The leak was stopped Monday night after crews working nearly nine hours packed 90 truckloads of sand and gravel onto the structure.
On Tuesday, officials from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the Weber Basin Water Conservancy District continued to monitor the situation and promised round-the-clock surveillance while additional repairs are completed during the next few weeks.
Meanwhile, officials said they believe the leak was caused because a drain pipe, designed to carry seepage away from the dike, became clogged.
Had the dike failed, a half-dozen homes and a feedlot with 7,000 cattle would have been inundated. But officials insisted a catastrophe was never a real possibility.
"Imminent failure wasn't in the mix," said Brent Rhees, deputy area manager for the bureau's Provo office.
As a precaution, however, workers had prepared to breach the dike at a point where the bay's water - about 175,000 acre-feet, or 57 billion gallons - would drain into the lake, Rhees said.
The emergency breach plan remains in effect. As a further safety measure, the level of the bay is being drawn down one to two feet by discharging water into the lake through an outlet system.
The leak was discovered Saturday by a farmer who has land nearby.
He reported the problem about 2 p.m. Monday and leak was stopped by 10:30 p.m.
Rhees said the leak was initially flowing at the rate of 100 to 150 gallons-per-minute. "That's quite a bit of water," he said.
He said the seepage began in the "foundation" of the dike - the sand and dirt upon which the dike was built. As the water eroded the foundation, it created instability and a slump on the face of the 35-foot-high dike.
At the point where the leak was discovered, the water behind the dike was about 15 feet from the top, which is about 1.5 feet from what is considered full, according to a Bureau of Reclamation press release.
The leak occurred on a southwest section of the 14.5-mile dike, described by Rhees as located about two miles northwest of the Smith and Edwards store.
Tage Flint, general manager of the Weber Basin water district, said officials believe the leak - which affected a 200-foot-wide section of the dike - was likely caused by a plug in the system of drain pipes designed to transport water away from the dike.
Flint said it is "fairly common" for drain pipes to clog. "You might see a drain issue once a decade," he said.
But clogged drains are also relatively easy to fix.
"It's all on the outside of the dam," Flint said. "We don't have to cut into the dam itself."
