Conservation Group Claims Better Alternative to Bear River Pipeline

None by KCPW

(KCPW News) Utah officials are prepared to spend hundreds of millions of dollars rounding up water for Northern Utah in the coming decades. The primary proposal entails piping water from the Bear River. But conservation group Utah Rivers Council say it has a better plan:

"The state could do a lot better job by investing in things like conservation and agricultural water transfers as opposed to building more dams on our rivers," says Utah Rivers Council Spokesman Mark Danenhauer.

A new report from the Utah Rivers Council claims conservation and wisely-managed agricultural water rights could yield the same amount of water at one-third the cost of the Bear River Pipeline.

Skeptics argue that conservation alone will not meet the needs of the state's growing population and desert climate. Earlier this year, state lawmakers gave the green light to money for early stages of the Bear River Development Act.

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