With the completion of a new 2-million gallon water tank in addition to several water conservation moves, it looks like Hyde Park won’t see a repeat of last summer’s city water crisis any time soon.
The tank, scheduled to go online later this week, has been in the works for several years, but the need for it became painfully apparent as drought conditions worsened last summer. With output from the city’s spring in Birch Canyon dropping markedly, residents were using water faster than it could be replenished in the town’s three existing water tanks, prompting city leaders to put a six-month moratorium on new landscaping and request residents voluntarily cut their outside water use by 50%.
But Cox and others in the town of roughly 6,000 aren’t resting easy with the immediate water crisis averted. They’re looking for a new well, they’ve enacted stricter commercial and residential landscaping rules, they’ve raised water rates and they’re planning an update for their aging and unreliable water-metering system. Read the rest of the story on HJnews.com.
This story is made possible thanks to a community reporting partnership between The Herald Journal and Utah Public Radio.
