The Bureau of Reclamation has rescinded its approval of the environmental impact statement for the Narrows Project in Sanpete County, and said an impartial contractor will be asked to review it.
The bureau's Sept. 11 action was in response to a federal lawsuit filed against it on July 28 by the Carbon Water Committee, a coalition of rural government, utility and environmental groups that wants to stop Sanpete County from building a dam and reservoir.The bureau said in a news release that it will now ask for dismissal of that suit.
Neighboring Carbon County has long opposed the decades-old project, which would divert 5,400 acre-feet of Price River water to farm fields on the Sanpete County side of the Wasatch Plateau. The project includes a 17,000-acre-foot reservoir on Gooseberry Creek and a transmountain pipeline through the Wasatch Plateau.
The Bureau of Reclamation approved the required federal environmental impact statement for the project in May. That allowed Sanpete to obtain a construction loan from the Small Reclamation Loan Program for the $17.3 million project.
In the lawsuit, the committee alleged the bureau failed to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act. It also alleged the contractor hired by the Sanpete Water Conservancy District to prepare the statement and a loan application, Franson and Noble, also is a consultant to the Sanpete water district and therefore had a conflict of interest.
The bureau's rescission of its earlier approval was announced last week in the Federal Register. In a news release, it said it will hire a contractor to take an independent look at the environmental impact statement.
The review will determine whether there was any bias in the statement, the bureau said. "The corrective action to be taken, if any, will be determined at the conclusion of this review," the bureau said in its release.
The review should be completed by November, the bureau said.
Defendants in the suit include the bureau's regional director Charles Calhoun, bureau Commissioner Dan Beard and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.
Among the committee members are Carbon County government officials, Price River water companies, electric utility PacifiCorp, the Utah Rivers Conservation Council and the Utah Wilderness Association.
The two neighboring counties have been fighting over the Narrows since it was first proposed in the 1940s. The Utah Supreme Court ruled in the 1960s that Sanpete County users have legal rights to the water.