Never has, never will.

"We live in the second-driest state in the country with most of our population living on the edge of the Great Basin desert," Hooton said Thursday after a lengthy city Public Utilities Advisory Committee discussion of a new proposal to link Park City and ski resorts in Big Cottonwood and Little Cottonwood canyons with tunnels.

"Salt Lake City relies on those canyons for the water supply for more than 400,000 residents," he added. "We ought to do everything possible to protect our water supply. . . . This appears to be driven more by economic development and trying to draw more business into the area than trying to protect the canyons, which is my job and what I feel strongly about."

The advisory committee also looked askance at an idea floated by state Sen. Carlene Walker, R-Holladay, to consider transportation infrastructure projects that could link the three Park City-area resorts with four ski areas in the Cottonwood canyons.

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. has agreed to play host to a Nov. 3 meeting of two dozen "influential people in government, tourism and the ski industry" to discuss the proposal, which could include a two-mile tunnel between Alta and Brighton and a four-mile tunnel between Brighton and Park City.

A one-page "talking points" sheet suggested the "AltaBright" tunnel could cost $250 million, while a $50 million to $150 million "CottonPark Interconnect" could tie Park City to Brighton by tunnel or snow sheds that would keep the existing, but seasonal, Guardsman Pass road open year-round.

Hooton said neither he nor anyone else in his department was among the influential people invited to the Nov. 3 meeting, even though he has been in charge of protecting the watershed serving Salt Lake City and much of the valley's east bench for more than two decades.

During that time, he noted, other tunnel and interconnect proposals have been raised. In the late 1980s, there was the Wasatch Supertunnel that would have linked Draper and Park City. The Mountainlands Association of Governments also pushed a ski-resort interconnect featuring tunnels, roads and cableways.

"Salt Lake City vigorously opposed both of those projects because we rely on the Cottonwood canyons for our water," he said. "This has been an issue for us since pioneer times. One of the first ordinances the city passed in 1851 was to protect the quality of the water in City Creek."

Public advisory committee chairman Cullen Battle said he was troubled that this idea was circulated without paying heed to the fact that Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County and the U.S. Forest Service all have master plans for the central Wasatch Mountains, documents adopted following extensive public processes.

"That tells me this is a misguided initiative," he said. "They don't know enough to initiate their proposal at the proper place. It has to start as an amendment to these existing plans, and there has been no effort to do this. . . . This seems to be an effort to do it as a top-down decision."

Loren Kroenke, supervisor of the Forest Service's Salt Lake District office, said he was informed verbally of the Nov. 3 meeting by ski-area representatives. He welcomed the meeting as a "good opportunity to be in the front end of discussing whether these transportation issues have merit." To the Forest Service, Kroenke added, water quality is "one of the very most important issues."

Shane Pace, Sandy's public utilities director, said he did not want to dismiss the notion without hearing what proponents have to say. But with Sandy owning the rights to 34 percent of the water coming out of upper Little Cottonwood Canyon, "we have the same concerns as LeRoy about protecting the Albion Basin. We need to keep that area pristine and would be concerned about anything that would damage that watershed."

Hooton is convinced any tunnel project would do that. "Anybody in mining knows when you dig tunnels you run into water," he said. "If they want to start drilling tunnels between Park City and Big Cottonwood, or between the two canyons, that may change the hydrology of those canyons and the streams the people in the valley rely on for drinking water."

mikeg@sltrib.com