The Central Utah Water Conservancy District wants to be a tributary to the rising torrent of property tax increases this year. This probably has escaped the notice of many Utahns, who likely aren't really sure what the district is or what it does. Besides, with about 17 levies on a typical Salt Lake County property tax notice, it's hard to puzzle out all of the governments or quasi-governments with their hand out.

If you mention the Central Utah Project, however, a knowing look may pass across the faces of many Utahns. For decades beginning in the late 1950s, the CUP was the holy grail of Utah water, a mammoth system of dams, aqueducts and pipes that diverts water from the Colorado River drainage to the thirsty Wasatch Front. Jordanelle Dam is the latest major addition. It is the kind of water project that would make the Romans proud.

In 1992, Congress finally decided that it wasn't going to foot the entire bill for massive Western reclamation projects anymore, including the CUP, and it required Utah to come up with 35 percent of the scratch for new construction. So the district, which enfolds 10 of Utah's 29 counties, put itself on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars of general obligation bonds that residents of the district repay through their property taxes.

The state's leaders decided back then that a tax rate of .0004 would be adequate to service those bonds over time, and through the years the district has adjusted that rate up

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and down below that prescribed ceiling. Figuring that the tax base would continue to grow, the bond payments were structured accordingly.

Enter the Great Recession. Property values fell, and to service its bonds, the district must raise the tax rate up to the authorized ceiling from its previous setting at .000318. That's justifiable, and it won't be too painful, because it amounts to $11.28 more per year on $250,000 of residential valuation.

But we have one bone to pick with the district. That increase is also making possible the up-front financing of the Central Water Project (not to be confused with the CUP), a scheme hatched in 2006 to bring groundwater from the old Geneva Steel site to Saratoga Springs and Eagle Mountain in Utah County, as well as points in southwest Salt Lake County. The finance costs eventually will be repaid by ratepayers as the water is delivered.

Eagle Mountain is the poster child for unsustainable sprawl development. Its isolation in Cedar Valley imposes disproportionate costs on other Utahns for roads and, now, water. The district should not be enabling this folly.