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