Park City Water Sidebars

Sustainability

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 and drained to the surface for disposal.  Water from the mines was used in town for many years until we discovered that its quality was questionable for human consumption.   Water supply now includes importation of treated surface water from the Weber River to augment the harvest of clean groundwater from deep wells and springs. 

Our population in the Snyderville Basin is expected to double again in the next 20 years bringing with it challenges and choices between conservation and consumption, balance and blind ignorance, sustainability and selfishness.  Water demands are expected to out strip supply by 50 to 100 percent over those periods.  Importing new water into the basin is necessary and critical as we outgrow the supply that we have.  Fortunately water flows towards money but eventually we will have to balance our supply with our demand. 

Climate and Water

Park City is an alpine - high desert climate, situated at the northern tip of the Colorado Plateau at just the right latitude and elevation to enjoy alpine winters and sunny dry summers.  Drift 100 miles north and you are in the cold, cloudy continental climate of the Tetons and Snake River.  Drift 100 miles south and you are in the sweltering Great American Desert and the Canyon country.   Here in the rain shadow of the Wasatch Mountain we enjoy the Great Salt Lake effect and the Greatest Snow on Earth and the climate is just right. 

John Wesley Powell, Grand Canyon Explorer and founder of the U.S. Geological Survey, recommended to Congress in 1878 that western drainage basins should live on solely the precipitation that falls in their individual geographic basin, encouraging wise use and conservation.  Of course Congress categorically dismissed Powell’s sustainability sentiments and set about re-plumbing the rivers and waters of the west.    Park City continues that tradition by importing new water to the basin from the Weber and Provo Rivers.

Water Geology

The Snyderville Basin geology is bounded by folded and faulted sedimentary rocks, mostly sandstone, quartzite, shale and limestone to the west and south, and by the Keetley volcanics, tuff and breccia 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 course 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. 

Municipal wells in the Park City area therefore withdraw water from the underlying 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 ground water difficult.  This water, which recharges in the bedrock outcrops high in the mountains, typically takes 15 to 40 years to move through the system, although much older water is still being mined from our underlying bedrock and aquifers. 

Park City Water Personalities

Whiskey is for drinking, Water is for fighting. That pithy maxim is still true throughout the west where our shrinking water supply easily outstrips our insatiable demand.  It is especially true in Park City where our individual perspectives and priorities are as different and diverse as our personalities.  The recent regionalization of the Snyderville Basin’s water by the Weber Basin Water Conservancy District has brought cooperation and collaboration to the area but the future still remains challenging with our explosive growth, changing climate and increasing demands.

 

Luckily there are two dynamic and innovative Water Czars in Park City, Clint McAfee and Andy Armstrong, managing the local water for the City and the County respectively.  They deal with the day to day operation of our water systems but also with the planning for the forecasted future supply and demand.  We caught up with them the other day over a glass of cold, clear, clean water and here is some of what they had to say;

“We live in a desert, for hell’s sake” shouts Andy Armstrong, Manager of the Mountain Regional and colorful, self-proclaimed water curmudgeon. “Don’t let the snow packed ski resorts and Kentucky Blue Grass fool you, we get 22 inches of precipitation a year here in the Park – that’s less than half of what they get in Chicago, Seattle or New York.  We have a very limited natural resource and an almost unlimited market growth potential here.  Water is like petrol, water is gold.” 

Andy is a native Utahan from hardy Pioneer stock, and has lived and worked as an engineer in the Park City area for over 30 years.   As a modern day renaissance man, Andy is a skier, a hunter/gatherer, an artisan, a voracious reader and a river rat but his passion is with negotiation and the Art of the Deal.   Three weeks out of open heart surgery, Andy leans back, undaunted, in his comfortable windowless office, festooned with his impressionistic photographs of rivers and clouds, water and rock.  “Utah has some of the highest per capita water usage in the country, because of its climate and because it’s subsidized water is so darn cheap.  It is tough to build a modern day water company in this climate and culture.”

 

Starting in 2000, Andy helped Mountain Regional stitch together dozens of struggling private water companies over the past ten years, in a local regionalization and sometimes controversial effort to serve western Summit County.  Largely unsubsidized, they incurred a mountain of debt to do this and immediately instituted a punitive, conservation rate that puts Salt Lake, LA and Las Vegas to shame.  The tiered rate encourages wise use, where water wasters pay as much as 20 dollars per 1000 gallons.  Mountain Regional now has one of the lowest per capita usage rates in the state, using almost half of the average.  “The mostly affluent customers here were not immune to the costs and were immediately responsive.”  “People will still spend more on wine than on water in Park City”, Andy proudly laments.

In 2014 Mountain Regional signed an agreement with the Weber Basin WCD, Park City Municipal Company and privately owned Summit Water Distribution Company to globally regionalize water distribution in this area and increase the reliability, redundancy and efficiency of their systems.  Mountain Regional embraced this global regionalization and now markets its sizable surplus water stores and pumping capacity to the other companies when needed. Mountain Regional can now bring 8800 acre feet from the Weber River near Rockport Reservoir to this basin, enough to service 12,000 homes.  “By maximizing our existing water contracts” Andy says, “we can delay expensive new water projects and together we can qualify for cheap Federal funding for those future projects”. 

Realizing that water flows uphill with power, towards money, Andy and engineer Doug Evans oversaw an energy savings program designed to avoid peak power spiking and focus on off peak power usage.  Mountain Regional pumps much of its water from deep wells and from the Weber River, 1000 feet over the mountain at Promontory, to service its 3500 clients and to ‘wheel’ water to Park City and Summit Water Company.  Andy says, “We paid $300,000 less last year for power than we did 6 years ago, pumping twice as much water, as energy prices steadily climbed”.  Andy attributes this to the “advanced automatic SCADA operating system set up by Chris Braun that ties together communication and operation of all their sources, wells, tanks and pumps, which are coordinated with a real time computerized system model set up by engineer Scott Morrison.   Overall we have a small but efficient staff that is all on the same page, gets the company concept and can think on their feet.”

 

Andy admits that balancing water sales and conservation is like “wielding a schizophrenic, double edge sword”.  He welcomes conservation and the local and basin wide regionalization that makes us more resilient to growth, climate change and drought with a wider portfolio of sources and supply.   He looks forward to a future where there are even more incentives to use power and water wisely, on retail and wholesale basis, He looks for a “consistency of green, where people conserve on their energy and water usage and minimize their waste, to save money and the limited resources of this high desert”. 

Cool as a cucumber, Clint Mc Affee has a very full plate but is unflappable as the Director of Water and Streets for the Park City Municipal Corporation.  “ I have a lot of great people working with me that allow me to focus on the big picture and the future and make good decisions that allow me to sleep at night”  Clint is a next generation manager who relies on effective delegation, technology and communication to get him through his hectic days and nights.  A competitive biker and avid skier, Clint values his free time and peace of mind as much as the rest of us.

Clint was raised in the Cache Valley of Northern Utah but moved to Park City in 1997 with two friends and a dog.  They lived the ski bum dream in a frozen RV at the trailer park on Rasmussen road.  He landed his first job on the snowmaking crew at PCMR, which he maintained while studying civil engineering at the University of Utah.  “I loved the outdoor action and adventure of the job and relished studying for my hydraulics class next to a snowmaking pipe flowing 3000 gallons per minute at 600 psi.” 

He got his professional start when he was hired, fresh out of school, by Fred Duberow, the Godfather of Park City water.  Fred had authored the original Water Resource study for Park City in 1983 that madly suggested that the City look to the Weber River for new water.  Clint eventually became involved with water treatment design and became a project manager for the City when the Quinn’s Junction treatment plant was being built.  As cream rises to the top, Clint rapidly rose up through the ranks to become the New-Age Park City Director of Water.

“Regionalization occurred in a nick of time in 2013-2014” says Clint “when Park City was at their end of their water supply rope”.  Imported water from the Weber and Provo Rivers now accounts for 30% of the City’s water supply portfolio that also includes 2 mine sources, 3 wells and one spring”.  “Park City now has a 15 mile straw to Rockport reservoir and can import a reliable 2900 acre feet or almost a billion gallons per year to the City.” 

“The moral of the story is that Weber Basin WCD is now the Mother Ship that delivers more than 200,000 acre feet of water throughout Northern Utah so it is imperative that we guide the process here to fit the unique Park City community needs.”  Conventional water wisdom says that ‘being at the top of the drainage with a shovel is better than being at the bottom end with all the Water Rights in the world.’  Clint says that his “next challenge is to secure upstream water storage to assure a reliable, redundant and flexible yield to meet the highest predicted demands of the future and help control our own destiny.”

With a comfortable water quantity supply in place Clint has been able to tackle his highest priority – water quality.  “Although the water flowing from the Judge and Spiro mine tunnels meets EPA standards it does not meet Park City Standards.”  Concerns about tunnel levels of Antimony, Arsenic and heavy metals became a growing issue.   So in 2013 the untreated Judge Tunnel source, which flows from 600 - 2500 gpm, was turned back to the creek in Daly Canyon and water quality throughout Old Town was improved in less than one month.”  Plans for future treatment of the Judge and Spiro water, even if it is left in the creek, are planned for the future.  “This will not be cheap but when an Old Town waiter asks us if we want local tap or bottled water, I want to be sure we are all comfortable with the local tap water.”

Clint’s other passion and priority is “water conservation that can put off or even eliminate the need for expensive future expansion projects.”  Park City instituted a punitive, tiered conservation rate in 2004, similar to Mountain Regional, which increased the price of water and decreased consumption.  Clint also introduced a high tech Water Smart Customer Portal program that “allows for real time monitoring and reporting of individual water to promote awareness and water use knowledge that allows customers to make informed decisions.”  The system can actually send customers a warning email when the usage patterns reveal a small leak or excessive seasonal usage.  “Customers can now see their usage compared to their neighbors that in a competitive conservation minded town such as Park City can be highly motivating.”   Clint hopes to “balance wise use with the sustainability of the Park City look and lifestyle we all love.  We don’t want to look like Vegas”

Clint sees the changing climate as a big future challenge with “an increasing need for snowmaking water during more the frequent drought years (like 2012, 2013,2014, 2015…) and to combat the foretasted rising snow level.”  Snowmaking is where he started and he knows that “our snowmaking peak demands will rival out summertime irrigation demands.”  He has also “initiated a Long Range Finance Model to help plan for the infrastructure and technological innovation needed to keep water prices reasonable and reliable supplies flowing.” 

Clint also sees his continued role with the City as “helping them adjust to; the regionalization and the growing regulations, the exploding population and popularity of the City and the increase in sophistication and awareness of his constituents”.  Clint “welcomes the ambitious plans of Vail Associates, Mountain Accord and One Wasatch that will steer us into future.”  He is cool with these future challenges.  Cool as a cucumber. 

  

We are fortunate to have such professionals guiding the evolution and development of our water resources.  If there is power in personality, we are dealing with a powder keg with Andy and Clint.  They have brought us from the uncertain past to a reliable present, from a washed up mining town to a world class destination resort.  We will need them to help navigate the contentious and combative water landscape of the future, with foresight and wisdom, humor and tenacity, for sustainable solutions.

"Relicts of a Beautiful Sea"

Relicts of a Beautiful Sea, Survival, Extinction and Conservation in a Desert World

By; Christopher J. Norment, SUNY Brockport
From; The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill NC.
Reviewed by Matt Lindon of the Friends of the Park City Library

 “Relicts of a Beautiful Sea” is an elegant story of several sublime but significant endangered species including salamanders, toads and three types of Pup-fish, eking out an existence in Death Valley, Owens Valley, Amorgosa Valley and the White Mountains of Western Nevada.  Their prehistoric battle with earths changing geology and climates pales in comparison with their recent battles with enterprising humans, their good ideas and bad intentions, hell bent on re-plumbing the west and making the desert bloom.  Only the intervention of the government and private conservation groups has saved these species by reclaiming the land, their historical hydrology and their unique habitat. 

Noment, a professor of environmental science and biology at the State University of New York at Brockport, masterfully tells the age old story of western Nevada, where sparse springs were quickly identified and developed for human benefit and eventually abandoned when they played out.  It is story that is still alive today as we continue to exploit these delicate water sources for short term gain without much consideration of the long term consequences.  ‘The desert’, Norment writes, ‘is defined by the absence of water, and yet in the desert there is water enough, if you live properly.’

Every section on an each individual species starts with a fairly prosaic treatment of the species trials and tribulations, which can gloss over even the most scientific readers, but quickly evolves into finely written ruminations about general solitude and seclusion, tenacity and persistence.   Norment even weaves a little Whitman, Lopez, Abbey, Santayanna and Springsteen in there as he waxes personally, philosophically and lyrically about habitat and humanity, science and sustainability.  It is also an enduring story of isolation and loneliness, for these species, the author and our humanity.   

I have personally worked for years with Ash Meadows National Wildlife Reserve, attempting to recreate the historical hydrology and habitat conducive to saving the Amorgosa Pupfish.  Saving Nemo we call it for marketing purposes.  It is great to read this outside perspective, from an erudite but objective east coast academic, on our choices, priorities and the restoration work currently being done.  Norment helps explain the cost and the worth of these species, and why we should care.

 As Utah and Las Vegas continue to fight over developing the water in the connected ancient aquifers on our shared border,  we conveniently forget that when we start pumping that water, the surface springs will dry up first and the Pupfish will go belly up.  Aquifer over pumping is a common problem out west and the unintended consequences are often ignored.  Saving Nemo puts a face on this practice and “Relicts of a Beautiful Sea” puts a voice to it.  Bravo.