OREM, Utah — Thanks to the Don A. Christiansen Regional Water Plant in Orem, Utah and Salt Lake County residents get clean drinking water out of their taps.
"We deliver water to about 2 million people from this plant,” said Gene Shawcroft, the general manager of the Central Utah Water Conservancy District.
On Friday, Shawcroft helped lead a tour of the treatment plant for a number of state and federal officials, including Congressman Mike Kennedy. He and the others learned how gravity takes water from the Wasatch Mountains to the Provo River, right to this plant.
“It’s pretty complicated, takes a great deal of engineering,” said Congressman Kennedy. “We’re here at the mouth of Provo Canyon, and it's seven acres that allows purification of water for more than a million people. That's a remarkable engineering feat."
And speaking of feats, a pipeline in the Provo Canyon, which is near the Wasatch Fault Line, is of concern in the event of an earthquake. That said, officials are being proactive and are in the process of replacing a portion of the pipeline, just over a mile long.
"The sections are very, very short, and so at each of those joints, there will be some opportunity for expansion, contraction and angular movement, so that if there is an earthquake and there's a displacement of the material, a fault line, that pipeline will cross that and then move so that we can continue to deliver water through that period of time,” said Shawcroft.
Knowing it’s not a matter of if, but a matter of when a big quake will hit, Congressman Kennedy said he wasn’t surprised that water officials are ahead of the game.
"We know these events are coming, and for us as Utahns to be ready for that, I just think that's how we do it in Utah, we're always looking to the future, trying to make it better now, so that we can be prepared for those events in the future.”
