Upon completing a pipeline into Park City Parkites could finally have secure drinking water until the town gets fully developed.
City Hall in the 1990s reserved about 2,500 acre-feet of water from Weber Basin Water Conservancy District in Smith and Morehouse reservoir east of Oakley, Park City Mayor Dana Williams said.
Officials will recognize the completion of the pipeline into the Snyderville Basin at a ribbon cutting Friday at 11 a.m. at the Rockport Church in Wanship.
However, officials must still extend the pipeline into the Park City limits.
“The pipeline is finished up into Promontory, but it is not done in terms of the line from Promontory into the city,” Williams said, adding that the city worked with Summit County’s Mountain Regional Water Special Service District to build the Lost Creek Canyon Pipeline.
The project will extend into Park City within two years, he explained.
“It will probably come in along the Rail Trail right of way,” Williams said.
A plant at Quinn’s Junction will treat culinary water before it gets pumped into the city.
“It gives us the ability to use untreated water for irrigating playing fields. So we aren’t using treated city water for irrigating soccer fields, baseball fields and football fields,” Williams said.
More than half of Park City’s water is currently from the Judge and Spiro mineshafts, he said.
“If there was ever an event in either of those mineshafts, having this redundancy in the system is extra protection in terms of long-term water,” Williams said. “One of my biggest concerns ever since I took office is the fact that close to 60 percent of the city’s water comes out of two mineshafts.”
The mayor stressed that the water rights obtained by the city were not originally earmarked for irrigating agriculture.
“The water that Park City is getting through this, is water that was made available through the expansion of the Smith and Morehouse reservoir,” Williams said. “I think people need to realize, unlike some of the issues that are going on in Southern Utah, this is not the conversion of agricultural water rights to municipal use.”
Officials will still stress water conservation each summer.
“We’re still going to be trying to get the community to stop drowning their lawns,” Williams said. “[The pipeline] does give us a little more breathing room, but I don’t for a second want the community to think, ‘Oh, now we can water every day.’ The conservation aspect will not go away just because we have this other source.”
Meanwhile, Mountain Regional Water Special Service District receives about 2,500 acre feet of water from the latest deal.
“To the West Side, it’s quite important,” Summit County Commissioner Ken Woolstenhulme said. “This should be the final straw for water going to the West Side of the county.”
Elected officials have discussed the Rockport pipeline since he moved to Park City 28 years ago, Summit County Commissioner Bob Richer said.
“I have worked on that for six years and I was glad that we were able to get together on this,” Richer said in a telephone interview.