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Letter: Brute politics? The water war is being waged by Salt Lake City

(Steve Griffin | The Salt Lake Tribune) Trees glow with color as rain falls in Albion Basin near Alta, Utah, Monday, Sept. 24, 2012.

Regarding Robert Gehrke’s column “Waging war over water in the Salt Lake canyons shouldn’t come down to brute politics”:

The war is being waged by Salt Lake City fulfilling its promise to Alta Mayor Bill Levitt “that it would gain control of the Albion Basin contracts in order to protect the area from development by using Salt Lake City’s watershed management muscle to deny them water.”

A quarter-century ago, in June 1992, Salt Lake City’s Application for Permanent Change of Water was received by the state of Utah “to divert up to 1 5.75 acre feet annually for domestic requirement, only, for 35 homes in the Albion Basin Subdivision.”

Salt Lake City’s appropriation of municipal water to serve the properties in the canyons and its subsequent denial of use to some property owners while their neighbors are served are the brute politics in question.

M.C. Haik, Holladay