Tribune Editorial: Bill Lacks Regulations Needed for Canal Safety
Tribune Editorial
Updated: 01/29/2010 06:16:45 PM MST
At 4,703 words, Utah House Bill 60 sets a record. Never have so many words accomplished so little when a situation demands so much.
In the wake of a canal collapse that killed a Logan woman and her two children last summer, and another that destroyed dozens of homes in Riverdale a decade ago, the Water Conveyance Facilities Safety Act is weak medicine for Utah’s aging canal systems. Nearly 1,200 irrigation companies operate a combined 6,600 miles of unregulated canals in the state, including some more than a century old.
The situation screams for stringent safety standards, a strong regulatory framework and periodic safety inspections. Liability insurance mandates and emergency response plans and operator certification programs are also needed. Simply put, strict government oversight is needed to protect the public from dangerous canals.
Instead, HB 60, sponsored by state Rep. Fred Hunsaker, R-Logan, and endorsed by the state’s Executive Water Task Force, offers what amounts to a suggestion, a strictly volunteer program to identify and remediate hazardous canals.
Irrigation companies, if they want, can draft canal management plans for potentially hazardous canal segments. And, to shield the companies that choose to comply from public scrutiny, the law would make the management plans exempt from the state’s Government Records Access and Management Act, and thus hidden from public view. In other words, persons who are put at risk by hazardous canals will, unconscionably, never learn of the danger.
This is simply not adequate protection for the public. There is a huge regulatory gap regarding canals that must be filled. Who is in charge? No one. No government agency has stepped forward to accept responsibility for canal regulation and oversight. It can’t be left in the hands of the canal owners. The free enterprise system only works with strict government regulations to protect the public.
The most odious part of the bill is that management plans are optional, and for those who do comply their plans are exempt from public scrutiny. What on earth good is accomplished by secrecy in this matter?
Canal operators should be required, mandated, to provide a safe canal and they should be subject to inspection for safety no less than a restaurant, no less than when someone builds a bridge or a house.
The reason for this legislative tepidness must be a concern for the possible enormous capital costs that it would take for a canal company to comply with reasonable safety standards. If so, that is a shame. The state should not be subsidizing unsafe canal conditions by a willingness to ignore safety responsibilities. The state should not be complicit in unsafe canals.
There’s a carrot in the law to make canal owners cooperate. In order for a canal company to receive state grants or low-interest loans for canal repairs and improvements, a management plan must be filed. But there’s no stick to force canal companies to comply.
The bill could be improved by mandating that each and every canal company create a management plan that identifies and mitigates hazards to public safety, whether they want state money or not. And it should force them to reveal potential hazards to the public, as common decency demands.
With those amendments, HB 60 would be a good start toward safeguarding the water supplies of irrigation company shareholders, and the lives and property of people who live below Utah canals. But it can’t be the end game.
The current system of self-regulation by canal companies has gone on for far too long, and recent canal breaks prove that government oversight is sorely needed. Like any other enterprise that puts the public at risk, Utah’s canal companies need a government watchdog.
