It lifted the pause late last year after breaking ground on a secondary water system for irrigation. The only water supply right now, even for watering, is culinary water.
But now Summit County staff say Henefer started the work without securing required permits. That forced the city to temporarily shut down the project.
Mayor Kay Richins said the permitting process will delay anyone hoping to connect to secondary water for irrigation or other purposes.
“People will not be able to have a secondary water system until next year because now we've had to pay for the contractor to demobilize, and then later in the summer, he'll mobilize again and start. By the time we finish the project, it'll be late summer,” Richins said at a joint meeting of the county’s mayors April 15.
Henefer went to the Eastern Summit County Planning Commission April 17 to secure a permit, but came away empty-handed.
Staff want more information about how the project will handle extreme spring runoff.
The town is building a pipe to pump water from the Weber River uphill to a new storage reservoir, which will be created with a dam.
The reservoir would be located on city-owned land south of Main Street, past the cemetery, and hold up to 3.5 acre-feet of water. That’s roughly enough water to cover a football field in 3.5 feet of water.
Henefer intends to annex the land it owns. It hasn’t yet, so it still has to follow county rules on the property.
Planner Jennifer Leslie said the reservoir may threaten county roads and residents’ homes if it overflows.
“We just haven't been presented with the evidence to know the path that the water would take if that were to happen. So we can't rule out those possibilities today,” Leslie told eastside planning commissioners.
Commissioners plan to reconsider Hefer’s permit request at their May 1 meeting.
City Engineer Brian Deeter said Henefer received a permit for its dam from the state of Utah. City Attorney Mason Kjar indicated they thought that was enough.
“In a perfect world, we should have come in from the start and gotten these [county] approvals, and we're sorry that we didn't,” Kjar said.
According to Leslie, about 80% of the water pipe had been installed before county engineering and planning staff found out about the project.
The other rural Summit County community that instituted and recently lifted a development moratorium, Oakley, also experienced its own water system setback this month.
A gas explosion seriously injured a worker and destroyed the pump house the town needs to access water from a new well. Oakley officials anticipate they’re delayed a couple of months.
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