If you haven't, you should.

And when you do, you'll understand why the Bear Lake Watch Group, the Garden City mayor and many residents of the tiny communities ringing the lake are hotly opposed to plans of a Logan firm, Symbiotics, to build a hydroelectric plant on the lake's east side.

We agree with them that the project could be a disaster for this area's economy, which depends almost exclusively on tourism.

The plan includes a 270-foot-high dam, reservoir, emergency spillway, transmission lines, substation and underground powerhouse with 14 turbines to pump more than 18,000 cubic feet of water per second to generate 1,000 megawatts of electricity daily that would be sold to Rocky Mountain Power.

The sizable Hook Canyon Pump Storage Project would change the look of the lakeside, part of that jaw-dropping view enjoyed by northbound motorists, including more than 100 tour buses each summer.

More important, the turbines pumping water from the lake to a created reservoir uphill could churn the calcium carbonate at the lake bottom, ruining the lake's distinctive color and threatening four endemic species of fish that are found only in Bear Lake.

Further, the project will take 19,000 acre-feet out of the drought-stricken lake initially, and construction could dump sediment into the lake. Residents also worry the lake would not freeze in the winter because of the churning, and that would create constant fog and overall climate change in the surrounding communities.

Bear Lake is possibly hundreds of thousands of years old, but it is hardly a natural lake these days. It is used as a reservoir, with Bear River water pumped in during runoff and pumped out to meet irrigation needs.

Still, the lake is a beauty. It attracts half a million visitors annually who come to buy trademark raspberry milkshakes and juicy burgers flipped at locally owned stands with names like La Beau's and Merlin's and to rent Jet-Skis.

A local playhouse packs in tourists and seasonal residents all summer, and two state parks lure campers.

The lake, with its fragile ecosystem, feeds tourism and recreation, the lifeblood of Bear Lake communities. Generating power, even clean power, is not worth the cost of spoiling it.