: ’ ~ ~ ? i. . 6 * co Weber State College Alumni Association, April 1977 Ser cs az aa a ®, 8 <@ Drought page I, 2 Inflation page3 Fuel page 4, 5 Conservation pages, 6 = Recreation page 6, 7 , Study Needed on Underground Water by Dr. E. Fred Pashley, Jr. Professor of Geology Most of the citizens of Utah, from je Governor to the man in the street, em to be aware of the state’s pendence on winter snows to supply e water used during the remainder ‘the year. A visit to some of the servoirs of the state is enough to wvince the skeptic that the water yels in the lakes are considerably low the high water marks of the full age. These obervations are convincing enough to assure us that the managers of the local ‘‘Water works”’ are not involved in a plot to withhold water until the price goes up, as the oil companies are often accused of doing with the country’s less visible oil and gas supplies. It appears that Utah’s plan for continued growth based on storage of water in surface reservoirs still leaves us at the mercy of future droughts. The situation is similar to that of a man who each year spends his entire salary, but fails to put some away ina Savings account as an insurance policy against an unforeseen period of unemployment. A shortage of water in the Ogden area is not a problem the managers of the Weber Basin Project (one of our major suppliers of water) have had to face. Up until now one of their problems has been that they have had more water behind their dams than they could sell. Demand for their water stored at Willard Bay has not been as great as was anticipated at the time the project was conceived and as a result income from water sales has been less than expected. This has complicated the process of paying off their indebtedness. Utah does have another source of water, in vast but not unlimited quantities, stored right under our feet (like the emergency food and water currently being stock-piled in many basements). In fact the greatest (continued on Page 2)