Logan-area farmers will never again use a hillside section of canal that failed catastrophically on July 11, killing a mother and her two children, irrigation company officials say.

Instead, the Logan & Northern Canal Co. proposes a joint venture with the Logan, Hyde Park and Smithfield Canal Co. to use the latter's canal to skirt a mile-long segment of hillside above Canyon Road where the canal broke and caused the deadly mudslide.

"The hillside is unstable," said Lyle Thornley, secretary and treasurer for Logan & Northern.

To get around it, Logan & Northern would run water out of the Logan River through the other company's canal, then down 3100 North in North Logan to an access point downstream from the rupture point.

The two companies propose jointly forming a Cache Highland Water Association to seek federal and state funds for a $25 million upgrade that would improve safety and water retention. They would pipe water through some sections of the formerly earthen canals, and line others with concrete, Thornley said.

Where water is piped, he said, the association would leave the newly dry canals intact to divert floodwaters away from residential areas. The hillside canal section that failed would not be left in place, though, he said.

Logan, Hyde Park and Smithfield farmer shareholders on Oct. 11 voted overwhelmingly -- 1,647 shares to 47 -- to approve the joint venture. Logan & Northern shareholders are scheduled to vote tonight. Thornley said he expects the shareholders to consent because there's no other option for getting water to them.

The July 11 mudslide inundated a rental home on Canyon Road and killed 43-year-old Jacqueline Leavey, 13-year-old Victor Alanis and 12-year-old Abbey Alanis. Leavey's father retained Salt Lake City attorney Colin King to investigate the disaster. Efforts to reach King this week were unsuccessful, but he previously asserted that both Logan & Northern and the city of Logan were responsible for maintaining the canal to safe standards.

Gov. Gary Herbert on Sept. 11 declared the canal break an agricultural disaster. That designation goes to disasters lacking the immediate financial wreckage to call on the Federal Emergency Management Agency but potentially disastrous to farmers.

It makes the project eligible for federal funds, and the farmers are seeking $20 million from the Natural Resources Conservation Service's Emergency Watershed Protection Fund, said NRCS state conservation engineer Bronson Smart. Congress controls that fund and would have to approve the expense in a supplemental appropriations amendment.

Thornley said the new water association would seek the rest of the money for the $25 million upgrade through a low-interest state loan to be repaid by the farmers.

Logan, Hyde Park and Smithfield shareholders will benefit by upgrading a canal built in the late 1880s and scarcely changed since, board member Jim Huppi said. The porous canal loses 20 percent of its water back to the Logan River in just the first two miles, he said. Piping the water would correct that.

"If we can get federal funding, that's the only way it's going to happen," Huppi said.

Failure to upgrade would mean the farmers have to spend $100,000 a year in maintenance, he said.