A first of its kind project to save Utah’s water supply features divers
What do you do with aging infrastructure that is nearly 100 feet below water at one of the state’s most critical water supply reservoirs that is also a huge recreational asset and vital to the environment?
You refurbish it via a $100 million, yearslong project that is a first of its kind in Utah, utilizing barges, huge cranes, precast cement slabs that fit together like a puzzle, a team of engineers and divers who do their construction work in the “wet” — deep below the surface of Deer Creek Reservoir.
This type of work that began in earnest this spring and will wrap up three years from now stems from 80-year-old guard gates that facilitate the release of water downstream into the Provo River.
Some of the parts on the gates are no longer still manufactured or have to be specifically made.
The Provo River Water Users Association convened the project after noticing several years ago some irregularities on the gates’ opening and closing.
“That’s what really spurred this entire project,” said Dave Faux, land facilities manager for the association. “We wanted to be ahead of the game and do something before the gate absolutely fails.”
How to fix Deer Creek Reservoir
Faux said a lot of planning had to happen at the front end of the project with design and engineering work to fix a problem confounded by the reservoir’s critical nature.
“We’ve got environmental concerns we need to worry about. We have to worry about making sure we’re maintaining a water supply to 1.5 million people and a lot of water moves through the power plant, through the dam. So there is a lot of things to consider for that five-year process. We came to the conclusion that it is going to be far better to do this in the water than to drain the reservoir or mess up the ecosystem.”
The project at completion will also have an improved chance of withstanding vulnerability posed by the invasive quagga mussel, in which there was a scare at Deer Creek several years ago.
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Brad Jorgensen, operations and engineering manager for the association, said the concrete panels that have a total weight of 250,000 pounds are assembled on land.
They are then pushed over to the barge by tugboats and then hoisted into the water from Sailboat Beach day-use area, the staging area for construction.
Jorgensen said it is similar to what a home’s foundation would need.
A team of six divers enter the water one by one and each is submerged for about 90 minutes completing the task at hand. The operation is monitored by a remote operated vehicle before the next diver goes in, and then the next.
Deer Creek is not unlike other examples of intricate water infrastructure in need of repair, with construction upgrades that have occurred at the dam that impounds Yuba, and DMAD in Millard County, the drawing down at Echo for seismic upgrades and raising the Arthur V. Watkins Dam at Willard Bay.
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Aqueducts along the Wasatch Front that rest on or cross the Wasatch Fault are also on their way for much needed attention with the Utah Legislature granting a financial assist to keep those water systems safe.
Both men said there is another good reason to not drain Deer Creek to facilitate the project work: the uncertainty inherent with Utah’s water year and what it will deliver.
“We were very concerned with being able to fill that reservoir if we were to have drained it,” Faux said.
More information can be found on the project’s website.
