Imagine an earthquake taking out an aqueduct because it crosses several areas of the Wasatch Fault.
The result would be the cessation of the delivery of treated culinary and secondary water for 400,000 Davis County area residents.
“It would take months, not days, not weeks — it would take months to put it back together because that size of pipe is not available,” said Scott Paxman, general manager of the Weber Basin Water Conservancy District. “It would just take a lot of work and if it were to rupture, there would be residences that would lose a lot of property as well as life.”
Hence the need for an $82 million project to construct a pipeline along a 2.2-mile stretch of U.S. 89 in the Layton area. The alignment of the pipeline will cross the thoroughfare and run parallel to the west side of the highway. It also includes two new pump houses to support resiliency.
“It’s the lifeblood to Davis County for sure. It serves three water treatment plants, our three water treatment plants, as well as a lot of secondary irrigation,” Paxman said. “But we’re mostly concerned about the drinking water supply that we would be short. So by doing this, it really gives us some some redundancy and resilience if we did have an earthquake in that area.”
Paxman said the area where the pipeline installation should be wrapped up year from now will build that insurance policy for infrastructure built in the 1950s. He added basin managers have long been aware of its vulnerability.
“It’s a reinforced concrete pipe but it will not stay intact if there’s any movement at all,” he said. “So, we’ve been working on doing this for decades, but just felt like now was the time that we’ve got to get it done.”
The magic of money
An infusion of $24 million from the state Legislature helped get the project started, along with money from the Federal Emergency Management Association and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The state funding grew out of recommendations as a result of work done by Envision Utah and the Utah Seismic Safety Commission.
Ari Bruening, president and chief executive officer of Envision Utah, said an analysis of catastrophic failures in the event of the “Big One” revealed a whole host of areas where improvements in infrastructure needed to be made.
“There are a lot of things that we could do — everything from transportation to natural gas and power and upgrading buildings. But what rose to the top was water because it is such a critical need. And what rose to the top of that was these aqueducts, because without these aqueducts, most of the water that serves the Wasatch Front would not be available for many, many, many months,” he told the Deseret News at the time.
Four aging aqueduct systems that serve over two million people on the Wasatch Front received $50 million for upgrades or replacements to incorporate earthquake resilience.
According to Envision Utah, FEMA has called the Wasatch Fault “one of the most probable catastrophic natural threat scenarios in the U.S.” The Wasatch Fault has a 43% chance of experiencing a 6.75 or greater magnitude earthquake in the next 50 years, and experts project that such an event would be among the deadliest disasters in U.S. history.
The pipeline, according to Paxman, is 72 inches in diameter and designed to withstand a magnitude 7 earthquake, swaying as the ground moves.
Paxman said the project has not been without its inconveniences for commuters along U.S. 89.
The interstate was closed in both directions at the time of the Weber State University commencement exercises.
“It was a mess,” he added, “but the contractors did a good job.”
