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Show WATER RESOURCES OF THE HEBER- KAMAS- PARK CITY AREA NORTH- CENTRAL UTAH by C. H. Baker, Jr., Hydrologist U. S. Geological Survey ABSTRACT The Heber- Kamas- Park City area encompasses about 810 square miles in Wasatch and Summit Counties, in north- central Utah, and includes four mountain valleys- Heber Valley, Rhodes Valley, Parleys Park, and Round Valley- with most of the surrounding watersheds. Parleys Park and most of Rhodes Valley are in the Weber River drainage basin; Heber and Round Valleys are in the Provo River drainage basin. The Provo River rises in the southwestern Uinta Mountains and flows to Utah Lake. At Deer Creek Dam, on the boundary of the study area, the average annual discharge of the Provo River for the 14- year period 1953- 67 was 256,300 acre- feet per year; an additional 33,900 acre- feet per year ( average) was diverted for use outside the drainage basin. An average of 68,000 acre- feet of water per year is added to the Provo River by diversion from other drainage basins. The Weber River has its headwaters in the northwestern Uinta Mountains, and flows to Great Salt Lake. The average discharge of the Weber River below Wanship Dam near the north end of the study area, for the 10- year period 1957- 67, was 110,000 acre- feet per year. During that period, an average of 50,600 acre- feet per year was diverted from the drainage basin above Wanship Dam. The surface- water discharge from Parleys Park enters the Weber River below Wanship Dam through East Canyon Creek and Silver Creek; the discharge from Parleys Park averages about 20,000 acre- feet per year. The consolidated rocks of the Wasatch Range and Uinta Mountains contain large quantities of ground water, mostly in fractures and solution openings, and numerous springs discharge water from the consolidated rocks. Despite the abundance of springs and the fact that mine workings in the Wasatch Range tap large flows of ground water, most wells yield only small supplies of water from the consolidated rocks. The primary permeability of the rocks is low, and wells can produce large yields only if they intersect fractures and solution openings. Consideration of the water budget for Deer Creek Reservoir, astride the Charleston thrust fault, indicates that there is no net loss of water from the reservoir through the fault. An unbalance of about 17,000 acre- feet of water per year in the water budget for the valley fill in Heber Valley, however, may represent outflow from the valley through the consolidated rocks. Most of the wells in the area derive water from the unconsolidated alluvial fill in the four valleys. The valley fill consists of a poorly sorted mixture of rock material ranging in size from clay through boulders. There is no evidence to suggest the presence of zones of either very high or very low permeability in any of the valleys; and the valley fill in all the valleys is saturated, generally to within a few feet of the land surface, mostly with unconfined ground water. Geophysical studies indicate that the valley fill may be as much as 800 feet thick in the deepest parts of Heber Valley and more than 300 feet thick in most of Rhodes Valley. Rocks of Tertiary and Quaternary age are more than 1,600 feet thick in the northern part of Rhodes 1 |