With the East Canyon Creek running very low, local environmental agencies are looking for ways to support more robust flow.
The creek flows south through Jeremy Ranch, draining snowmelt runoff into the Snyderville Basin. The water is used locally for irrigation and is home to native fish species like Bonneville cutthroat trout and mountain suckers.
The creek is currently “well below 20- and 30-year averages,” said Nell Larson, director of the Swaner Preserve and EcoCenter. Her organization is an extension of Utah State University near Kimball Junction whose mission is to sustain natural areas and educate the public about them.
“East Canyon Creek has been dipping below one cubic foot per second, which is truly just a trickle,” Larson said. “When you look at the stream, it’s hard to tell if there’s movement. That means it’s getting really warm, and it’s then losing its dissolved oxygen, and those two things make it really difficult for the native fish.”
She said too many people have rights to draw water from the creek for flow to remain strong in a drought.
“The water rights are overallocated, so the stream can go completely dry, and everybody’s completely within their rights,” she said.
The Swaner Preserve is also in the early stages of a water bank pilot project, according to Larson. That would be a mechanism to keep water in the stream and flowing at stronger levels.
There have been other efforts to curb overuse of the creek in the past two decades.
“The state has cut water rights back, and they’re starting to do some closer monitoring of when water is taken out and how the water levels are looking, and we’ve been working with the Weber River commissioner on that,” Larson said.
In recent years, all local water companies have joined a “master agreement” drafted by the Weber Basin Water Conservancy District, according to Mike Luers of the Snyderville Basin Water Reclamation District. Its terms help the entities work together to conserve water.
“One of the goals of that document,” Luers told KPCW, “is to improve cooperation during periods of low flow to help establish and maintain some kind of flow in the creek for the benefit of the fish and wildlife, and that has worked. We’ve had some pretty dry years, we’ve talked to each other, including this year, and we were successful in making a few changes in the way water is diverted by a number of folks.”
But Luers says in multi-year droughts, there is a limit to how much the agreement to conserve can help. There are still too many entities drawing from the creek to keep the flow at a healthy level.
In 2003, the East Canyon Creek went completely dry. That resulted in fish dying on a “severe” scale.
This year, he said the local agreement helped a higher percentage of fish in the creek survive the drought.
In 2007, Luers helped bring a proposal to the Utah Legislature that would have made it easier for local entities, such as his own, to buy local water rights.
The bill stalled in the Legislature with little support.
“The intent of that purchase would be to allow water to flow downstream, never divert it, for the benefit of the fish and the wildlife,” Luers said. “The state’s Legislature did not like that idea. The farm bureau in particular did not want another set of entities in the market purchasing water rights, so it did not pass.”
In recent years, Luers said all local water companies have joined a “master agreement” drafted by the Weber Basin Water Conservancy District. Its terms help the entities work together to conserve water.
“One of the goals of that document is to improve cooperation during periods of low flow to help establish and maintain some kind of flow in the creek for the benefit of the fish and wildlife, and that has worked,” he said.
But Luers says in multi-year droughts, there is a limit to how much the agreement to conserve can help. There are still too many entities drawing from the creek to keep the flow at a healthy level.
In 2003, for example, the East Canyon Creek went completely dry. That resulted in fish dying on a “severe” scale.
This year, he said the local agreement has helped a higher percentage of fish in the creek survive the drought.
“We’ve had some pretty dry years, we’ve talked to each other, including this year, and we were successful in making a few changes in the way water is diverted by a number of folks,” he said.
