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o was confronted with sporadic mu- tinies by local entities-such as county commissions, local water districts and American Indian g'"oups-anxious to protect their own rights and in vestments, o was ferociouslv defended bv Utah's political heavyweights n;,. ganlless of their political affiliation, :J managed to hold the support of Utah's silent majority, :J plodded ahead-albeit over bud- get and behind schedule-as if Im- pervious to the controversy swirl- ing around it However. within the past three years, news stories on the CUP have altered their tone, Criticism from environmen- talists has become muted and often re- placed by grudging support for comple- tion of the project In Congress, some of the CUP's most vehement critics now back a bill to raise the CUP's funding ceiling, "At this point there doesn'tseem to be any real opposition," Wayne Owens, said recentlv, Can this be th~ same project that Utahns have grown to love/hate' WHY THE CUP? Most of Utah' s predpitation collects as snow in the eastern mountai.ns-such as the Wasatch and the Uintas-where growing seasons are short and commu- nities are smalL Only a fraction falls on the broad valleys to the west, where crops have more time to mature and the large cities are developing, 50 Utahns long have been obsessed with finding ways to capture the runoff from those eastern mountains and, to use a time-worn ex- pression attributed to Brigham Young, "make the desert bloom" 'Tve said many times that Brigham Young could have solved this problem if he had said, 'This Is The Place" in the Uinta Basin," recounted 5on, Jake Garn, whose career has been intertwined with the issue since his days as Salt Lake City water commissioner in the late 19605, "The trouble is, we're (along the Wasatch Front) on the other side of that water- shed," ENTER THE CUP The concept was broached in the 19405 bv the Bureau of Reclamation (Bureau), a brnnch of the federal Department of the Interior, which handled many large water projects. As it evolved, the plan called for an aqueduct to divert water from a number of Uinta Basin streams into Strawberry Reservoir (created bv an earlier water project) and then by runnel into Spanish Fork Canyon, From there, the water would be delivered by aque- duct to Utah Lake and to an enlarged Mona Reservoir, near Nephi, Utahns had another reasor. for sup- porting the pro1ect, Those Umta Basin streams are trioutaries of the Colorado River, whose tlow had been dIvvied UP by a tno of agreements with the su;- rounding states-\.Vyoming, Colorado, New MeXICO, Anzona, Nevada, and Cal- ifornia-and Mexico, II Utah didn't use its "share" of the water. the reasoninf:- went. another thirsty state like Califorrua might graD It first 50 the cry became, "Use it or lose it'" In April 1956, President DwightEisen- hower signed legislation authorizing the construction of the Colorado River Stor- age Pro;ect (CRSP), which included the CUP as well as the Flaming Gorge and Glen Canyon dams, But it took Congress until 1964 to fund the major element of the CUP, the Bonneville Unit Even then, construction wouldn't begin until voters in the seven-<:ounty Central Utah Water Conservancy District (District), created to run the finished project, agreed to tax themselves to repay about $158 million in project costs over 50 years. In the December 1965 election, resi- dents ofUintah County voted against the project. 804 (no) to 351 (yes), But it was a futile gesture, In the other six counties, voters approved the tax by an over- whehning 20-1 margin, encouraged by wide-eyed stories in the local press, In Wasatch County, the margm was 85-1, The next two decades saw the con- struction of a chain of dams, aqueducts, and tunnels starting at Rock Creek. north of Duchesne, and running southwest to a new lv-enlarged Strawbem' ReservOIr 5onous planrung also began for anoth., phase of the project, the Jordanelle Reser- voir, in Summit and Wasatch counties, on the Provo River just north of Heber. Uke its downstream predecessor, Deer Creek Reservoir, it would store culinary water for the Wasatch Front. INTENSE OPPOSmON By 1985, the money approved in the original repayment contract had almost run out, and a new election was called in the district, which by then took in 12 counties. But this time approval was no foregone conclusion. Opposition from anglers and environmentalists had be- come intense. In Washington, the project had been under fire regularly since the early davs of the Carter administration, This time, the Utah press was less ac- commodating, In a Sunday special sec- tion, the Deseret News ran a~hing series that revealed. among other tliings, huge cost overruns on certain key phases liT AH HOLlDA'" . J u,,"[ 1 QQl 43