The Weber Basin Water Conservancy District owns the Smith and Morehouse, Rockport and Echo reservoirs. While the man-made lakes provide summer recreation for residents, more importantly they provide the drinking water and storage for residents of the Wasatch Front.
The $110 million loan will help the Weber Basin water district provide reliable drinking water to five counties representing more than 20% of Utah’s population.
All Summit County taxpayers pay into the conservancy district to reserve future water shares. Some of those shares have already been harnessed; water is siphoned from the Weber River near Rockport and is pumped up the back side of Promontory to fill the Park City and Snyderville Basin drinking water systems.
Scott Paxman, General Manager and CEO of the Weber Basin district said the EPA funds will pay for the construction of critical infrastructure projects, including two drinking water treatment plants. It will also cover the costs of replacing some storage tanks and build water reuse facilities.
Both of the Snyderville Basin Water Reclamation District’s treatment facilities put water back into the Weber River, but district director Mike Luers said none of the federal funding will be spent locally.
“It doesn't provide any benefit to us, but it's a good exercise of using treated wastewater to meet an obligation,” Luers said.
He said of the more interesting projects set for funding will take treated wastewater from one sewer improvement area and use it to increase water flow to the bird refuge on Willard Bay.
“They're required to send, it's about 90,000-acre feet a year to the bird refuge, and instead of using drinking water, they're now going to take the treated wastewater and meet that obligation and save the drinking water for culinary purposes. So yeah, Scott Paxman and the group there at Weber Basin are working hard to utilize treated wastewater to meet obligations, instead of using culinary water.”
With federal funding cuts looming, Luers said it remains to be seen what impacts that may have on local operations. He said there are state watershed coordinator positions funded with federal dollars that could be in jeopardy.
