigar’ and I say, ‘a road is a road’.   

We have rebuilt 248 every year for 5 years where it shrinks down to two lanes by the schools, for tunnels, crossings and pipes, but we have not considered fitting four lanes through there, since UDOT proposed it in 2017 and we respectfully, but foolishly, declined.  Now we are at the bottom of their list and have a low priority.  And 20-30 years ago, we told UDOT we were ‘not fly over type people’ at 224 north onto 80 west and are still stuck with the back-up from Kimball to The Canyons all winter.  Sometimes we are our own worst enemies.  UDOT doesn’t often have time for ‘those people up there’ and they would rather serve the conservatives from Utah County who vote for them and embrace their plans and prejudice.  It is political, and we need to know what to kiss and when to kiss it, especially with Olympic money ostensibly coming due.  UDOT priorities can change in the blink of an eye, depending on whose winking. 

Our new UDOT representative is Commissioner Tom Jacobson who is a lawyer who understands transportation and the political process and is a good guy.  Let’s lean on him for advice and influence.  Better yet we should take over jurisdiction of 224 and 248 and do what we want, as creatively as we can, with flex lane barriers and multi-use shoulders.  The best way to control land is to buy it and the best way to control roads is to own them.  I am embarrassed, we are embarrassed, UDOT should be embarrassed and something must be done, soon.   Let’s work smarter with our representatives and elect sensible people like Diego, Tana or Beth who can take action now for a transportation vision for the Olympics and beyond.  I’m sure both pragmatic Bruce and aesthetic Candy Erickson would approve. 

 

Matthew Lindon, PE

Hydrologist & Traffic Engineer

WaterandWhatever.blogspot.com