Spring City takes initial steps toward fourth culinary well

SPRING CITY—The Spring City Council has voted to move ahead with the first steps toward the town’s fourth culinary water well.

At a city council meeting Sept. 3, the council approved an agreement with Sunrise Engineering for $55,000 to do an environmental study, prepare specifications and bid documents for a test well, and potentially evaluate the results of the test well.

The council has been grappling with the well proposal since late July, when it learned about $450,000 in contingency funds was left over from the $6 million water project the city completed in 2025.

That project included a new pipeline to carry water to areas of Spring City that had low water pressure, a new water tank in the mouth of Spring City Canyon and upgrades to three existing water wells.

At a city council work meeting July 30 of this year, Jesse Ralphs, vice president in the Fillmore office of Sunrise Engineering and the key consulting engineer on the 2025 project, said the $450,000 would not be enough to build a new well but could cover the cost of getting a well project “shovel ready.”

The $55,000 approved at the last council meeting would not include the purchase or lease of 1-1.5 acres of land Ralphs said would be required for a well. Nor would it include drilling a test well—that job would be contracted out to a drilling company. Assumedly, those costs would come out of some of the remaining $450,000.

The proposed well site is on 200 West between 300 and 500 North, a location identified as promising in a well-site study a few years ago. While there are no guarantees, Ralphs said, the site study projected a deep well at that location could produce 300 to 450 gallons of water per minute.

If a test well was successful, the engineer told the council, the next steps would include designs for a production well, a well house and a pipeline to get water from the well to water tanks in the mouth of the canyon. Ralphs told the council design and construction of a new well would cost about $500,000.

At the July 30 meeting, Ralphs said Spring City’s present springs and wells meet the town’s everyday needs, although output from springs and the water levels in existing wells have dropped significantly this summer because of the low winter snowpack.

However, he said, the Utah Division of Drinking Water requires culinary water system to always have surplus water on hand in case of emergencies (such as a mechanical failure somewhere in the water system) or to fight a major fire.

There are times, Ralphs said, when Spring City is 100 gallons per minute short of meeting DDW “source capacity” requirements.

He said the state inspects culinary systems every three years. If a system doesn’t meet source capacity requirements, it can be barred from adding any new connections. If the system doesn’t correct the problem, it can be required to prepare and implement a Corrective Action Plan. And if it doesn’t implement the plan, it can be fined.

At the regular council meeting earlier this month, Councilman Stan Soper said the 200 West site is an “ideal location” to drill deep into the ground to tap an abundant water source.

“Currently, we don’t have sufficient capacity for the state requirements,” he said. “And given expected potential new growth, it’s just going to get worse over time.”

Soper said the city was going to have to do the preliminary work for a new well at some point, either this year or next. “But we’ve got the funds available now.”

Councilman Michael Broadbent pointed to language in the $55,000 agreement with Sunrise Engineering saying the agreement “excludes negotiations for the use or purchase of the well site and associated easements, including preparing and executing documents.”

He asked if the city could end up writing a check to Sunrise for work related to a site the city was unable to acquire.

Soper said Sunrise had said anywhere within a few hundred feet of the targeted location would work. “Maybe three or four potential property owners could be the ones where this could be located.” While the city doesn’t know right now which property owner would sell or lease land, he said, ‘It’s likely one of them would.”

Councilman Chris Anderson said he believed land negotiations could happen simultaneously with the environmental and engineering work. “We go out there, we start looking, we start talking to the neighbors, (the) landowners,” he said. “Ultimately, we identify the three or four alternatives. And that’s kind of how it works out. I can’t imagine any other way to do this.”

Soper proposed a motion to approve the $55,000 contract with Sunrise “subject to verification that this project can proceed simultaneously with the city’s discussion with potential landowners…”

The motion passed unanimously.