Clay Essig has lived on the bank of the Little Logan River for years. It was where his parents built his childhood home in the late ‘60s, and where he returned when he bought the place about a decade ago.
The cool mountain creek splits from its more forceful counterpart, the Logan River, just upstream, then flows between River Hollow Park and his house.
“All along here, people find places to come and play, but it’s just such a beautiful, peaceful river,” he said.
Throughout his life, he has seen the stream shrink. Now, as a project seeks to redirect much of the river’s flow to keep Cache Valley lawns green, Essig worries it may be slowed to a trickle.
The Cache Water District and Crockett Avenue Irrigation Co. — a conglomeration of several canal companies — want to install a pressurized system that would take the Little Logan River’s place in getting water for irrigation to people in Hyde Park, North Logan, and Logan. The cities are cosponsoring the effort.
The new system would divert water from First Dam near the mouth of Logan Canyon, rather than allowing it to flow through the small waterway, where the three cities currently tap in for untreated irrigation water, often called secondary water.
River runs through changes
Project backers say the current system just isn’t efficient enough in getting water to the municipalities.
“There’s a lot of people in the cities — a lot of residents in the cities — who would like to be able to use secondary water, but we can’t deliver it to them,” said Gordon Coulson, the president of the irrigation company. “Everything right now is still all gravity flow under no pressure.”
To help secure funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, officials also want to construct trails along Canyon Road and over the river, according to project manager Zan Murray, who works for J-U-B Engineers, a group contracted for the initiative.
In its entirety, the plan would cost almost $310 million, with about 90% of that being funded through the USDA, according to Murray.
The sponsor cities and irrigation company would be responsible for the portion not covered by federal funding.
If it’s built, the cities could require people to connect to secondary water where it’s available, or they could adjust culinary prices to promote the use of untreated water.
Slowing the flow
Rerouting water before it hits the Little Logan River means the waterway could get even littler.
Currently, state data shows, the river is flowing at 70 cubic feet per second where it crosses Riverside Drive.
A draft environmental study says the project would leave a baseline flow of five to 10 cubic feet per second in the river. Murray, however, concedes that will only happen when there’s enough water to go around.
While the prospect of reduced flows have stoked fears about the future of recreation on the waterway and downstream effects on the ailing Great Salt Lake, proponents of the plan say it packs plenty of positives.
For one thing, Logan Public Works Department director Paul Lindhardt said, it will remove 28 homes near the Logan River from a flood plain.
Cities will also see a smaller demand for culinary water than they otherwise would as they continue to grow, he said.
If the project is built, water rates are estimated to go up in the near term, project officials say, though they believe the reduced culinary water demand will mean smaller prices in the long run.
Lindhardt said a new pressurized system would allow the city to delay or eliminate other costly water projects.
On top of that, a new system would mean less water would be lost to seepage because it would travel through a pipe, according to the plan’s draft environmental study.
Coulson, the Crockett Avenue Irrigation Co. president, said the plan would also help his company retain its water rights. If someone legally challenged the company, and the organization couldn’t show its rights are being used beneficially, it could lose water rights, he said.
Gardens and grass or the Great Salt Lake
Many who spoke out at a public meeting on the effort last month weren’t convinced the project is worth it.
If the new system is needed for the irrigation company to retain its water rights, some argued, then maybe the company doesn’t actually need those water rights. That water, they said, would be better used flowing downstream into the Bear River, the thirsty Great Salt Lake’s largest tributary.
Susanne Janecke — a retired geosciences professor at Utah State University and long-time advocate of the Little Logan River — said the project sends the wrong message in the midst of the lake’s ongoing water crisis.
“People would be encouraged to use river water to irrigate their landscapes, which is mostly lawns in Utah,” she said. “... It seems really wrong to be encouraging the use of more river water on personal landscapes rather than conservation.”
Patrick Belmont, a watershed sciences professor at USU, said extra water from the Logan River could instead be “a big part of the solution” to the lake’s dipping levels.
“This is a really proximate source,” Belmont said. “... These plans to just utilize as much as we can right here — especially for turf grass — that’s a values judgement, but I don’t think we’re making that values judgement in a very coherent way as a community right now.”
Giving water users a choice
Coulson said his company plans to discuss potentially leasing water to the Great Salt Lake this fall.
“It hasn’t been communicated well,” he said of the state’s leasing program. “The canal companies don’t know what the state is offering, partially because of the different phases that it’s gone through to get to this point, and not everybody knows and not everybody qualifies.”
Even if leasing water to the Great Salt Lake could help the irrigation company retain its water rights without a major infrastructure overhaul, Coulson said he still sees the Little Logan River diversion project as necessary.
People, he said, should have a choice in what water they use on their lawns, and this project would make secondary water a more widely available alternative.
“They will have the option to use it or not,” he said. “OK, that’s part of the great thing about living in America, is we do have choice.”
Project plans are expected to be finalized this fall, according to USDA documents. If it moves forward, construction would be slated to begin in 2028 and end in 2033.
Those who want to share their thoughts on the project with the USDA can do so until June 22 by visiting the agency’s website.
This article is published through the Great Salt Lake Collaborative with funding from Love the Lake, an initiative of the nonprofit Great Salt Lake Alliance. Editorial decisions are made independently by the Collaborative and partner newsrooms.
