The Snyderville Water Reclamation District recently received two awards for its environmental stewardship.
District Manager Mike Luers said that’s a tribute to the District’s staff. They operate off two major streams in the Park City/Snyderville area—with different ecological challenges.
Luers said the operation received two honors this past week.
“The East Canyon Water Reclamation Facility received an award for 100 percent compliance with all environmental permit requirements for 16 consecutive years. And kudos to our staff, because that takes a lot of hard work to do that. And we received a similar award for the Silver Creek facility for 100 percent compliance for 17 consecutive years.”
The District’s East Canyon Treatment Plant, near Jeremy Ranch, is named for a stream that has developed a water-flow problem in recent decades.
“East Canyon Creek at one time was a Blue Ribbon trout fishery. We had many springs feeding that creek year-round. Well, we all moved here. We all needed water, so a lot of that water was diverted from the springs. And that resulted in less water being in the creek, and that’s especially true during these dry summer months.”
Fortunately, a pact between some of the major water users in the Basin has avoided some serious problems for fish in the stream.
“So now we see a situation where there’s just barely enough water to keep the fish alive above Jeremy Ranch. And that’s a tough situation. A lot of that has to do with the way Utah water laws are in place. But I will say that since the Water Master Agreement was signed some five years ago, we all have committed ourselves to keeping the fish alive when the situation gets critical. And again this year, this was approximately six weeks ago, we contacted some of the larger water diverters out of the creek, and they all stepped up and we were able to avoid a fish kill once again this year.”
On the other side of the Basin, feeding into their Silver Creek Water Treatment Plant, is a stream that is a mine tailings corridor under the purview of the EPA.
“And there’s a fish advisory, meaning you cannot eat so much fish. The other part of that is that the creek above our discharge point does dry up every year. And the fish pretty much swim downstream, and they live in our treated waste-water. And there’s quite a nice population of Bonneville Cutthroat living downstream. I’ve personally have worked with Division of Wildlife Resources of some shocking of the fish. And I saw a 21-inch Bonneville Cutthroat out of a creek that wasn’t any wider than about 36 inches.”
Luers said they will have to see if the EPA’s cleanup of the corridor will restore the stream flow year-round.
Finally, Luers said they are continuing to monitor indications of Covid at their plants.
“We treat waste-water, we do remove all the Covid. But the water coming into both of our facilities is sampled weekly. And the SARS COVID-2 virus genetic material is looked at. And we report those results to the website that you can go on line and see, so that the Health Departments and the Division of Water Quality and other agencies can get an idea as to if our cases are going up and down. In general terms, what we’re seeing, not only here locally, but across the state is that, we generally can pick up genetic material about a week before cases will increase at any given location.”
Manager for the Snyderville Water Reclamation District, Mike Luers.
