9337

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 9337
• Author: Colorado River Water Users Association.
• Title: The Colorado River of Many Returns.
• USFW Year: 2001.
• USFW - Doc Type: Coachella, California.
• Copyright Material: NO

UTAH
Reed Smoot presented a far-sighted project to the U.S. Secretary of
the Interior calling for the diversion of waters from Uinta Mountain
streams as far east as the Yellowstone River for storage in a reservoir in
Strawberry Valley. The water would then flow by tunnel through the
Wasatch Divide into the headwaters of the Spanish Fork River.
Although then known by a different name, the Central Utah
Project was born.
Today, the $2 billion Central Utah Project is the linchpin of the
state's long-range water-management blueprint. It is the state's water-
insurance policy, promising to sustain, through at least 2020, its
burgeoning population and commerce along its populated north-central
sector anchored by the Wasatch Front.
The CUP is a spinoff of the Strawberry Valley Project, which
was authorized for construction by the Secretary of the Interior on
December 15, 1905. That project represented the first large-scale
diversion of water from the Colorado River to the Great Basin and marked
one of the earliest U.S. Bureau of Reclamation projects to develop
hydroelectric power.
By 1919, Utah municipal and agricultural water users recognized
that future water requirements in populous north-central Utah demanded
expansion of the Strawberry Valley Project to obtain additional water.
Utah's farmers knew the consequences of a year or two of drought, and
state leaders quickly began investigating methods to expand the state's
limited water-storage system of lakes, dikes and reservoirs.
Studies after World War I pinpointed the Colorado River Basin as
a vital segment of Utah's water future. The passage in 1922 of the
Colorado River Compact apportioned use of the river's water between the
Upper and Lower Colorado River basins. Utah joined the upper basin
states of Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico in agreeing to develop
methods to transport their allotments of Colorado River water.
Finally, the Colorado River Storage Act of 1956 authorized
Utah to collect a substantial amount of unused water from the Colorado
River Basin for populous areas. Government leaders and water officials
hailed the act as one of the most significant chapters written in
Utah's water history.
The act assigned Utah a 23 percent share of the Upper Colorado
River Basin water - about 1.7 million acre-feet of water per year based
on the availability of 7.5 million acre-feet apportioned annually to the
upper basin states.
Two key units of the Colorado River Storage Project built by
the Bureau of Reclamation are in Utah - Flaming Gorge Dam and
virtually all of Lake Powell, created by Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona.
Flaming Gorge Dam, completed in 1964, stores 3.8 million
acre-feet of water on the Green River. The reservoir is divided between
Wyoming and Utah. The power plant has a maximum generation
capacity of 152 megawatts. Of equal importance, the reservoir attracts 2
million visitors a year.
OF THE DAY FOR WORKERS ON THE
STRAWBERRY TUNNEL.
recreation magnet,
attracting more than 3
million visitors annually
to its 27 million acre-
foot reservoir with 1,200 miles of shoreline.
This means that of 9 million visitors to recreation sites in the
Upper Colorado River Basin states, about 5 million spend all, or part, of
their time in Utah. The Colorado River Storage Project obviously means
more than providing critical water storage and power generation to the
people of Utah.
But even though its northern and southern borders became sites of
major reservoirs, Utah still faced a formidable task - how to store or
transport its share of the Colorado River Basin water to the agricultural
and industrial centers in central Utah. Studies indicated Utah would be
unable to support expanded industrial and municipal growth after the year
2010 without a considerably larger, reliable central water system.
The Utah State Planning Office in 1,992 projected Utah's
population to swell from 1.37 million to 2.27 million by the year 2000. It
also identified Utah's water resources as a potentially limiting factor in the
state's economic expansion.
Working closely with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, state
water officials oversaw the initial phases of the Central Utah Project.
While the original Strawberry Valley Project was built using horses,
mules, belly dump wagons and an army of men employing picks and
At the other end
of the state, Lake Powell
provides the stored
water reserves for the
Lower Colorado River
Basin, thus enabling
the upper basin states
to develop their
Colorado River waters.
This red-rock-rimmed
lake serves as a
?i
shovels, federal funding and modern equipment made construction of
the CUP faster and more efficient.
Why is the CUP so important to Utah?
One of the major sources of water in Utah is the Uinta
Mountains, which receive average annual precipitation of more than
50 inches. Most of that water becomes runoff into the Green River, which
merges with the Colorado River that ultimately carries Utah water out of
the state.
The CUP makes possible the utilization of Utah's fair share of that
water now being lost into the Colorado River.
28
HEADGEAR APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN THE MODE
THERE WAS NO LACK OF HORSEPOWER WHEN UTAH CREWS STARTED CONSTRUCTION
OF STRAWBERRY DAM.
LEE FERRY IN ARIZONA WAS A POPULAR FORDING SPOT ALONG THE COLORADO
RIVER, THANKS TO SOME STALWART REPAIR WORK ON THE ROADWAY.