COLUMN: Water conservation a msut
The water that will be splashing over the roads and sidewalks on our campus come spring might be dismissed as a slight inconvenience, or at most, a humorous illustration of the collective performance of the Physical Plant.
Unfortunately, in the hands of a government agency whose existence depends upon self-justification, wasteful water use becomes a black hole into which our natural resources and community heritage are shamelessly jettisoned.
Enter the Division of Water Resources and the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District, agencies whose managers spend our tax dollars but are not elected by us. Due to the Salt Lake Valley’s high population growth rate and obscene spreads of green lawn turf, its water use is pushing the constraints of available supply. The answer? Simple – build a pair of dams in Cache Valley and ship the water southward.
The Honeyville Reservoir and the Amalga Barrens Reservoir have been proposed as the answer (for now at least) to the insatiable thirst of the Salt Lake Valley. These reservoirs would be filled with Bear River water, and would act as a reserve and diversion mechanism for exporting water from our community. The collateral damage? Untold numbers of burial grounds, ruins and other sacred sites of the Shoshone Indians who called Cache Valley home far longer than have Utah State University students.
More than 15 miles of farms and ranches along the Bear River, and more than 50 farming families would consequently be evicted. And the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, an internationally renowned complex of land and water at the mouth of the Bear River’s entrance to the Great Salt Lake, would lose yet more of the water needed to sustain its myriad of rich plant and animal life. And about $1 billion in Utah taxpayer, and water user, money would be lost.
But the real kicker is the cynicism and arrogance of the agencies pushing the project. The JVWCD finances itself about 20 percent with property taxes. Consequently, the landowner is paying to subsidize the water of the lawn-wielding suburbanite. As ECON 101 confirms, subsidized goods lead to over-consumption, and indeed, Utah has the highest per capita water-use rate in the country, more than twice the national average despite our precarious position as the second-driest state in the country.
The Utah Rivers Council and Republican Senator Howard Stephenson (also President of the Utah Taxpayers Association) have teamed to propose that water users pay for their own water, and that autocratic water districts not be empowered to impose property taxes. The JVWCD has reacted to this proposal with all the enthusiasm of Richard Nixon during impeachment.
“I think people are fairly comfortable with how we deliver water service,” one water official has said. “If we were to make a major change, it would turn everything upside down.”
If flooding my neighbor to water my campus sidewalk at subsidized rates is logical, I’ll happily take upside down.
When even water, the sustenance of life itself, crosses political divides freely and uphill toward wherever the money lies, there is a desperate need for a new brand of politics, one that is local, meaningful and above all, human. One that values the glistening white of a trumpeter swan, the smell of freshly cut alfalfa, the hypnotic gurgling of river coursing downstream and the concealed wisdom of a shard of pottery every bit as much as it values the dollars ready to be forked over by country clubs of rich corporate executives.
One that values the diverse carpet of pasture, marsh, water and grass as much as it values the monotypic carpet of Salt Lake Valley lawns. One that does not send us a suit, tie and briefcase knocking on our door every few years to tell us that yet more of our community and heritage must be evicted in the name of “progress.”
We can start now. USU students can inform the DNR and the legislature (which, in a fit of stupidity, authorized these projects in 1991) that Bear River development is not required or desired. We can conserve our water, insist water users pay their own way and yes tell Physical Plant to get their nozzle heads spraying in the right direction. We can, as I have often exhorted USU students to do, defend our backyard.