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Glen Stringham, president of the Millville Canal Company, walks along the Millville Providence Blacksmith Fork Canal on July 23. The canal is in need of maintenance, much like the one that failed in Logan. Stringham is among many canal owners who has an application into the Utah Division of Water Rights for a low-cost loan for improvements to his canal. The state Legislature cut the division's budget from $30 million to $7 million last year. Stringham says he needs $97,000 to sink a 420-foot flood-preventing pipe into the side of the hill. Company shareholders say upgrading the canal is the only way to ensure the safety of new homes below. No government regulator is making them do it.
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Millville » Glen Stringham tramps through a patch of waist-high weeds, stops at the hillside precipice and tilts back his dingy white cowboy hat for a better view of the valley below.

"Well, who wouldn't want to live here?" he wonders aloud as he looks over the fertile narrow that runs between the hillside and the Blacksmith Fork River. "It's beautiful."

But that beauty has a price. And for Stringham and other owners of the Millville Canal Co. that price is $97,000. That's the cost of sinking a 420-foot flood-preventing pipe into the side of the hill -- a construction project precipitated by a single home that has been built about 50 feet below.

"It's one home now,"

Glen Stringham, president of the Millville Canal Company, walks along the Millville Providence Blacksmith Fork Canal on July 23. The canal is in need of maintenance, much like the one that failed in Logan. (Trent Nelson / The Salt Lake Tribune)
says Stringham, the company's president. "More will come."

Stringham's company is upgrading the canal because its shareholders have decided it's the only way to ensure the safety of new homes below. No government regulator is making them do it. In fact, canal owners in Utah don't have to tell anyone if they suspect their irrigation ditches are unsafe -- unless they're seeking state money for repairs.

Unlike government scrutiny given to dams, bridges, buildings and roads, there is no inspection program to review the safety of hundreds of irrigation waterways that crisscross the state -- sometimes within feet of private homes. That lack of authority is getting renewed attention following a July 11 landslide and canal collapse that killed a mother and her two children in their Logan home.

The closest thing to a review of canal safety in Utah was a cursory evaluation the Bureau of Reclamation completed this year of the 31 canals it owns in the state.

Of those, eight have been called "high hazards."

 

Few inspections » Jamison Thornton isn't sure whether the hundreds of Utah County residents that live downhill from the Strawberry Highline Canal are aware that the

High hazard canals (pdf)
19-mile irrigation channel has been deemed a potential hazard by the U.S. government. But the president of the company that maintains the channel doesn't believe there's cause for worry, either.

Thornton said the company stays on top of maintenance issues and inspects its canal regularly for signs of trouble.

"I don't believe that our canal is a danger," he said of the waterway that passes through the rapidly urbanizing cities of Spanish Fork, Salem, Payson and Santaquin before ending near the small town of Genola. "I know it has potential problems."

Ed Vidmar, a manager in Reclamation's Provo office, said there's no reason to believe that canals like Strawberry Highline are in danger of failing anytime soon. He noted that the federal lines are checked daily, inspected annually and put through an even more extensive review every third year.

Vidmar conceded, however, that the same inspection regimen didn't stop a 30-foot section of Nevada's Truckee Canal from collapsing in 2008. That breach sent a torrent of water into the desert town of Fernley, flooding nearly 600 homes and displacing thousands of residents. The Truckee Canal had also been deemed a "high hazard," by the federal agency -- but few outside the bureau knew that until after the disaster.

High-hazard irrigation channels -- which the bureau began calling "urbanized canals" in the wake of the Truckee disaster -- could endanger more than 500 people or cause more than $5 million in property damage in the event of a breach. But bureau officials say they won't know the full extent to which the Strawberry Highline canal is a danger until later this year, when it will undergo an extensive on-the-ground inspection, along with an infrared aerial examination that will reveal areas of leakage along its banks.

The bureau received $10 million in stimulus funds for the high-tech inspection of Strawberry Highline and other potentially dangerous canals in 17 Western states. But as of yet there is no money to fix any problems that might be exposed -- or to study the other seven canals on the list.

 

Deadly pressures » Imperfect it may be, the federal program to inspect canals and identify dangerous situations is far more comprehensive than any state-based effort in Utah. But it's also a drop in the bucket. The bureau owns less than 5 percent of Utah's canals.

Most of the rest are private ventures, where irrigation companies are generally left to their own devices.

That's in part because the state's irrigation law has remained largely unchanged since it was written in the early 1900s -- a time when there was very little development along canal lines. Utah law instructs canal owners "to prevent waste of water or damage to the property of others." But it doesn't provide any standards, delineate who has the responsibility for enforcement or identify who should investigate when things go wrong.

And things do go wrong. Over the past century, Utah's canals have been blamed for scores of landslides, mudslides and floods -- failures that have cost tens of millions of dollars in waterway repairs, property damages, and legal settlements.

But until July 11 there had not been any instances in which the breach of a canal contributed to the loss of human lives. So for a state legislature already resistant to regulation and protective of the agricultural economy, there had been little to prompt the end of a century of laissez-faire irrigation law.

Even after the 1999 collapse of a canal in Riverdale -- a calamity that ruined scores of homes -- the state legislature balked at mandating that the government oversee the 5,300 miles of Utah canals. When Rep. Ben Ferry attempted to appropriate $350,000 for an assessment of the state's canals after the Riverdale disaster, he found little support for paying the tab.

"When you deal with property, that's important," said Ferry, R-Corrine, who gets water for his farm from the Bear River Canal Company. "But when you're dealing with human life, that's what changes the rules."

 

Favoring farmers » For one canal company president, the current rules work just fine.

Nelson Petersen, who directs the non-profit Utah and Salt Lake Canal Company, knows every inch of his 27-mile ditch. And he doesn't figure he needs government to tell him how to make it safer.

What Petersen believes he needs is more help keeping development off the banks of his canal.

Not far from where the canal begins in Bluffdale, Petersen points out a spot where a homeowner has cut into the canal bank -- leaving less soil between one of Utah's largest canals and the homes below.

"I just don't know why anyone would do that," he says. "That scares the hell out of me."

But Petersen's options are limited. His company's easement allows it to maintain its canal, which runs through six cities, but dealing with problems like this means taking individual property owners to court.

"I can drive to the courthouse blindfolded, I'm there so often," Petersen says. "But I get so many, I have to prioritize the people I take to court."

Members of a state board that is reviewing canal safety in the wake of the Logan disaster appear sympathetic to the concerns of Petersen and irrigation company owners like him. The state Executive Water Task Force -- which is stacked with farmers, canal owners and attorneys who represent water-rights holders -- will meet Tuesday to take up Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert's charge to decide who should have oversight of Utah's canals.

Task force member Steve Clyde, a Salt Lake City attorney who has helped craft several municipal water ordinances, said it's important to remember that most of Utah's canals were in place long before the subdivisions that have sprung up around them.

At one time, a broken or flooded canal might ruin a farmer's field, "but now we're talking about million-dollar homes," he said.

"To some extent these companies have not recognized that increased risk," Clyde said. But he questioned whether canal shareholders should have to shoulder additional costs associated with development they had no control over.

"If this is important to the state there has to be a public-private partnership," he said.

Until he's told otherwise, Petersen says, he'll just keep working on his canal the same way he and others have for more than 100 years. But while he's proud of his work, he's wary of the dangers.

"There isn't a person in the world that can say, 'Hey, my canal is safe, nothing is going to happen,' " Petersen says. "That canal can get away from you just so quick it's unbelievable. And when it does, the damage is done."

mlaplante@sltrib.com

What should you be looking for?

People living near a canal should keep a lookout for signs of potential problems and contact canal owners or public safety officials if they notice any of the following:

Seepage and wet areas on the downhill side of the canal.

Large, deep-rooted vegetation growing out the canal embankment.

Burrowing rodents.

Any hillside cuts into the canal embankment.

Anything that might block flow of the canal or an abundance of storm water discharge into the canal.

Source » U.S. Bureau of Reclamation