The issue of damming the Bear River should be evaluated in accordance with both the short and long-term effects on the environment and economy. Dams have been shown to affect literally every aspect of life downstream from the wildlife to the urban and rural inhabitants (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4634923/). The core issues at hand are the damage that water development causes and the rate of water waste of the average Utahn (http://utahrivers.org/cause/the-bear-river-project/). Not only do we use more water per person than almost any other state in the United States, the widespread ecological issues and temporary, high input nature of dams makes it a temporary and prohibitively costly band-aid on the issue of water management in our region (http://rivers.bee.oregonstate.edu/sites/default/files/brown_et_al_2008.pdf). Methods for changing Utahns’ attitudes toward water usage should be put into practice before spending millions of dollars to create and remediate the environmental damage produced for the profit of the few at the expense of the many.
