Tucked 28 pages into President Donald Trump’s budget recommendations for next year, released May 2, was a proposed funding cut to the Central Utah Project to the tune of $609 million. Congress must approve the final budget.
The Central Utah Project is “the largest and most complex water resources development project” in the state, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The project is a complicated system of reservoirs and pipelines that bring water from the Colorado River system to the Wasatch Front for irrigation, municipal and industrial uses, supporting the region’s rapid growth. It also provides opportunities for recreation, water conservation and fish and wildlife protection.
“The budget reduces funding for programs that have nothing to do with building and maintaining water infrastructure, such as habitat restoration,” Trump’s budget brief reads. “Instead, the budget focuses Reclamation and the Central Utah Project on their core missions of maintaining assets that provide safe, reliable, and efficient management of water resources throughout the western United States.”
Zach Frankel, executive director of the environmental nonprofit Utah Rivers Council, said the proposed cuts were surprising and confusing.
Frankel said it’s unclear exactly what programs would be cut within the project. The Trump administration “can claim that [the cuts are] about making government more efficient, but the truth is they don’t have any idea how to separate essential services from non-essential cuts,” he added.
Given the budget language, Frankel said he believes the potential cuts could endanger projects to restore the Provo River delta and protect the endangered June sucker, a fish native to Utah Lake and the Provo River. Both state and federal dollars fund those projects.
The cuts could even impact the Great Salt Lake, Frankel said.
Read the full report at sltrib.com.
This article is published through the Utah News Collaborative, a partnership of news organizations in Utah that aims to inform readers across the state.