Canal boss tries to quell misinformation

Should Cache County act as administrator in managing federal money for revamping a local canal system improvement project? That’s the only question up for discussion at a special meeting of the Cache County Council Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. in the Historic Cache County Court House. The issue will also be discussed at an earlier joint meeting of the Logan City and Cache County councils starting at 5:30 p.m. that same evening in the Logan City Hall conference room. Keith Meikle, President of the Cache Highline Water Association and the Logan-Hyde Park-Smithfield Canal Company says, unfortunately, there’s been a lot of misinformation circulated, particularly that it would cost the taxpayers money. On KVNU’s Crosstalk show Friday, March 26, Meikle said when it was learned his organization needed an agency to administer a multi-million dollar federal grant appropriated by U.S. Senator Bob Bennett, R-UT, they approached the county council for help. “They said, ‘yes, we can do that,'” Meikle said, “‘but we cannot commit any funding to it. We will manage the money. We will manage it as it comes through. We will issue the contracts. “‘We will do these type of administrative things that we need, but everything has to be subcontracted and we will not proceed until there are signed contracts with the canal company that they are responsible for the funding.'” Meikle explained that the canal company will need to come up with 25-percent of the cost in order to move the project forward. He says the federal money became available after last July’s fatal canal break above Logan’s Canyon Road which claimed the lives of three people. A presentation of the costs to shareholders was given on March 8. To view information about the financial scenarios given at that meeting,

<a href=”http://www.loganandnorthern.com/slideshow.pdf”>click here</a>

.

Free News Delivery by Email

Would you like to have the day's news stories delivered right to your inbox every evening? Enter your email below to start!