BEAR RIVER BIRD REFUGE - If the Bear River ever crosses the minds of Utah's city-dwellers, it is likely as a twisting puzzle.
    How can that clear stream flowing out of the snow-capped Uinta Mountains that crosses under Interstate 80 in Evanston, Wyo., be the same river as that muddy, green, slow-moving ribbon just south of Tremonton on Interstate 15?
    Yet those two 75 mph glimpses of the Bear give a sample of its diversity and its range.
    It's 500 miles long but ends just 90 miles from its source in the high Uintas, draining into the marshlands at the northeast shore of the Great Salt Lake, providing the saline inland sea more fresh water than any other surface source.
    Along the way, the Bear River is many things.
    For wildlife, it provides both fast, cold water in its high tributaries and slow, warmer water through the valleys. Its vast network of wetlands and marshes nourish millions of migrating birds, particularly at the mouth, where the Bear River Bird Refuge is a jewel in the national system of refuges.
    The river is fuel for electricity-generating dams in southern Idaho and northern Utah, as well as a source of irrigation for thousands of acres of farmland in three states. The river carries away wastewater from cities and agricultural production plants.
    "It is a fascinating river because it has such different personalities," says Craig Denton, a University of Utah professor who spent the better part of a decade shooting photographs of the river and writing his 2007 book, Bear River, Last Chance to Change Course.
    One thing the Bear River has not yet become is a drinking fountain for the urban Wasatch Front. But by a 17-year-old fiat of the Legislature - grounded in an even older compact between Utah, Wyoming and Idaho - that is going to change in the coming decades.
    Although conservation and efforts by water districts in Salt Lake, Davis and Weber counties to first pursue lower-cost sources have postponed it a few years, the river will eventually be tapped, say those who work to ensure there is water for growing Wasatch Front cities.
    "It's just a fact," says Gina Hirst, an engineer with the Utah Division of Water Resources. "As long as population continues to grow, we are going to continue needing water. You can get rid of all the lawns and gardens, but people still gotta drink."
   
   
    Planning the plumbing:
   
    Already, the state has consultants studying the feasibility of building dikes to create a five-mile-long reservoir at Washakie, a low spot in the Bear River Valley. The river water would be piped or carried by canal from just below Cutler Dam at the Box Elder-Cache county line during high spring runoff.
    From the Washakie reservoir, as well as from the river where I-15 crosses at Elwood, water would be piped to the Willard Bay area, if not into Willard Bay itself, for use in the high-demand summer months.
    The state would build the infrastructure, but most of the $330 million project would be repaid by the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District and Weber Basin Water Conservancy District, which already have acquired land for a treatment plant in West Haven and about half the land for new pipes to carry the water through Weber and Davis counties to the Salt Lake Valley.
    Although the Jordan Valley will need some Bear River water in 2035, it won't need its full share until 2060 or 2070 "if everything falls in perfect place," says Richard Bay, general manager of the district serving much of the Salt Lake Valley.
    Weber Basin, which serves Summit, Morgan, Weber and Davis counties, will need water even sooner - by about 2030 - but the district is committed to "doing everything we possibly can" before importing water from the Bear River Basin, says Tage Flint, general manager.
    River advocates at the Utah Rivers Council say the most responsible thing the state and water districts could do is to shelve dams and diversions as old school.
    "I don't think it's the way we should be thinking for the 21st century," says Amy Defreese, river defense manager for the river council. "It's too costly to our pocketbooks and to our environment."
    Instead, she says, the state should put faith - and money - into reducing demand.
    "It's cost effective and doable. We have demonstrated that," says Defreese, pointing to reductions in water demand through a concerted conservation campaign during this decade's drought.
    Though the water districts agree that reducing demand is the holy grail of ensuring future water supplies, they're dubious it will be enough.
    Bay notes that after conserving during the drought, his customers came back thirsty as ever during the fairly wet years 2006 and 2007. Last year alone, demand for the Jordan Valley's water surged by an amount equal to three Mountain Dell reservoirs, he says. "It's a wake-up call and a reminder that if we relied on conservation [alone], we would be in trouble."
   
   
    Detractors line up:
   
    The Utah Rivers Council has allies in its attempt to stop dams and diversions on the Bear: ranchers and farmers who would lose their land to a reservoir at Washakie.
    "Why should we give up our land so they can have water down there?" asks rancher Dan Thomas of Portage, whose great-grandfather homesteaded in nearby Washakie.
    Just 100 of Thomas' 2,500 acres would go under water, but he worries that a higher water table would make it impossible to grow hay on several hundred more.
    The reservoir would cover 4,900 acres and be surrounded on three sides by a dike, says Hirst, the DWR engineer.
    The big pond likely would be too shallow for good recreation, she says. But Thomas says others in the state agency have suggested it could be as attractive as Willard Bay to recreationists. It's a prospect residents of the area don't relish, fearing boaters and ATV traffic.
    A reservoir might not be so bad if local farmers could pump water out, but that's not in the cards, says Thomas.
    "If they want me to give it up, they should have to find a replacement," says Thomas.
   
   
    Wildlife to be affected, too:
   
    Perhaps the biggest battleground for the state as it eyes the Bear River water will be the Great Salt Lake and the massive, 76,000-acre Bear River Bird Refuge on its northeastern shore.
    Refuge manager Bob Barrett chooses words carefully when talking of the implications of the state's plan to eventually take 220,000 acre-feet of water from the river each year and send 100,000 acres of it south to Salt Lake, Davis and Weber counties.
    In a normal year, that is nearly a fifth of the river's water. In a bad year, it could amount to two-thirds.
    "Obviously we recognize the need for water for many uses," says Barrett, who came from Denver last summer. But, he adds, "We want to see development address the needs of wildlife conservation. Life without wildlife resources and habitat isn't appealing to most people."
    The level of the Great Salt Lake matters to the refuge, since it's all one habitat, with the marshlands of the refuge turning into the wetlands of the Great Salt Lake. The water moves between them, as is obvious from a platform viewpoint at the end of "H" canal on the refuge, where the water spills into the Great Salt Lake's wetlands.
    "There aren't many places where you can go and see what the explorers would have seen 200 years ago," says Barrett, standing on a viewpoint platform where the refuge's H Canal spills its water into the Great Salt Lake's wetlands. White-faced ibis and snowy egrets poke in a muddy riffle for food nearby.
    "The river is critical for the future of the refuge. I can't overstate that," says Barrett.
    Advocates of the river and the Great Salt Lake say there has not been enough research to know the implications of taking even a fifth of its fresh-water supply away from the lake.
    Surely the salty lake would be saltier, they suggest. Add in the unknown effects of global warming, which might mean more flash rainstorms and less snow, and fiddling with the flow into the lake is even dicier, says Defreese.
    Hirst, at DWR, doubts that taking water from the river during the high spring flows would affect the Great Salt Lake much, though she concedes the environmental effects deserve more study.
    If Denton, the U. professor who wrote the book on the river, had his way, Utah - indeed the West - would change how it regards its rivers. They are most always a means to an end: making the desert bloom.
    In particular, Denton hopes Utah will protect rather than plumb the Bear, "which represents the little bit of water that's left in northern Utah," he says. "Are we going to use it up now or consider the implications?"
    kmoulton@sltrib.com
   
   
    About the water series
   
    This summer, The Tribune is exploring Utah's water challenges. We have looked at water rights, viewed the challenges of growth as water resources shrink, scrutinized dam safety and looked at high-stakes water politics.
   
    TODAY: Water and the environment.
    NEXT: Water and conservation.
   
   
    Though the river is pristine at its source, the water quality degrades, both because of humans (and their animals) and because it flows through an ancient lake bed - Lake Bonneville - and picks up sediment.
    But Nancy Mesner, a Utah State University aquatics biologist and environmental engineer who has long studied the river, says it's cleaner in certain places than it was 20 years ago because of cooperative efforts of farmers, ranchers, government agencies, scientists and river advocates.
    Still, high levels of phosphorous plague the lower Bear River.
    Bob Barrett, the manager of the Bear River Bird Refuge, says the river's quality is perhaps as important to the ecosystem as its quantity.
    Researchers are now studying the effect of phosphorous on the sago pondweed, which is "breakfast, lunch and dinner" for the thousands of tundra swans that migrate through the refuge each year, he says.
    Mesner says that because of its reputation for poor water quality - somewhat undeserved - the Bear is treated by those living nearby as "this ugly, hammered thing."
    "But it's a beautiful system," she says, ticking off its values to the animal, plant and human life it nourishes. "It's a gem in some ways. I feel bad we don't value it more than we do."
   
   
    Helpful Web sites
   
    Bear River Watershed Information System, set up by USU to provide river data: http://www.bearriverinfo.org
   
    Utah Division of Water Resources: http://www.water.utah.gov
   
    Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge: http://www.fws.gov/bearriver/index.html
   
    Utah Rivers Council: http://www.utahrivers.org www.utahrivers.org.
   
    How clean is the Bear River?
   
    About the Bear River
   
    *It's the longest river in the Western Hemisphere that does not drain into an ocean. It feeds into the Great Salt Lake.
   
    *The Bear River provides 60 percent o of the Great Salt Lake's fresh surface water, the largest source.
   
    *The Bear River basin is one of the few left in Utah that has not been developed for municipal uses.
   
    *The river begins as several small streams in Utah's Uinta Mountains, flows through Wyoming, back into Utah, back into Wyoming, through Idaho and finally, back into Utah, covering 500 miles to reach its destination: the Great Salt Lake, just 90 miles from the source.
   
    *The river's average annual flow o into the Great Salt Lake is nearly 1.2 million acre feet. By decades-old compact and a legislative decision, the state plans to eventually take 220,000 acre feet per year, and sell it to water districts that serve Salt Lake, Davis, Weber, Box Elder counties and to Cache County.
   
    *Six dams along the river provide irrigation water and/or hydropower.