WASINGTON, D.C. – Utah’s Rep. Blake Moore, R-1st District, will visit Northern Utah twice in the next 10 days.
The first of those visits is set for Wednesday, August 18 when Moore and U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-AR) will take a boat tour of the Bear River Duck Club in Brigham City.
Westerman is the ranking GOP member of the House Natural Resources Committee on which Moore also serves.
Moore is bringing Westerman to Utah to learn firsthand about the challenges local communities face in terms of living as neighbors and managers of public lands. Topics of discussion with local officials will include watersheds, habitat management, conservation easements and what private landowners and groups are doing to provide stewardship of Utah’s lands.
With the intermountain West in the midst of a historic drought, watershed management issues are being closely studied at both state and federal levels nowadays.
During an Aug. 10 meeting of the Cache County Council, County Executive David Zook discussed a recent meeting with state Sen. Chris Wilson and Nathan Daugs, the manager of the Cache Water District.
“The state Legislature has federal funds from the American Rescue Plan Act that they need to spend on water infrastructure,” Zook explained. “That’s why Sen. Wilson wanted to meet with the water district about that issue. So we discussed our priorities related to that and where new reservoirs might be built.”
In a previous report to the county council, Daugs argued that local officials need to “… open people’s eyes to the fact that we need to do big water projects in this valley.”
Unlike water providers along the Wasatch Front, most of whom have multiple reservoirs to rely on, Cache Valley depends primarily on wells, springs, rivers and canals for its water supply.
Daugs said that the creation of even small reservoirs in the valley could go a long way toward resolving that problem.
Zook added that he thinks that plans for new reservoirs in the current Bear River Development Act “aren’t necessarily advantageous” for Cache County and said that Daugs and Wilson seemed to agree with that position.
“Sen. Wilson will hopefully be a good advocate for us on that issue,” Zook emphasized.
Moore is also scheduled to visit Logan on Tuesday, Aug. 24.
The freshman congressman will hold a public town hall at 5 p.m. that evening at the Cache County Events Center at 490 South, 500 West in Logan.
But Moore’s press secretary, Caroline Tucker, cautioned that the House of Representatives is unusually still in session this summer considering the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and the unprecedented $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package.
The town hall meeting in Logan may have to be rescheduled, she explained, if it conflicts with crucial House votes on those items of legislation.