Ogden City touts ‘once in a generation’ water infrastructure improvement

OGDEN — State and local officials, representation from the Environmental Protection Agency and Weber Basin Water Conservancy District, and others gathered at the Ogden Municipal Building on Thursday to celebrate a key water infrastructure improvement.

A ceremonial signing was held in the Ogden City Council chambers to mark the closing of a $42.6 million federal loan, administered by the EPA via the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act, or WIFIA. Those funds, along with $34.3 million from a State Revolving Loan Fund, $10 million from state appropriations and $12 million from federal American Rescue Plan Act funding will go toward the city’s Canyon Waterline project.

Dubbed a “once in a generation” infrastructure improvement, the project encompasses the updating of a waterline running through Ogden Canyon, as well as the 36-inch concrete-lined steel pipe running under Pineview Reservoir from the city’s well fields.

Justin Anderson, Ogden City’s director of public services, told the Standard-Examiner that the project is essentially a full replacement of existing pipelines carrying culinary/drinking water to the city, portions of which date back to the 1930s. The latest estimates indicate that construction of the new lines will cost approximately $100 million; Anderson noted that Whitaker Construction was contracted to oversee the design portion of the project.

“It is going to be a phased project over multiple years,” Anderson said. “We’re looking to have it complete within at least five years.”

In addition to staving off possible critical failures in aging lines, Anderson says the new lines also could eliminate millions of gallons in water losses the city may be experiencing each day.

“We replaced a hundred-year-old, 24-inch pipeline in approximately 2013 down the canyon and we saw significant savings from water losses,” Anderson said. “Upwards of 2 (million) to 3 million gallons a day water losses that we were experiencing is what we’ve been able to determine.”

Thanks in part to the project funding and future water savings that will be generated, Ogden City also is releasing additional water to the Willard Spur to help combat a botulism outbreak in the area.

“Ogden City currently has some additional water storage rights in Pineview Reservoir that we feel we are not going to need to provide service for a number of years still because of the work that we’re doing to replace and upgrade our infrastructure,” Anderson said. “(Willard Spur) is a portion of the Great Salt Lake that experiences some botulism and, in turn, that causes a lot of birds that are in that area to perish. So, they have a high loss of waterfowl and what we are working out is doing a release out of Willard Bay. … We are releasing 200 cubic feet per second right now.”

Ogden Mayor Ben Nadolski offered remarks during the ceremonial signing event, praising the level of coordination and cooperation that occurred between local, state and federal entities to secure funding for the project.

“There have been opportunities for me as the mayor where I get to plug in and see all of the teams on a screen all at once. It’s dizzying to see the number of people that are doing one thing at a time,” Nadolski said. “When we put in that kind of energy, we transcended administrations at the municipal level, and at the federal level and at the state level. We transcend the politics to put people first.”

Other speakers at the event included Ken Richey, Ogden City Council chair; Michael Grange, section manager for the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund; Kelly Watkins, chief of staff for EPA Region 8; and Mae Wu, deputy assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Water.

Said Wu of the WIFIA program: “We have an amazing team to really help secure funding that’s necessary to upgrade and fortify the drinking water infrastructure for communities all around the country.”

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