OCR Text |
Show District of Salt Lake City ( MWD) was established to manage Salt Lake City's interests in the Provo River Project. Salt Lake City established a policy in 1951 allowing the sale of water outside its corporate boundaries to retail customers in the growing suburbs along the east bench. With the addition of retail customers outside its boundaries, the population served doubled between 1940 and 1960. The metropolitan water district treatment plant was constructed in 1960 near the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon. At that time, Salt Lake City and the Metropolitan Water District served an equivalent population of 375,000 including residential customers in Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County. Post World War II growth in the smaller municipalities and unincorporated communities ( most notably the Kearns area), stimulated interest in developing a large- scale water supply for those areas. During the postwar years, most people in the Granger- Hunter area were served by individual or shared wells. When developers in the Kearns area proposed constructing a line to bring in water, several individuals in nearby areas asked to be included in the system. In response to petitions, the Salt Lake County Commission took action in the late 1940s to establish the Salt Lake County Water Conservancy District ( SLCWCD), under the provisions of UCA Title 73, Chapter 9. The district came into existence in September 1951 and was charged with the responsibility for developing water sources and establishing a water conveyance system to serve communities south of 2100 South Street and west of Salt Lake City's suburban service area. The actual service area was defined partially through an unwritten agreement with the MWD. Realizing early the development of local water sources would not keep up with the growth in population, the SLCWCD entered into an agreement in 1956 to participate in the Central Utah Project ( CUP). During the 1960s, the SLCWCD continued to expand its conveyance systems, acquire and develop additional groundwater resources, and enter into agreements to purchase greater amounts of surplus water from the MWD. Because of delays in the construction of the CUP, originally scheduled for completion in the mid- 1970s, the SLCWCD developed more groundwater sources and purchased increasing amounts of surplus water. The SLCWCD purchased as much as 25,000 acre- feet of surplus water from MWD in the early 1980s. In the past year, the SLCWCD purchased 10,000 acre- feet of water from the MWD and 20,000 acre- feet of water in Jordanelle Reservoir from the Central Utah Water Conservancy District. The Jordan Valley Water Treatment Plant was built in Bluffdale in 1974 and greatly improved the district's ability to serve areas on the west side of the valley. During the 1977 drought, MWD notified the SLCWCD the availability of surplus water could not be guaranteed throughout the high use period. The SLCWCD developed a contingency plan to restrict water use. When forced to implement the plan, the restrictions imposed on customers resulted in a 50 percent reduction in outside water use. Since the 1977 drought, the SLCWCD, in cooperation with the MWD and the Salt Lake City Public Works Department, has undertaken extensive efforts to locate new water resources' and to increase water use efficiency. The Area- Wide Water Study, completed in April 1982, is a product of these efforts. Among other things, the study points out the need to develop additional storage facilities so that more of the local high quality waters lost in spring run- off can be Jordan Valley Water Treatment Plant 11- 3 |