Applications by the Davis County geologist were approved by the County Commission this week for three state grants, including one to study the Rudd Creek mudslide that devastated parts of Farmington in May 1983.
Geologist Mike Lowe is applying for a $10,000 grant to study the capacity of the Rudd Creek channel and debris basin. Lowe is challenging a finding by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.FEMA says the potential flow of mud, debris, and sediment down the Rudd Creek channel is more than twice what the channel and debris basin at the foot of the mountain in Farmington can handle.
Lowe disputes that. He says much of the potential slough has already come down, the channel has been cleaned out and the debris basin is adequate to handle what he estimates the potential flow could be.
Lowe is also applying for a $5,000 grant to install a weather station in the Mueller Park area above Bountiful. The grant will buy the station, but not pay for its installation or maintenance, he told the commission.
Part of the station's function will be to monitor conditions along the route of the proposed high pressure natural gas pipeline that may be built there.
Lowe's third grant application is for $3,000 to update and expand a study of floods, debris flows, and mudslides in Davis County from 1850 to the present. One partial history already exists, Lowe said, but needs to be expanded.
He told the commission he wants to study old newspaper accounts and other sources for personal recollections of the disasters, mapping the location and extent of the flows, and telling some of their costs in human terms.