About 1.5 million people, or half of Utah’s population, rely on Deer Creek to supply water.
But aging infrastructure means it’s increasingly difficult to keep the dam in good working order. It’s more than 80 years old, and engineers say several concerns with the design need to be addressed.
Utah is in the middle of a major project to restore the dam. Brad Jorgensen, of the Provo River Water Users Association, told the Wasatch County Council what’s next for the project Wednesday, July 10.
He said the dam’s guard gates are a major part of the system in need of replacement. Guard gates help manage water levels in the reservoir and control water flow. They’re especially important to reduce flood risks.
Jorgensen said the project designer has come up with a way to do this key phase of work underwater.
“The original proposal was identifying that we needed to drain the reservoir, and that has all sorts of issues with it,” he said. “It’s not an easy task to be able to fill it up again, so we were very interested in having this opportunity to be able to do this work in the wet.”
The project involves creating a new route to carry water from the reservoir to the power plant on the other side of the dam. A special “microtunnel boring machine” will drill a tunnel from dry land into the reservoir. Crews will divert water into the new bypass system so they can do maintenance work on the guard gates.
Construction divers then head underwater to finish the tunnel construction and do rehabilitation work on the gates.
“They’ve got a fishbowl, basically, on their head, and there’s a video on top of their helmet that shows what they’re doing,” Jorgensen said. “Everything’s hooked up with GPS so they know where they’re at.”
The divers are accompanied by a remote-operated vehicle to help with their work. And Jorgensen said the depth of the water adds to the challenge.
“Each diver can only do about 30 minutes of those depths,” he said. “So one goes in, the other one’s been watching what they’ve been doing. He comes out, goes into the decompression chamber, next one’s in. So, it’s a process.”
Work on the project began in 2023. Jorgensen said the new tunnel is almost complete. Divers are slated to return to the construction site this summer. The guard gates will be refurbished in late 2025 and completion is scheduled for March 2026.
In total, the project will cost about $100 million.
More information about the Deer Creek project is available on the Provo River Water Users Association website.
