Bluff Utah, it’s not Moab.

 

Bluff Utah, It’s not Moab.

 

In attempt to do something ‘different’ in the middle of November, we went south to Bluff.  We are somewhat limited with ‘different’ in Utah, with only Moab and St George on the busy end, Fruita and Kanab in the obscure middle and Cisco and Grafton on the quiet side.  With only 200 people in Bluff, half of them Navajo, no place to eat or drink mid-week and a main street so empty that you could shoot a man, and no one would see, it is the essence of catatonic chill. 

After a round of golf with our dog in Price on the way down, and a harried pit stop in metropolitan Moab we were happy to leave the maddening throngs and huddled masses behind.  We made the mistake of going thru Provo City and Wasatch County where they tease you with reverse traffic light timing for more stopping and imitation freeway entrances to entice you behind the most trucks possible for the slog up Soldier Summit.  Indian Canyon was off limits and has been under construction for the past five decades to build two short passing lanes for the infinite oil trucks lining up at 5 mph over the 15% slope.  

We arrived in Bluff under a spectacular purple setting sun and obscured rising Beaver Moon and quickly found our cabin since there was only one choice on Main Street.  The nights are 16 hours long this time of year and we couldn’t camp, read or play rummy for that long in our van so we treated ourselves to the lap of luxury in a comfortably complete pine box cabin with coffee, heat and a TV.  We are being kind to ourselves lately since our ‘Wealth Manager’ told us to spend more money, but we are cautious because we are Park City rich with nothing but house and you can’t eat equity.  

There are two resort hotels, one in East Bluff and one in West Bluff, and like America there was little middle class in between.  The parenthetical Pueblo type resorts on either end of town wouldn’t take dogs, and we don’t go anywhere without Eva, so we settled for something simple but new, compact and clean.  Centrally located across the street from the LDS Fort Bluff theme park and next to the river bike path entrance we were Downtown-Charlie Brown.

Surrounded by BLM land, Grand Staircase and Bears Ears National Monuments, there are purportedly over 100,000 Native American ruins and rock art installations in this area including Grand Gulch and the San Juan River, which was the Park Avenue for the Ancient Ones.  With the southern end of the prosaic Coxcomb dominating the landscape from Kanab to Lake Powell, there is a Native site of some sort up every canyon which lends itself to endless bike and hike adventures.  This feature may be an extension of the porno Cockscomb in Arizona because these formations sometimes dip underground and pop up in the strangest of places, if you look at it right, with the strangest of names, like Mollie’s Nipple, Brigham’s Unit or Cave 7. 

The point is that there is infinite geography to explore down there and a lifetime to do it.  In one canyon, there was an extravagant royal apartment complex perfectly intact in the middle of a 500 foot cliff and a Michelangelo museum quality petroglyph of Wilt Chamberlin, the Alta insignia and an upside-down chairlift going backwards, peppered by a few bullet holes.   The next canyon had several ground level rooms and granaries for the secure or lazy middle-class serfs and a couple of amateur handprints, spirals and chickens on the wall.  None of these are located on any map or indicated with any BLM signs, since they are doing more with less these days and want to protect these sights from rampant tourism and unethical collectors.

Some nice Nomad campers, who live in the canyons but move every 14 days, gave us the lay of the land and some good guidance that became confused or forgotten immediately but pointed us in the right direction.  From there on it was easy to make it up as we went along and find cool stuff.  My wife would explore several canyons each day while I would rest and relax with the dog after one or two ruins, in the cool van or cabin, taking notes and naps or reading books and maps in the solace that I had nothing to prove.  We seldom encountered any other hikers either in the cool of the morning or low winter sun of the afternoon.  I suspect I gets as hot as Moab here but there is no need for reservations or any effort to beat the rush or high season.

Bluff does not get a lot of traffic or business, and they don’t seem to care.  With a Chamber of Commerce or marketing manager they could turn this place into another red rock Disney land of conspicuous consumption, but I get the sense that they don’t want to.  There is an attempt at a river trail from town through the sandy bosque cottonwoods to the river raft boat launch area, but it is only rough graded and there is a large portion that fell off into the river.  While we were there they held a Marathon from Blanding that had more volunteers than runners and more cones than competitors, but they were nice people with free bananas and 80’s music there all day. 

We were so enchanted that we stayed an extra day into the weekend and a killer Coffee house, Navajo breakfast and Pork House rib place opened mostly for the locals.  They were mostly friendly folks except for some multigenerational natives that have perfected the one-word answer that almost sounds like another question.  None-the-less we had fun playing in the country and exploring the towns funky sandstone castles and modern palaces, with our dog, undeterred and undisturbed by other thrill seekers adrenaline hounds and athletic adventurists.  Go there soon, before it becomes another Moab. 

 

Groundwater Change

When you run out of surface water you stop farming and build a dam or a canal.  When you run out of groundwater you dig a deeper well and get a bigger pump.  Out of sight, out of mind.  There-in lies the problem.  Groundwater in the west, especially in the basin fill aquifers of Utah and the Great Basin, is generally on the decline.  Historically replenished by the deep snowpack high in the surrounding mountains, these aquifers are declining from over pumping beyond the sustainable yield of the natural snowmelt recharge.   As the water level in these underground sponges declines we start pumping ancient water from previous ice ages and from the ancestral Rockies 50-300 million years ago.  This is one time water that is not coming back.   This needs to change.

We complain about all the change in Park City but what if we didn’t change.  Cities and economies are like swimming sharks, if they stop swimming they die.  We don’t want to go backwards.  It is easier to balance a glass of wine on a bowling bowl than it is for a place to remain the same, stationary, or sustainable.   So, we take all the change and growth, development and upgrades, as we morph into something new, and hopefully better. Unfortunately, that takes water.  Even though we have money and pump half of our water over Promontory, from the Weber river, we are still mining local groundwater that was snow 500 years ago on the Wasatch and 16,000 years ago on the Uintas.  We are deficit spending, and we just can’t print more water like we do money and keep the change.

The more than 1000 miles of mine tunnels under our town, longer than the NYC subway system, acts as a huge underdrain, further lowering the historical ground water levels.  With the modern change from mining and agricultural water use to municipal use by people, the changing demand has warranted a new 100 million dollar mine-water treatment plant to augment the exaction of our regional groundwater by wells. Municipal wells in the Park City area therefore withdraw water from consolidated rocks, such as the fractured and faulted, Keetley volcanics, Weber quartzite, Park City limestone and Navajo/Nugget sandstone.  These rock formations are locally broken into separate block formations that can inhibit or isolate water flow and withdrawal, which can make finding reliable water difficult.  Park City’s ground water is geologically compartmentalized and better on the east side, but recharge is not meeting demand for a sustainable yield.  Because of the low capacity for bedrock ground water storage, the hydrological system is very dependent on the amount of annual precipitation and is therefore sensitive to prolonged drought and climate change.  Less than normal precipitation, or overuse, can result in substantial groundwater level decline, both in the bedrock (affecting municipal wells), and in the basin fill (affecting stream flow), producing anecdotal and visible change. 

The Colorado River and the Great Salt Lake are suffering likewise, partially because of our inability to limit groundwater usage in these basins that have a conjugate effect on surface water deliveries.  Both The Lake and The River are shrinking from overuse of surface and ground water.  Many agricultural water users in Utah have Supplemental Water Rights that allow them to take surface or groundwater, whichever is more prevalent or convenient.  The State of Utah has regulated surface water use since 1903 and groundwater use since 1935, but both have been systematically overallocated on paper, relying on priority dates rather than regulatory restraint.  The Sate Engineer tried to rescue the worst over-pumped and overallocated groundwater basins in Utah, back to sustainability, at the turn of this century but the legislature, in their infinite wisdom, insisted that we give water users 100 years to comply with reductions.  California has only been regulating groundwater since it got scarce 10 years ago, but they give their water users a similar ridiculous time frame to achieve compliance and sustainability.  In Texas, the biggest pump wins and they won’t change.  They are not thinking of the future and the children, land subsidence or aquifer health, it is just mindless “Drill Baby Drill.”

Over pumping can cause the collapse of the aquifer and subsidence of surrounding surface lands but the practice is relatively new and is not confined locally.  Since the development of submersible well pumps for oil in the 1920’s and perfection of their application for water in the 1960’s these aquifer wells, and their surface telltale crop circles, have proliferated across the western United States.  The Ogallala aquifer is 175,000 square miles and 500 feet thick and extends from South Dakota to New Mexico and from Texas to Wyoming.  It is being depleted 2-3 times as fast as it is recharging and could be gone by 2100.  By then agriculture in the Great Plains could be radically changed with the old, imported cattle that require imported feed and water, replaced by the historical residents, the American Buffalo, Bison-Bison.  These Bison are the only living creature uniquely suited to live in that harsh climate, that spans 150 degrees F, and the limited surface water vegetation complex.  That might be a welcomed change.

We cannot continue this selfish mining of historical, ancient groundwater. which can be a metaphor for how we treat all of our Natural Resources, using them up until they are gone.  To leave it up to the private sector, the profit motive, or human nature does not work in maintaining a sustainable yield and public welfare.  Locally we need to empower the State Engineer to step in and regulate this public resource for the common good.  She (Tereasa Wilhelmsen, PE) is doing her job, for she would be blamed if we run out of water, but her hands are tied by the shortsighted capitalistic, male, Mormon, developer dominated legislature.  This is not socialism, it is the law, written to promote fair, sustainable growth and wise, conservative use for the public benefit.  What is out of sight cannot be out of mind.  Nationally and globally, we need to see our shortsighted abuse of water and our natural resources and change our ways.  Think globally, conserve locally.  

Word Power Personified.

 Melancholy is the word that comes to mind. Bittersweet.  I felt melancholic the day after our graduation, and melancholic the day after our reunion. Glad, both days, to have spent so much time together, sad that it was over, and that life would move on with or without these people. Or perhaps it was just another hangover. 

What started on a lonely windswept corner of Jones Beach, with whales breaching in the background, and ended on an empty Jericho Turnpike corner, waiting for an Uber under a halogen streetlight, our reunion was nothing short of transplended, uplifting and transmogrifying. From Brother Tom, Chis, Carla and John Westerman’s opening words of wisdoms to Fearsome Mike Fees ‘Fear Not” Bible statistics, correctly prophesied only by John Fucillo's Jeopardy juxtaposition, with a little fence jumping in between, the tone and the vibe were set.  Then from Jim Rice's succinct and sincere prayer at Meribah to Doctor Gerry's wise decision not to sing, the days and nights were filled with nostalgia and recognition, revisionist history and amnesic reconstruction. Stories at Meribah reflected courage and bacchanalia, physically impaired and snow infringed driving, poor choices, capers and carrying on. While the names have remained the same, the faces have changed from the years of yearning, months of moderation, weeks of wisdom, days of diligence, hours of honor, minutes of mediocrity, and seconds of sobriety.

Reunion MVP Steve Schneider surprised us all with his health, presence and a bucket list as long as both arms. Bill Joyce was still humble, courageous and curious, while Fitz is still hungry and ambulatory. Greg O'Keefe is still the pleasure machine with his sweet grammar school wife, Janet and Mike Corsello is the candy man that can still take you to Willy Wonkas and back.  Jimmy Finn was the quiet flux-capacitor genius, while Kleczk’s was still the class clown, effortlessly weaving stories, extemporaneously, like George Carlin or Johnny Carson. Herc, for once, had Uni in his shadow and Brian Rogan was unrecognizable to himself, except for his infectious laugh and kind blue eyes.  Quiet Colin Carroll was the clear MIP with harrowing stories of submarines and nuking, road trips and puking. Reardon supplied the outline of our times while Sampson offered superior storyteller.  Special guests Louise and Maryanne boiled our collective testosterone once more, which was quickly quelled by our beautiful and beatific wives who, once again, endured our old stories of false bravado and true grit.

In the end, it was an experience of brotherhood and fraternity, returning us to the place and people who made us who we are. We have all iteratively improved and excelled, through small and large decisions, shaping our personality and character through discipline and effort, courage and calamities, to build the people we are now, and form the legacy of our lives. We were all very close for a short time, a very long time ago, but the ties that bind are strong and resilient, from people and places forgiven but not forgotten. May the promise to stay friends and keep in touch be kept, with miles to go before we sleep. We will need each other now more than ever, now that we truly realize that there is strength in our unity.

 

Matt Lindon

2025 WATER YEAR – A Race to the Bottom

Well, another year has come and gone with a weird winter of early drought, three midseason rain events (up to 10,000 feet) and two premature snowmelt runoff cycles, followed by a desperate spring, a desiccated summer, and a dehydrated fall.  Ground cover and Maple/Aspen colors were surprisingly bright considering the drought, with the orange blob in The Cities Bonanza Flats standing out above all again, before I was closed for Moose mating, traffic concerns or just to let the grove rest. 

We received only 13.81 inches of precipitation or 61 percent of average, at the NWS Snyderville gage in my backyard, with a whopping 70 percent of our precipitation coming as snow.  With only one month above average, February, the water year started off slowly and then petered out altogether.  This was the driest year, along with 2020, in 85 years, since the dirty 30’s, according to the extrapolated PRISM database.  If you don’t think the climate is changing, then you don’t get out much or are not paying attention.

So, what does I look like for the great Salt Lake and the Colorado River, the two poster boys of water in the west along with the Klamath that has Native Americans and Salmon fighting with our farmers and people.   I have not seen the local usage charts they usually show on TV because water use has been elevated to embarrassing levels.  Utah’s reservoir levels are showing a drastic decline. Since June 1, the state has drawn down reservoirs at double the normal rate.

In August 2025, the Great Salt Lake is at a historically scary, low level of 4191.3 dropping nearly 2 feet this year already, towards the record-low point of a catastrophic 4188.5, reached in 2022, due to increased demand for water and a very dry summer. Another 2-foot drop is expected by the end of the calendar year.  Peak level in 1986 was 4211.5 before they started pumping it out to the west desert for evaporation.  The average level is 4202 feet.  State officials were particularly concerned about the approaching seasonal low this fall, which could further expose the lakebed, increase air quality issues from dust, harm the ecosystem, and negatively impact the brine shrimp fishing industry. A warm, dry winter is forecast, raising alarm among advocates as significant snowfall is crucial for the lake's recovery.  

In 2022 they made some progress in addressing this issue, including fasting and praying, but then we had a big winer and it was put on the back burner behind gerrymandering, abortion and gun rights.  They had talked about paying farmers not to grow but they need 8 million acre-feet (MAF) to get the lake to a reasonable level of 4198 but that proved too expensive.  They could give all Water Rights holders a 10-20% haircut for the Public Welfare, natural stream environment and recreational opportunities stipulated in the law but that would be political suicide and probably not enough water.  The Utah River Council is suing the State for ignoring Public Welfare and they have precedence in the Mono Lake lawsuit where LA had to give water back to the lake for the public good.  The new plan is to dry up the North half of the lake and drain the water to the south end to submerge the toxic dust, but the north end has all the wildlife and bird migration areas.

The Colorado River flow in 2025 is predicted to be below average, with forecasts from August 2025 indicating the most probable unregulated inflow to Lake Powell will be around 50% of the long-term average.  Early 2025 forecasts showed potential inflow of 81% normal, but dry conditions have since reduced these projections. The typical 25-50 foot, or 2-3 MAF, annual spring bump in Lake Powell level was barely 5 feet, or 1 MAF, this year at elevation 3550.  Lake elevation is predicted to drop to 3520 by next spring’s runoff, only 30 feet or a bad year above the minimum Power Pool elevation, and only 150 feet or 5 MAF, or a bad decade above Dead Pool outlet level. 

There are contractual adjustments that could be made or additional releases from upstream reservoirs like Flaming George to postpone the catastrophe, but it seems inevitable to me.  The overall trend for The River is one of decreasing inflow due to drought and rising temperatures.  Climate Change, ground water depletion and increasing demand, overallocation and disagreements between the upper and lower basin states have plagued The River for years.  Renegotiation of the Colorado River Compact of 1922 is expected next year that should address a river that has been flowing 5 MAF a year lately instead of the 17 MAF originally assumed.  The low-level outlet plumbing at Glen Canyon should be enlarged immediately to maintain some control of flows in the Grand Canyon and allow for compliance with the Colorado Compact of 2022.   All we can do about it is to pray for snow, stop growing grass and reduce fossil fuels.    It is The Tragedy of the Commons vs Game Theory when competing for limited resources.  Cooperation and community are the answers. 

Follow the Water – 4 - Utah – Incidents and Accidents, Threats and Allegations

 

The frantic cry we always hear in the water business is that there is too much ‘paper’ water out there and not enough ‘wet’ water.  That means that there are more prescribed Water Rights than there is actual water for people to use.  That is ideally rectified by the priority system of ‘first in time first in right’ where if you have a senior right you get your water and if you have a later priority date, or junior right, you are out of luck.  That theoretically takes care of drought and Climate Change or long-term drought as the deniers like to call it.  But does it really?  Utah gets about 50 million acre-feet of precipitation from the sky each year, the question is what do we wan to do with it.

When it hits the fan, it is better to be at the top of the ditch with a municipal right and a shovel than anything else.  When push comes to shove, water for people or municipal water usually takes precedence, as it should, and then comes agricultural water and finally industrial uses.  And when ground water runs out you just dig a deeper well and get a bigger pump.  Priority problem solved?  And what about all the billions of dollars the State has paid for the Central Utah Project (CUP) infrastructure to bring Colorado River water from the Uinta mountains to the Wasatch front, or for that matter, the billions they want to spend bringing water from Lake Powell to Saint George, when both those uses have a later, or junior priority date. 

Now that all the free water has been distributed for our mutual beneficial use, and water is more of a commodity to be bought and sold, how do priority dates change with the change of use and location.  Water Rights with early or senior priority dates are much more valuable because they are much less likely to be shut off in a drought.  Is that maximizing beneficial use and fair to all concerned?  Water is also supposed to be distributed by The State Engineer, Teresa Wilhelmsen PE and her Division of Water Rights, for the most beneficial use with respect to the Public Welfare, natural stream riparian environment and recreational opportunities.  That is harder to define than drought or Climate Change.

But our biggest issue now is the vanishing amount of water in the Great Salt Lake and the Colorado River.  Inflow into the lake has been shrinking since Bringham Young took his first drink and upstream use has exploded.  In the 60’s they feared the lake was declining so fast that it would all but disappear.  In the 80’s, during the last bonanza snowpacks before Climate Change kicked in, the lake grew to historical levels flooding railroads, highways, farms and fields.  The Union Pacific railroad told our Governor Norman Bangerter to get control of his lake, or they would leave.  So, Norm ordered some pumps the size of my house and pumped the lake out in the west desert to evaporate.  Problem solved?  But then Climate Change and long-term drought kicked in as snowpack runoff supply decreased, and upstream demand increased.  You can imagine what that does to the price of water. The lake shrank and toxic dust from the exposed lakebed began to blow into Salt Lake and our little Vatican City.  That is bad for Public Welfare. 

Unfortunately, keeping water in a stream or lake for fish, or aesthetics, the environment or just for the fun of it does not constitute a beneficial use so dedicating water to the lake is tricky.  The State Engineer could theoretically give every upstream Water Right holder a 10-20 percent ‘haircut’ on their water right and put that water into the lake but that would be political suicide, and Teresa wants to keep her job.  It would be hard to identify all that saved water all the way to the lake when junior Water Right holders would love to use it, even with the haircut. 

Friends of the lake are suing the state saying that it is not in the best Public Welfare to dry up the lake and create toxic dust storms.  They might have a point since the Friends of Mono Lake sued California for drying up their lake and won on the Public Welfare argument.  But what the State of Utah decided to do, in their infinite wisdom and generosity, is develop funding mechanisms to pay people for their water and let it run to the lake. They would need about 8-million-acre feet* to stabilize the lake at a good level and it started to snow again the next winter, so they have put that project on the back burner.   Tragedy narrowly averted.  Until his year when the drought returned.

The Colorado River is a different story, but the same. There is not enough water.  Or it is being used for the wrong things.  Or they don’t accurately model the conjunctive effect of the depleted groundwater on surface water flows.  The River was divided on paper among all the contiguous states when it supposedly ran 17 million acer feet a year, but then they found it only runs 13.  Recently it has been running 10 and lately only 5-million-acre feet a year.  Utah gets about 10% of whatever it flows and although we do not use all our share yet, there is already much more paper Water Rights allocated for its use, not to mention what we might owe to the Native Americans who have the first priority date of 10,000 years BC. 

The states are now fighting, suing and renegotiating their paper agreements on an ever-decreasing pool of wet water.  There is an exaggerated farmer mentality going on where they each want to use it before they lose it and put it to beneficial use before the next guy.  Things like the Lake Powell Pipeline to Saint George. That will physically make it harder for them to take it away.  So, stay tuned while the paper water, that no one can drink, catches up to the wet water, that no one can afford, for the benefit of all.  In the meantime, keep conserving, eat less meat and play less golf, grow a brown lawn and stop burning stuff. 

 

 

*An acre-foot is one acre (43,560 sqft) or approximately a football field, covered in one foot of water.  That is about 326,000 gallons or enough for 2-4 families per year, depending on the family and year. 

Traffic Flows Like Water

 With apologies to my old roommates and City leaders, Bruce and Candy Erickson, the roads leading to Park City are an embarrassment.  They were of the school that said ‘if you do not build       big roads, people will not drive here’.  I’m a water-guy but traffic flows like water, for politics and money.  I’m here to tell you that they all still drive here, in droves.  Winter, spring, summer and fall, morning noon and night, 224 and 248 are packed with service workers, skiers, students, commuters, tourists and us.  It is time to abandon the old idea that these byways are gardens or parkways or sidewalks or bike paths, they are roads that should move people from what generates them to what attracts them.  Roads are not deterrents or tools, like water and housing, for politicians to limit growth, development or desire.  That is what political spine is for. 

It doesn’t take a half billion dollars of new infrastructure to fix this.  Let’s wisely use the roads we have.  We could do it now with two buckets of paint and restripe the pinch points.  Get the 15-foot planters and islands out of the medians of these roads and get rid of the 20-foot-wide bike lane - shoulders on both sides.  These are highways and not botanical gardens.  Let bikers ride on the bike paths.  Put artistically painted and architecturally aesthetic, flexible divider walls, taller than our oncoming headlights, in the middle to separate traffic and maximize capacity.  Then we can have 4 uninterrupted lanes from Kamas to the Bonanza and Kimball Junction to Deer Valley and Main Street.  From there traffic can split to the various attractions.

 

There can be bus lanes and shoulders or emergency access and snow storage as needed.  Stop messing around with County Ubers and Apps or traffic circles and competing bus systems and just repaint the damn roads.  We cannot afford the luxury of all these unused lanes, medians and shoulders. In Boston, for example, during rush hour everyone drives on the shoulders.   In Aspen they built a mini-Glenwood Canyon to get people up-valley.  In New York they stopped building new roads in the 60’s and maximized the roads they have.  Sometimes, as Freud said, ‘a cigar is a cigar’ and I say, ‘a road is a road’.   

We have rebuilt 248 every year for 5 years where it shrinks down to two lanes by the schools, for tunnels, crossings and pipes, but we have not considered fitting four lanes through there, since UDOT proposed it in 2017 and we respectfully, but foolishly, declined.  Now we are at the bottom of their list and have a low priority.  And 20-30 years ago, we told UDOT we were ‘not fly over type people’ at 224 north onto 80 west and are still stuck with the back-up from Kimball to The Canyons all winter.  Sometimes we are our own worst enemies.  UDOT doesn’t often have time for ‘those people up there’ and they would rather serve the conservatives from Utah County who vote for them and embrace their plans and prejudice.  It is political, and we need to know what to kiss and when to kiss it, especially with Olympic money ostensibly coming due.  UDOT priorities can change in the blink of an eye, depending on whose winking. 

Our new UDOT representative is Commissioner Tom Jacobson who is a lawyer who understands transportation and the political process and is a good guy.  Let’s lean on him for advice and influence.  Better yet we should take over jurisdiction of 224 and 248 and do what we want, as creatively as we can, with flex lane barriers and multi-use shoulders.  The best way to control land is to buy it and the best way to control roads is to own them.  I am embarrassed, we are embarrassed, UDOT should be embarrassed and something must be done, soon.   Let’s work smarter with our representatives and elect sensible people like Diego, Tana or Beth who can take action now for a transportation vision for the Olympics and beyond.  I’m sure both pragmatic Bruce and aesthetic Candy Erickson would approve. 

 

Matthew Lindon, PE

Hydrologist & Traffic Engineer

WaterandWhatever.blogspot.com         

Courage and Cooperation

             I attended a meet-and-greet for friends Diego and Tana the other night.  Last names are not needed for friends and family in our small town.  If you don’t know who they are by now, you haven’t been paying attention.   I was so impressed with the committed people they were and the powerful personality they each exhibited.  Tana is a wile veteran of the Town Council already, after only one term, and she gave us the inside scoop on how things really work, and how they don’t.  Diego is the relative novice with dreams and aspirations but instead of promising us the world as most desperate upstarts do, he outlined his concerns with potential solutions.  Most of all he listened. 

Housing and traffic, new development entitlements and respect for old residents were the theme as usual but there was a tangible sense that it is time to rise above our self-absorption, petty squabbles and differences and get things done.  The Park City Five Way code is; the downhill skier has the right of way, as does the up-hill biker/hiker and the vehicle IN a round-about, but finally and most importantly, have fun and don’t be a dick.  Diego and Tana get this, which is more than I can say about some others. 

With the Olympic pressures already here, this may be our last chance to define the town that we want, instead of the one we can no longer abide.  Wallowing in analysis paralysis, we are continually surprised that every new final study and analysis ends with the need for more study and analysis, while we ignore the educated and objective recommendations of a very professional staff and council.  Eventually it takes temerity and courage to move forward, with a solid master plan but with flexibility to adapt and improvise. 

Inside conflicts and outside pressures must be identified clearly for their intentions and motives that may not be in the best public interest.  Backroom deals or Sate intervention should not decide City or private development entitlements.  It takes candidates with backbone to stand up to these pressures and make decisions to move forward.  These two candidates have the spine and resilience to recognize and address all of the contiguous issues and interests, to get the job done. 

In the end it is about coordination and communication of our entire community of people.  Wasatch and Summit counties have an incredible amount of development on the books that Park City is undoubtably driving.  Deer Valley is doubling in size in the next five or ten years and the affiliated suburbs are stretching from Deer Creek to Echo.  These people are not going to go to Heber or Coalville to go skiing or for dinner.  A free cookie or an App is not going to get them to carpool or get on a bus or gondola.    The gap between local homes and affordable housing is insurmountable and the loss of local character is lamentable. 

We built this town for our families, not for fly by night developers, and we want to stay here.   We need to face these issues together. I believe Tana and Diego have the ability to learn, listen and lead with all the stakeholders’ interests balanced with the common good and social welfare, to keep Park City cool and keep Park City kind.   Vote Tana and Diego August 12, for the new Park City and for the old Park City.

Matthew Lindon, 1979.

Follow the Water - 3 - Park City

 

 

Water use in the Park City area was historically focused on surface water, which was used for agriculture and mining processing. Ground water was a nuisance to mining and was pumped or drained to the surface for disposal.  Now it drains through the mine tunnels and is fed by gravity to our new 120-million-dollar water treatment plant that removes heavy metals such as Arsenic, Mercury, Cadmium and Lead Zeppelin.  Streams have dried as this water has been used in the city and sold to purveyors in the Snyderville Basin to help pay for the new treatment plant.  Everything is a tradeoff.  You don’t get something for nothing.

 

With the modern change from mining and agricultural water use to municipal uses, the demand has shifted from surface water treatment to the capture of cool, clean groundwater.   Municipal wells in the Park City area therefore withdraw water from consolidated rocks, such as the fractured and faulted limestone and sandstone.  These rock formations are locally broken into separate block formations that can inhibit or isolate water flow and withdrawal, which can make finding reliable water difficult.  Water that recharges in the bedrock outcrops in the mountains, typically takes 15 to 40 years to move through the system, although much older water can still be found stored in the underlying bedrock and aquifers.  Because of the low capacity for bedrock ground water storage, the hydrological system is very dependent on the amount of annual precipitation and is therefore sensitive to prolonged drought and climate change.  Less than normal precipitation or overuse can result in substantial groundwater level decline, both in the bedrock (affecting municipal wells), and in the basin fill (affecting stream flow). 

 

In addition, the under-drain effect of the system of mine tunnels below our town also influences surface waters and subsequent ground water flows, inhibiting recharge and draining some water out of the basin toward Jordenelle, East Canyon and Echo, and even Snowbird and Brighton.  Mining related sinkholes, historically opened along Silver Creek and elsewhere, can capture the entire stream and direct it underground towards our aquifers or towards other drainages.   Because of our increased use of surface waters and springs, the local stream flows have diminished and historical recharge to the aquifer have suffered.  Unfortunately, in-stream flows are hard to protect in Utah where only the DNR Divisions of Wildlife and Parks can hold an in-stream right.  Protecting stream flows and establishing a base or minimum flow for water quality and wildlife or for riparian habitat and aesthetics, is difficult in this climate of low supply, high demand, and expensive water rights.  This protection may require cooperation of all the stakeholders and leadership to enable new legislation of in-stream flows. 

 

The public owns the water of the State, and the State Engineer distributes it to all for ‘beneficial use’ and economic development, till it is all gone.  The State Engineer must consider other issues when approving a water right, such as availability, interference, speculation, economic feasibility, recreation, natural stream environment and ‘public welfare.’  Fish and flowing water unfortunately are not considered a ‘beneficial use’ by the State Engineer and public welfare is hard to define.    But if the people lead, the leaders will follow.  It is we, who dictate what the ‘public welfare’ is, that must be protected by The State Engineer and our legislators.  We must send policy and law makers a strong message that we value clean, flowing water and the riparian environment that contribute to the quality of life that we all cherish.  Clearly, drying up the Great Salt Lake or The Colorado river is not good for public welfare.

 

The changing picture of the future of the Park City water resources is full of challenges.  This is a system, surely affected by man and climate, which is a system out of balance.  Our water supply is now being taxed to its limits both in water quantity and water quality.  Park City’s historical punitive-conservation rates have been repealed recently, at the request of some fat cats, allowing big users to waste water at the expense of small users who conserve.  Water flows downhill, but it also flows towards money.  How much will we pay for good water when we are thirsty?  What are the full costs of our consumption?  Water is an inelastic commodity and when we need it, price is not an issue.   Our affluence enables us to access the water within our basin and reach beyond its borders for augmentation, but it also inhibits our desire and ability to live within our natural basin means, as John Wesley Powell encouraged us to do more than one hundred and fifty years ago. 

 

We need to consider the needs and rights of our neighbors, the cost of our desires to the streams and wildlife as well as the limits of the natural systems that sustain us.  If we work at it, together we can live in harmony with our environment and with each other.  Picture the Native American Utes at their summer camp in our basin only 200 years ago, with grasses up to the belly of a Bison, a hydrologic system in balance.  Let that be our guide and goal.  Sustainability will require good science and engineering, legislation and regulation, conservation, and cooperation, which will respect the limits of nature and our environment and reveal the priorities and character of this great community.   

 

Keep Park City Kind.  Keep Park City Cool. 

 

 

 

Matthew Lindon, PE   

                                                         

 WaterandWhatever.blogspot.com                                                                                       

Follow the Water 2 – The Snyderville Basin

Follow the water on its frantic gravity trip downhill, not knowing where it is flowing, but going there directly.  The stream in my backyard, Willow Creek, still flows wildly during snowmelt season, recharging the local aquifer along with its related wetland but it shuts down abruptly when the snow is gone and our local water companies start capturing it for peak summer irrigation use.  Local lawn and garden irrigation increases water demand on our municipal suppliers tenfold but Willow Creek recovers nicely in the fall when irrigation ceases.  The diminishment of surface stream flows also inhibits the recharge of the meadows and Park areas that serve as a storage sponge for late summer stream flows, like The Snyderville Meadow, Park Meadows, Deer Valley, Heber, Midway and the Rhodes Valley of Kamas.  The groundwater discharge areas and wetland behind my house flow nicely all spring in conjunction with Willow Creek and the high local water table.  As the creek flow abates in the summer and autumn, the discharge stops and the wetland dries up along with the local aquifer, which does not recover until next spring.

The Snyderville Basin geology is bound by folded and faulted sedimentary rocks, mostly sandstone, quartzite, shale, and limestone to the west and south, and by the Keetley volcanics, tuffs and breccias to the east.  The basin is filled with unconsolidated alluvial (stream) and colluvial (glacial) deposits, as thick as 275 feet deep.  These deposits are typically coarse grained at the mountain interface, which is great for recharge, but are unfortunately fine grained in the basin and therefore do not yield water as easily as many of the unconsolidated fill basins in Utah like Salt Lake City or Heber. 

 

The Silver Springs behind the Park City Nursery and Church is the source of most of the culinary water for our subdivision of the same name.  It typically flows about 500 gallons per minute (gpm) of cool, clean mountain water, suitable for bottling, although it is considered relatively ‘hard’ because of the limestone source.  This flow can increase to as much as 5,000-15,000 gpm in the spring because of surface snowmelt runoff infiltration.  This high flow, however, is not usable due to water quality issues. Recently the springs ran red at high water because of golf course construction above it in the Nugget or Navajo Sandstone.  In our effort to get more golf we nearly ruined our perfect source of gravity-fed spring water.  Luckily, the spring cleared up in a few months, on it’s own, and has not run red since. In addition, the Silver Springs Subdivision was built in a wetland, before that was illegal,  and has an extensive underdrain system that depresses the local water table, so our homes do not flood, or float and our foundations do not implode.  The underdrain system flows several hundred gpm in the spring and never really drops below 100 gpm all year round, draining a billion pounds of water safely away by gravity every year.  Some homeowners want to abandon this underdrain system, due to maintenance costs, at our own puerile.  This illustrates the conjunctive relationship between surface water, groundwater, nuisance water and casual water along with water quality concerns in our local neighborhoods.  Hydrology, along with politics, is local. 

 

Our population in the Snyderville Basin is expected to double in the next 25 years, bringing with it challenges and choices between conservation and consumption, balance and blind ignorance, sustainability, and selfishness.    Snow making water demands are increasing and even though this use is more like winter water storage in the snowpack than depletion or consumption of the resource, it is somewhat indulgent and energy intensive.  A quarter section of local agriculture alfalfa can use as much water as Silver Springs Subdivision and our big landscape trees drink more free water from the near surface aquifer than we pay for through our water meters.  Much of the local mine water is being collected, used and sold, drying up local streams.  There is no more casual, free or extra water. 

 Importing new water into the basin is expensive but necessary and critical as we outgrow the local supply that we have. A punitive conservation rate has been in place for years that cuts our use and the costs to reasonable homeowners but as much as sixty percent of our water is pumped over Promontory from the Weber River, ten to fifteen miles away. There is a huge pumping station there with a full-time, live-in caretaker to watch the huge pumps.  Water is power and energy, and vice-versa.   Local private water companies are running dry and need to buy this expensive water for millions of dollars per year.  They are starting to realize the value, worth and cost of water.  Their water bills are going up.  Something has to give.

 

We can over pump our wells and import expensive new water to the basin until the cows-come-home but eventually, we will have to balance supply and demand.  This will involve charging a price reflecting the cost of what water is worth, so we conserve it and recognize its value. Despite years of consternation and conflict that wasted time, money and water there has been recent foresight and success.    There has been an effort to regionalize and coordinate the wholesale and retail companies in the basin for efficiency, redundancy, and reliability of our shared resources.  With prudence and good leadership this is possible, but only with cooperation and conservation by all of us. Brown is beautiful.  

 

Keep Park City Kind.  Keep Park City Cool.

waterandwhatever.blogspot.com

Share the Trails

 

After several cool, late spring days in the dessert riding on our own private White Rim Trail on the Lower Flint Trail in the Glen Canyon Recreation, we had exhausted the deliberate micro hikes in the slot canyons around our camp and decided we decided to head north to and higher for some cooler climes.  At the top of Indian Canyon between Price and Duchesne we found a nice cool and quiet campground on Reservation Ridge at 9400 feet that we never knew existed.  We congratulated ourselves for knowing how to read real maps and for finding the secret camping destinations in Utah that would take our entire lives to explore. 

After dinner I took a reconnaissance loop around the campground and, on the advice of some French Moto riders, I found an old ATV logging road.  It was technical and rocky, thin and steep but I put my e-bike in Turbo mode and was able to power up the 45-degree slopes without flipping over backwards, mainly because of 40 years of riding experience.  I decided it was ridable and that I would explore it the next morning when heart was fresh and my eyes were clear.   

My eyes are bad from falling on my head too much and do not process well dynamically, which causes me to fall on my head more, so it as a compounding effect, like compound interest of my brain.  My eyes can’t focus quickly so I have learned to look further up the trail.   My pulse had dropped to 30 beats per minute (bpm) a few years ago and my four chambers were uncoordinated.  So, they gave me a pace-maker that topped out at an orchestrated 120 bpm.  That didn’t allow me to ride very much but over the years I have convinced them to pick it up to 150 bpm.  I’ll buy the damn batteries.   The only downside is that if I exceed 150 bpm I can black out for a half minute or so, which is inconvenient, at least.  Without my Class-1 e-bike I would not be able to ride at all, and that is unacceptable. Mountain biking is apparently very dangerous, but I need to get out.

The next day after breakfast, I took off on the trail that was very steep, challenging and technical.  It wound through some great north facing forests and south facing clear cuts and I had to blaze some deadfall now and then to open the trail. It trended generally to the Northeast, and I figured it would contour around eventually to the campground entry road.  As I got further out, I realized that I was burning up battery power quickly on the unreal steep climbs and pushing my pulse rate.  I slowed my roll to save power and keep my pulse reasonable.  I soon realized that I had burned more than half my battery and therefore was unable to turn around and go back the way I came.  I became nervous and it became an official adventure at that point.  No one would find me out here. 

When worried I usually consider the worst-case scenario and then admit that, like a million times before, I would figure it out.  Comforted by that realization, I powered on.  I took some wrong turns and got lost a few more times but tended in the right direction and right before I ran out of juice, I found the road that led back to camp.  Tragedy narrowly averted, I pulled into camp where my wife and dog were, glad to see me, and I them. 

The point is, I would not be riding a bike without help and I would not have ridden this trail without a fair bike and some good skill for the great experience that makes me feel alive and nineteen again.  Some of my young or healthy friends will ride with me, as long as I ride in the back and do all the talking, so they don’t have to try to keep up.  Others are less inclusive and can’t stomach a ‘cheater’ that might challenge the exclusive right to trials to only those who are healthy, wealthy and wiled.  I just relish the opportunity to get out-and-about, see some nature, have an adventure and get some moderate exercise that won’t drain my battery or break my heart.  Ride on my friends, share the trails.  Ride a mile on my bike.

“I am Exalted by Water”

 

I am defined by water. I can’t imagine life without it.  I come from water and return to it whenever I can, daily, seasonally, yearly, constantly.  I was born on an Island, surrounded by water.  A Long Island near The City island.  My grandfather and father were in Public Water Works.  My first job was painting fire hydrants for my dad, Public Water Works.  My favorite job was being a lifeguard, languid and bittersweet.  My first sport was swimming, fast and furious.  My first friend was a high diver, daring and death defying.  My first love was a swimmer, warm, smooth and wet. My first broken arm required 9 casts since I kept jumping in the water with them on, lucky for me my uncle was my orthopedic.  My first major was Fluid Mechanics, Bernoulli, Newonian.  My first occupation was hydrology and hydraulics - surface water - repairing dams and rivers in the desert.  My retirement is spent partially on the central west coast where the sea is clean, blue and cold and I can watch it every day, even if I don’t go in much anymore.  Water encompasses and embodies me.  It is who I am.  We are all something.

 

My first recollection was of my dad taking me out in the ocean on his shoulders at Jones Beach and then launching me on a wave to ride towards the shore.  I must have been 6 or 8 and fearless.  The feeling of the ocean pitching me forward swiftly, all the way to the beach was incomprehensible. It felt alive, powerful and a little menacing.  Dad showed me how to catch waves myself, looking for sets with size and shape, and catching an early one before there was too much water on the beach.  It opened a new independent world to me, similar to learning to cross the street or tie my own shoes.  With his supervision, I moved out into deeper water to catch better waves, without losing my toehold of the seafloor that kept me from washing out to sea with the mysterious Under Toad.  Emboldened, I dropped into a big one but I was late and inside and It flipped me up the curl and crashed me down to the floor and sat on my chest for what felt like eternity.  Sputtering to the surface eventually and crying for my mother, I raced to the shore but found my dad there laughing and smiling incongruously.  WTF I said with my limited lexicon as he shook a mound of sand out of my little red surf shorts.  He asked me how I liked the ‘washing machine’ and I knew instantly what he meant.  He said next time drop my head and hands and go out the back door.  I asked him if there was anything else I needed to know and he just said yes.  I wasn’t sure what that meant but would figure it out after a PBJ sandwich, a Coke and the half-hour mandatory rest that seemed to be the prudent law of the beach. 

Conversely, I was swimming with my stepdaughter in big surf one day and she got caught in a riptide.  She wasn’t a strong swimmer, and I didn’t want her to be alone, so I followed her out.  She was besides herself due to the lack of control and distance building from the shore.  I calmed her down as we tread water and asked her calmly what she thought we should do.  She wanted to swim to an adjacent jetty and climb out.  We looked at the jetty and saw big waves cashing violently on it so that was out of the question.  I told her it was a rip current that would eventually dissipate and let us go in deeper water, but we couldn’t fight it. 

The lifeguards looked oblivious so I told her to swim parallel to the beach with me until we could find an inbound current.  We did this for a while with me asking her periodically if she was all right, and she would say yes, until she didn’t and said she was struggling and going down in the turbulent waves.  I told her swimming is 90% relaxing and calm breathing and I had her float on her back with her hands on my shoulders while I swam slowly.  She laid her head back and breathed rhythmically, trying to relax and recover.  Finally, we felt a current flowing towards the beach, and we turned and rode the waves in.  As we walked from the water a lifeguard ran over and asked if we were ok. I said YES and she said NO but we walked back to our blanket for some tuna sandwiches, a beer and the mandatory half hour beach nap.  After a while I asked her if she wanted to get back on the horse and go for a swim.  She said NO, never again. 

 

After freshman year of high school, I reported to our summer swim Club on the Great South Bay for our first practice.  There was a new saltwater swimming pool built between the docks of the bay and the nautical Clubhouse and lawn.  After practice I walked past the women’s locker room on the canal and out swung my old fiend Gina Sweeny in a bright yellow homemade polka dot bikini.  I didn’t recognize her out of her one-piece racing suit and she swung her hips that could sink ships, and brand knew tips way up firm and high, like most young women know how to do, instinctually, like holding a baby on their hip.  I had been in a carpool with Gina for years and knew she was crazy and funny, the best swimmer in the Club and exactly 10 months younger than me, when that was import in swimming and life.  Swimmers are not like racehorses, all born on Jan 1.  This woman Regina was all new to me and I was coming of the age where I would appreciate it. She was an athletic Goldie Hawn with a butterfly upper body and strong legs.  Va va va boom.  Wasting no time, for if you snooze you lose, I asked her to go for a swim, and we spent the rest of the day playing water ballet and swimming through each other’s legs blowing bubbles and laughing innocently.  We would spend the next four years growing up together swimming and sailing and going back behind the boats to smooch.  She loved Cat Stephens, Winnie the Pooh and me, not necessarily in that order.  We all love something. I eventually grew up and moved away from Gina to landlocked Indiana and worse yet, Utah.  All the kids still swim and sing:

 

Gina Sweeny had a ten-foot weenie,

And she showed it to the guy next door.

He thought it was a snake,

And wrapped it with a rake,

Now it’s only five foot four.

 

I also had a great friend, appropriately named Willie Hooper, who was a great swimmer and diver, football, basketball and baseball player.  Not William or Bill or Will but Willie.  With rugged Brad Pitt good looks, a baseball build, blonde hair and blue eyes, he personified and espoused ‘cool’ and was funny as snot.  We would bounce on the high diving boards all day long, doing clown dives and serious dives in our Bonner Bob, banana hammock Speedos.  One day we decided to skip swim practice and smoke surreptitiously in the white rocking chairs on the screen porch, incognito.  It was a blast watching the others work until big coach Reese snuck up behind us and banged our heads together and made us swim a double practice that day. 

When Willie wore a Dungaree Jacket with his Varsity A letter from Amityville High School on it, my dad asked him what the A was for, Willie looked down at the letter, perplexed for the moment, and then smiled and said, ‘A is for Outstanding’.  Not the sharpest tool in the shed but he was an outstanding guy with a big heart.

Despite him smoking 2 packs a day at age 12, my only goal was to beat him in the breast-stroke and in our last race we tied for third.  When we both sauntered up to the podium the coach was confused about what to do with the one ribbon.  Willie took it and ripped it in half and gave me the top part with a grin. He lost the Club Swimmer of the Year that summer by one half a point, but he didn’t care because Gina won it instead and we both loved Gina.  She accepted the trophy that winter in a homemade yellow polka-dot dress with Willie, in a sporty white turtleneck, at her side.  ‘I don’t recognize you with your clothes on’,’ we liked to say in the winter.

One day I came home from a two-week wrestling camp and found him in the Clubhouse smooching with Gina.  I asked him what was going on and he said he was making out with my girlfriend.  I said OK but did they want to go swimming when they were done.  We all got up and swam for the rest of the day and summer like nothing had ever happened.  And it didn’t.

Years later the three of us were drinking by candlelight at the Club on the night of the NYC blackout.  We went home to Willie’s house, across from the Amityville Horror house so we could ring their bell and run like old times, and Willie could show us his new motorcycle.   We all hopped on it to make believe we were riding.  Of course, we lost our balance and fell to the floor of the garage, becoming harmlessly pinned under the bike and laughing hysterically.  Willie’s dad came out to ask what we thought we were doing and Willie chortled that we were just going for a ride.  We were locked in the garage for the rest of the night, but we didn’t really mind.  Willie was haunted by fire and smoke and burned out young at 42, from lung cancer.  We all have something.  But we all still swim and sing along:

 

Every party has a pooper,

That’s why we invited you,

party pooper, Willie Hooper.