Everybody knows we’re dealing with a very warm very dry summer. But the new director of the Mountain Regional Water District, Scott Morrison, said their water supply isn’t a critical problem at this point.
Morrison said one dry summer isn’t a problem for them.
“About half of our water comes out of the Weber River and really it comes out of the Rockport Reservoir. If you think back a year ago as the result of the winter of ’16-’17 the Rockport Reservoir was full. The reality is from a surface water standpoint we haven’t seen any cutbacks by Weber Basin and don’t expect to see any. From a groundwater standpoint it typically takes many years of drought before you start to see a decline. You look out, it’s hot, it’s dry, it’s not raining, but from a water provider standpoint one-year doesn’t typically affect our water availability and then in turn doesn’t affect our customers water availability.”
What is an issue is the low levels in the creeks. Morrison said he’s working with several other stakeholders about that.
“We are actively working with Mike Luers and Michael Boyle from the Snyderville Basin Water Reclamation District and other partners, Park City Municipal, Glenwild golf course we are all actively working to try and not only maintain but bolster the levels of water in the creek. Mountain Regional has a well that we turned on about two weeks ago that’s really close to the Glenwild trial head in the spring creek area. We are currently discharging that well to the creek. I know Park City has made some adjustments as well to try to bring more water into East Canyon Creek. The golf course has curtailed or reeled-in their usage a bit to try to help.”
In other recent news, Mountain Regional will hold a hearing next week, August 16th 6:00 pm at the Silver Summit Academy, on their plans to incorporate the Community Water system, which operates in the lower Canyons.
“That was an area, in the Lower Canyon Village that’s going to annex into Mountain Regional’s District. The rate hearing is for them to adopt Mountain Regional’s current rates and there will also be an assessment for that community because there are some system improvements that are needed. Also, we talked about the integration of that water system into Mountain Regionals there’s some improvements that need to be made there to make that work and to make that seamless.”
Finally, Morrison said they have a new program to upgrade their water meters.
“We’re in the process right now of replacing our water meters. A number of customers have probably seen door-hangers that talk about the new meters. Essentially what it means is that they collect data hourly which allows the customers to set-up leak alerts. It also allows the customers when they log-on to the portal on the internet to really dial in their usage. So I’d encourage all of our customers, when they do see those door-hangers, to login and set up those leak alerts. If our customers can eliminate their leaks that will make our available resources that much more robust.”
