Former Utah governor Norm Bangerter has no regrets about his decision to OK a $71.7 million flood-control plan that pumped water from the Great Salt Lake into the western desert in 1987.
"Sometimes decisions are going to cost us money, and I'm totally comfortable with that decision," Bangerter said Saturday.
Bangerter, who served in Utah's highest office from 1985 through 1993, was the keynote speaker at the 2004 Great Salt Lake Issues Forum and spent time explaining the delicate balance that led to his decision to establish the pumping station.
"Nobody wanted to pump. Pumping salt water into a desert doesn't even sound smart, but it is. It (the flooding of the lake) was a major economic challenge to our state," he said.
When the lake rose to an elevation of 4,212 feet in 1986, Bangerter said he was left with no viable alternative but to activate the pumping system program first set up under Gov. Scott Matheson in the mid-1980s.
"There was no other alternative that was feasible, practical or affordable," he said.
But, the former two-term House speaker said, officials explored other options before settling on the West Desert Pumping Project, including diverting the Bear River into Idaho's Snake River, building more dikes along breaklines and constructing more dams upriver.
"It was not an easy project to go through, but sometimes the Great Salt Lake is not so friendly," Bangerter said.
The project, which pumped 2.7 million acre-feet of water from the Great Salt Lake to an evaporation basin in the western desert from April 1987 through June 1989, found bipartisan support and alleviated a lot of economic strain in the state, Bangerter said.
"We would definitely have pumped five years earlier if we knew what the lake would have done . . . where we draw the line is difficult to say," Bangerter said.
Though the three 72.6-ton engines haven't been used in nearly 15 years, Bangerter said lawmakers shouldn't hesitate to turn them back on if the banks of the Great Salt Lake ever rise to 1986 levels again — but they can't procrastinate. It can take as long as two months to get the machinery ready to begin pumping again.
"It doesn't appear the lake will go more than it has in the past 20 years, but nobody really knows," he said.
The lake has risen to a level of 4,212 feet just three times in its recorded history — 1870, 1986 and 1987 — but Bangerter said investing in the pumping project would be a wise and relatively inexpensive pre-emptive method of flood control if the lake ever creeps up to that depth again.
"The insurance policy on the pumps is already paid off, and the $60 million operating cost is a miniscule amount of money for the benefit of the state," he said.
Bangerter, who was born in rural Salt Lake County and grew up near the lake, told the thin crowd the days when Utah was recognized as one of the best-managed states in the nation are becoming a thing of the past.
"It's a tragedy of sorts that we've let the lake become as polluted as it has. Our state really has had an easy time these past few years, but those days are over," he said.
E-mail: abenson@desnews.com