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Sanpete water officials are weighing their options in light of a federal decision that could further delay the county's long-desired Narrows reservoir project.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' May request that Sanpete prepare a supplementary Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is a frustrating — and expensive — step backward for the county, which has wanted to build a dam on Gooseberry Creek since the 1930s and appeared to get a final go-ahead in 2013.

The Corps has suspended its review of the original EIS, which was filed by the Sanpete Water Conservancy District in November 2012, until the requested supplement is complete.

The decision puts Sanpete in a bind, said Edwin Sunderland, board chairman for the Sanpete Water Conservancy District. Completing the requested supplementary EIS could cost the county as much as $2 million and take up to two years to complete. But choosing not to complete the document could mean the end of the road for a project Sanpete has been pursing for more than 80 years.

"We don't have a choice," Sunderland said. "I don't see how we can drop the project because we need the water."

But some say the dam is less of a need and more of a want that could harm the environment without solving the county's water woes.

In the late summer, irrigation systems in Sanpete County run dry. Crops wilt and lose monetary value. And because agriculture is still the main economic driver in Sanpete, Sunderland said, this has significant ramifications for the county as a whole.

"There's a lot of ground," he said, "and it's a major source of income."

Sanpete experiences seasonal water shortages not because the county lacks water, Sunderland said, but because farmers on the north end of the county are not able to store spring runoff for later use — a problem that could be solved by a dam.

County Commissioner Steve Frischknecht said he doesn't believe the reservoir will serve agricultural sources exclusively. There isn't much suitable land left for agricultural development in Sanpete, he said. And as in other parts of the state, agriculture is declining in his county as pastures are sold to developers.

According the U.S. Department of Agriculture's census, the amount of Sanpete ground dedicated to agriculture fell from 311,551 acres in 2007 to 284,311 acres in 2012, a 9 percent drop. Utah overall lost about 1 percent — about 120,304 acres — of its agricultural land during that period.

"There's very few farms left," Frischknecht said, and those farmers who remain, including the commissioner himself, generally have to take a second job to support themselves. Even if agriculture is on its way out, the absence of water storage prevents other industry from moving to Sanpete, Sunderland said.

"There's no industry that can come into the county without water," he said. "And it also cuts back on people who are willing to invest in property."

Brian Anderson, vice chairman of conservation for the Utah Council of Trout Unlimited, is less convinced that a reservoir is the answer to Sanpete's economic woes. "Any future growth of industry or municipalities will happen on irrigated land," he said. "They can take all the water used for irrigation and have some left over, and that has not been considered."

Planning for life without a dam is just one of the alternatives the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would like Sanpete to consider. According to the Corps' May 27 letter to Sanpete, the original EIS did not contain enough information about the purpose and need for the Narrows reservoir and did not adequately consider alternatives to the proposed project.

Sanpete envisions constructing a 120-foot tall dam that would store up to 17,000 acre-feet of water in a 600-acre reservoir at a cost of $34 million, But the Corps wants Sanpete to flesh out its analysis of other options.

"We need to further explore alternative sites and methods providing the water," said Jason Gipson, the Corps' chief of the Utah-Nevada regulatory branch. "There are a couple of questions that haven't been answered yet, regarding clarification of purpose and need — the difference between culinary and irrigation water — that have a major impact on the type of alternatives we can look at."

Anderson said Trout Unlimited was pleased with the Corps' decision. About seven to 10 miles of the Gooseberry Creek below the Narrows site provide "fabulous" opportunities for cold-water fishing, and diverting more water from the stream could impact the aquatic life, he said.

Sanpete's EIS, he said, "completely neglected and overlooked" the impact of the Narrows project on those downstream fisheries, used outdated information, minimally discussed environmental mitigation and failed to consider alternatives that would have had less impact on the river.

"So much more could be done that would sustain them year round and allow them to grow that third crop of hay or whatever," Anderson said, "without impacting the environment, and for a fraction of the cost."

Sanpete officials say they had been told they'd addressed these concerns about the project. When the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation issued a Record of Decision in favor of constructing the dam in 2013 — awarding the water district a 15-year development period to design and build the dam — county officials thought it would be smooth sailing, once they raised the funding.

So they "just about died" when they received the Corps letter in May, said Greg Soter, a Narrows project spokesman.

The Corps did have unresolved concerns in 1998, when it sent a letter to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation — the first federal agency to review the Narrows EIS — saying the draft did not include adequate information about the purpose of, and alternatives to, the project.

Three years later, the Corps sent another letter, saying that more information provided by Sanpete to address those concerns "appears to be adequate."

Gipson said that letter, mailed in 2001, predated his tenure at the Corps. But the Corps sent Sanpete and the Bureau of Reclamation additional letters in 2003 and 2010 with further questions, he said.

The first letter raised concerns about economic and environmental analyses, and the second about the preferred alternative and environmental impacts.

Since he started with the Corps in 2003, he said, the focus of the agency's concern has shifted as management comes and goes. "We have had turnover," he said. "We've had at least four different project managers. So you will have different perspectives, and different expertise."

Sanpete County representatives met with the Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency last week. But the discussion was "frustrating," Frischknecht said, as the Corps did not seem willing to hear the county out.

"They were very disengaged to begin with," he said. "Our engineer started off with documents that said the Corps had approved this and had approved that, and they just said, 'Well, that doesn't matter.'

"Eventually, it came down to the fact that they said we had to do an EIS, and it didn't matter what we said," he said.

Frischknecht said the Corps did agree to communicate more effectively. While he said he can understand the Corps' desire to ensure "every T is crossed and every I is dotted," he added that he doesn't believe revising the EIS will turn up new information.

"They're trying to protect themselves, and I guess you can't blame them for that," he said. "But my feeling is that no matter what we do, nothing changes as far as the science goes."

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