(No Ratings Yet)
Loading...How relieved I was when the Settlement Canyon water was suddenly shut off on Wednesday, July 8. Finally the powers that be, who make these decisions for all members who own shares of Settlement Canyon water, had decided enough was enough. It was time to go on rationing for the rest of this year.
Then to my horror the water was back on within a few hours. Apparently, there was a break in the line and the water was turned off to fix it. Normally this should be good news, that the water was back on. How thankful we are for the people with experience who could fix the problem so fast.
But no — we are back in business as usual with full spraying of field after field and yard after yard to further deplete our dwindling water resource this early in the season.
Are we not aware we are in a drought?
The state of Utah has had its third worst water year in history and we are doing business as usual. Tooele County is the hardest hit of all 29 counties in Utah and we are still doing business as usual. When the month of April was such a terrible water month for us we should have been thinking about rationing. But no — we are doing business as usual. Then came the month of May, which was no better water wise that the previous month, and for sure we should have been thinking of rationing. But no — we are doing business as usual.
Fortunately, June was a little better, but certainly did not make up for the previous two months. Here we are, almost two weeks into July, with no rainfall thus far in the month, and still no rationing.
Perhaps business as usual should be to start every season on rationing. We could then better judge how the water season goes. It would be so much easier to go off rationing half way through the season if the water reserves are there. But then again that might be such a common sense method of doing business that it just could not work.
Think how satisfied we would be to know we have done our part in preserving our most valuable resources. How happy we would all be to go off rationing. We would praise the foresight of those who run the company for all our benefit. Who knows, we might end up with a surplus of water at the end of the season just in case mother nature is not so kind to us next year.
All of us will soon have our water shut off half way through the season just like we did last year. Perhaps if we are allowed a half season of water we should only be required to pay half the amount we are charged each season.
This is not just poor management of an extremely valuable resource on the part of the officers of Settlement Canyon water who make these decisions, it is gross dereliction of duty by people who are making these decisions at the sacrifice of all stockholders. This is a shameful failure on your part to fulfill your sworn obligation for the benefit of all shareholders.
Just business as usual, I suppose.
David Millburn
Tooele
Editor’s note: Settlement Canyon Irrigation announced water restrictions on July 15 that will be effective as of July 20.
