During the July public lands meeting, Craig Johansen reported that Joe’s Valley is currently at 45,000 acre feet of stored water. The projected use will be 21,000 acre feet leaving 24,000 acre feet at the end of the season. It is estimated that 3-4,000 acre feet will be lost to evaporation over the summer. These figures are close to those of the 2002 season.
Johansen also reported that all of the springs on the south end of Trail Mountain are dry, but the springs on the north end are continuing to flow. “Things have changed” he said, “we have seeps now where there were no seeps before and the usual ones are drying up.”
Utah Power and Light has made public the investigative report concerning Electric Lake. The Division of Oil, Gas and Mining requested the investigation. Johansen mentioned that there are several copies in the county at present and that Ray Petersen has received one if anyone is interested in reading the report.
The forest service is still taking input concerning wild and scenic rivers and Johansen stated that he is not optimistic about any of the rivers in Emery County coming off the list. He also stated that Utah is number one now and has surpassed Nevada as the driest state in the nation.
Dennis Worwood has requested information from Sanpete County concerning heritage area designation as suggested by Senator Bob Bennett.
Petersen said the Bureau of Land Management has come out with the Price River basin inventory of routes that are contained in the road management plan. The information is available at pricermp.com. He also requested permission to form a subcommittee to work with that issue.
Dickson Huntington led the discussion of grazing issues. He reported that the forest service is helping the grazers and that they are willing to try what is necessary to accommodate. Also, a trained person may need to go into the allotments after grazers have moved out to do independent transects.
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