“I’m all for doing something for the Great Salt Lake,” one farmer said. “My qualm was, if I say our irrigation company wants to donate 30 acre-feet per year to the lake, who is going to ascertain that even makes it there?”
To date, it appears no irrigators have officially signed up. Neither the Department of Natural Resources nor the National Audubon Society, who manage the state trust to help pay for leases, could confirm any deals have been finalized.
But as Harris looks around the Ogden Valley, he sees sprawling homes and developments popping up on the hillsides. The large family farms that once surrounded him have been subdivided, bought up by millionaires who build mansions.“I’m the token hillbilly in the neighborhood,” Harris joked.
“If you take the farmer’s water, he has to cut back,” said Ed Clyde, a farmer based in the Heber Valley. “If he cuts back, he can’t sustain. He’s probably right now on the bare minimum because we’re getting pushed from all sides.” Many of those shareholders still flood irrigate. They worry if their neighbor leases water to the Great Salt Lake, it means groundwater and streams won’t recharge, and as a result, there will be less water for everyone else.
Most of them formed a long time ago, some before Utah became a state. Pioneers looking to farm in arid Utah had to pool their resources to dig canals and build small reservoirs in order to make the desert bloom. “Sometimes when the legislators are trying to get water, “ Gertsch said, “it isn’t necessarily all for the Great Salt Lake. It is also for some of these developers.”At the Bear River Canal Company in Box Elder County, the largest remaining irrigation company in the lake’s watershed, farmers fear if they lease water, lawmakers will take that as a sign that they didn’t need it to begin with.
Tremonton, the county’s second-largest city, is seeing shortages during the summer as residents and business owners water their lawns with culinary water. Preserving farmland has environmental benefits, Nielson points out, including benefits for the Great Salt Lake.It can recreate the wetlands and seasonal flooding which occurred before rivers were dammed and diverted.
And there’s the question of payment. It’s unclear how much irrigators would receive per acre-foot leased.Manning, with the Division of Water Rights, said every time he hears a price tag floated, “the zeros keep adding on.” “We’ll see a lot of gain in the lake this year,” Nielson said. “Not only is that needed from an ecological perspective, but for this to ... work, we need a longer runway. And nature has been kind enough to extend the runway another 100 feet.”Joel Ferry, director of the Department of Natural Resources, was a key player in retooling Utah’s water laws to allow for leasing. He’s also a large shareholder in the Bear River Canal Company and owns a big family farm near the Great Salt Lake’s shores.
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