Wednesday’s Wasatch County Council meeting provided a COVID-19 update as well as discussion about who can and can’t build wells on their property. KPCW’s Sean Higgins has more:
Right now in Wasatch County, only properties that are five acres or larger can have their own well. Smaller properties and subdivisions must be connected to a central water system. The proposed amendment would lower the well threshold to four acres.
Paul Berg is behind the proposal and said the amendment would allow property owners Northeast of Midway along River Road the ability to develop their land without jumping through additional hoops with the county.
“The whole purpose of this proposed change is to bring some fairness to some property owners along River Road," Berg explained. "These property owners are basically faced with ‘hey, I need to annex into Midway City or I have to ask Wasatch County for a code text so that I can use my sewer connection and develop my property.’ For them to ask for four acre zoning, I don’t think is unreasonable.”
Proponents of the change say the amendment would help owners and developers continue low-density rural development efforts in the county. Property owners would have to agree to not further subdivide or otherwise reduce the size of their property in order to be approved for well construction.
Wasatch County Fire Marshall Clint Neerings said he is in favor of the amendment’s intent but expressed concern that it has no language requiring newly constructed well-fed buildings to have the necessary reliable water flow needed for fire fighting. He says that in some cases, effective fire fighting would not be possible if the amendment is passed with its current language.
“That’s been our main concern," he said. "It doesn’t address that some sort of fire flow will have to be required in order to appease international fire code and state code.”
The council voted unanimously to revisit the matter on July 1 after input from Wasatch Fire is considered.
Wasatch County also reported a steady increase in COVID-19 cases this week, bringing the total count of confirmed cases in the county to 368 since the start of the pandemic.
Wasatch County Health Director Randall Probst said that statewide hospital capacity is currently at 70%, that includes all non-COVID related hospitalizations. He adds that Wasatch County is not seeing the same capacity issues that neighboring Salt Lake County has, with some of their hospitals at or above 90% capacity. There have been 18 hospitalizations in Wasatch County due to the disease.
“I think the ICU situation is what most are interested in," he said. "We’re certainly not at capacity there with ICU. Some of the hospitals are watching much more closely now with seeing those numbers going up fairly consistently over the last couple of weeks but that’s certainly not at capacity.”
Wasatch County currently has the second highest per capita infection rate in the state -- 1,107 cases per 100,000 people -- and has two confirmed COVID-19 related deaths.