EMERY COUNTY, Utah — The saying typically goes "April showers, bring May flowers.” Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case in Emery County.
At an emergency meeting in Emery Town on April 22, the town turned off their secondary water. Turning it off has already had a lot of effects on their community, and it’s worrying their neighbors.
“We’re not even in the warm months yet. So, it’s coming and we’re going to feel it and we’re going to feel it hard,” Huntington resident, Jim Gordon said.
Jim Gordon’s son and daughter-in-law own Gordon’s Nursery and with prime planting time right around the corner, they’re already feeling the effects of this year’s drought. Typically, Gordan said the surrounding cities and towns purchase plants and flowers for their Main Street. This year, those orders were canceled because of the lack of water.
“In Orangeville, our secondary water is usually on by now and throughout the county it usually is as well. And we’ve seen multiple cities push that date back,” Orangeville City Councilmember, Kevin Butler said.
People in their community rely on their small gardens and farms. Their Fire Chief, Tracy Addley has a small farm of his own and said it’s already been tough.
“They cut back our first allocation on our farms. And the second allocation they don’t know yet, but it’s going to be low,” Addley said. "I’m hoping to get one good crop.”
The uncertainty is what concerns them the most. So much so, that they’ll do anything to will some more water. Councilmember Butler recalled a story he’d heard about doing just that.
“One of our citizens who lives in Emery County is a part of the Navajo Nation and he brought back some water from the Navajo Nation and poured it into Joe’s Valley, which is our reservoir. The next day we got a pretty good rainstorm and a whole bunch of snow,” Butler said.
That’s just the north side of the county. James Byars lives in Emery Town where the secondary water was on for just a week before it was turned off.
“It’s dire more in this area right here because we don’t have the water storage, the necessary reservoirs to store the water to sustain us throughout the year. We’re running off of spring flow right now,” Byars said.
At the emergency meeting last week, the city explained the dire situation of their water supply and said in just one weekend, during peak flow, the secondary system was pulling more than 300 gallons per minute. That took the total town usage to 600 gallons per minute.
People who don’t know the area well may not completely understand the impact this actually has.
“It’s a misunderstanding of the system, right? How reservoirs and pipelines work, it’s been nice for the majority of a lot of people's lives they’ve been able to turn the tap on and the waters there. This year, when you turn the tap on the waters not there,” Byars said.
As a small-town farmer, Byars said he's going to lose about $90,000 in revenue from hay sales.
Although some people in the community are frustrated, they’re working together to come up with solutions and saving water any way they can.
“We’re trying to figure out how to make things work,” Byars added. "The coal mine, they’re trying to drill. They need water to drill and we’re all pooling saying, 'ok I can give up a few shares.' That’s the agreement we just came to. There’s a few of us that can give up a few shares for critical things that have to happen.”
The state’s drought is not something this community is taking lightly. Many of the people in the area have lived there for decades, and while they’ve seen bad seasons, they said this is the worst season they’ve ever had.
