Open letter to all Strawberry Stockholders

Dear Strawberry Stockholder,

We don’t generally send this type of correspondence to our stockholders, but we feel the chain of events that has played out over the last three years warrants your careful scrutiny of several issues that, if enacted, will negatively impact the association and your water rights. We intend to be fully transparent in all issues that affect you as a stockholder. The information in this letter and the documents we reference are an attempt to provide you with pertinent information that we as a board have studied and discussed. Because of their magnitude, we feel that we must notify you of the issues, appeals, and the negative consequences that may unfold going forward. 

In October of 2013 a request was made to the US Department of the Interior’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) asking for an operational audit of practices carried out by the association. The letter identified nine items to be investigated by the OIG. (The request was made jointly by the Strawberry High Line Canal Company, Payson City, Salem City and Spanish Fork City). (see http://swua16.blogspot.com). Of the items identified, the two that we feel are of great consequence are the redistribution of the rehabilitation and other funds that are used to repair irrigation facilities and the ownership/use of the power transmission line (used by SWUA, Springville, Spanish Fork, Salem and Payson Cities) as a continued revenue source for SWUA. (These funds are used to help reduce your assessment as much as $450,000 per year.)  As you may recall, the federal government already took the recreation and grazing rights of the stockholders as revenue sources when the reservoir project was turned over to Central Utah Water Conservancy District.

The OIG decided that this was outside of their scope of work, and the audit was assigned to the Provo Office of Bureau of Reclamation (BOR). During the past eighteen months, the BOR has been reviewing the issues outlined in the letter request. This review included interviews with selected personnel from the affected canal companies the association serves; however, the bureau has not contacted the association directly for any pertinent information regarding the issues raised in the audit request. All information collected by the BOR in relation to the audit was done so without SWUA input.

During this time, our legal counsel filed a Freedom of Information Request (FOIA) to gather pertinent information regarding the ongoing BOR audit. In doing so, several disturbing documents surfaced that we feel you need to consider. If implemented, they will greatly affect local control of your association as well as cost and benefits to the organization. Additionally, federal bureaucratic personnel as well as a lobbyist hired by the cities have continued to fuel the city’s efforts to gain certain assets that are controlled and owned by your association.

During this information gathering period, Commissioner Estevan Lopez suggested that this is a local issue and the local entities should get together with the complainants of the letter and try to see if some solutions could be mitigated, thus ending the process. SWUA as well as the canal companies sent formal letters to the Commissioner stating our willingness to participate in this process, but Spanish Fork, Salem, Payson Cities and Strawberry Highline Canal Company would not participate in mediation; therefore, this option was not pursued.

This audit process has never been used before for the intent that the proponents would like.  The audit process that has been instigated has the potential to fundamentally change the constitutional right to own private property.  This request has set in motion powerful forces within the Obama Administration to put in place a newly created Executive Authority for the express purpose of giving the Federal Government--in this case, the Bureau of Reclamation--the power to be judge, jury, and executioner and dictate who should own private property.

   

We have placed several documents on our blog site for your review (http://swua16.blogspot.com). These include the original audit request, a timeline of events that have transpired to date, and a copy of the FOIA memo recommending that Central Utah Water Conservancy district take over operations of the association. We strongly encourage you to read the linked documents. If you do not have internet online access you can call our office and we will mail you a copy of the referenced documents. We will update the online blog site as additional information comes forward.

After you have reviewed the online documents, we strongly encourage you to contact your SWUA district director if you have additional questions about how this will affect you as a stockholder and the association in general. We feel as a board of directors of the association that the outcome and recommendations of the BOR, if followed as stated in their memo, can and will have monumental, long-term negative impact on you as a stockholder in operational costs as well as local representation.

We hope that you will seriously consider the ramifications if additional bureaucratic interference continues to erode the association’s ability to direct the affairs on a local level.

Sincerely,

SWUA Board of Directors