PINEVIEW RESERVOIR, Utah — Ogden City’s decades-old drinking water pipeline replacement project is underway at Pineview Reservoir, and officials said they are ahead of schedule.
“The project is going very smoothly. I want to say we are ahead of our January 1st scheduled deadline,” said Justin Anderson, Director of Public Services for Ogden City. Anderson said they plan to finish this phase in December, but don’t know the exact date yet.
Crews are laying the new pipes now and have a temporary bypass line where water is flowing and going to homes and businesses in Ogden City and others who rely on this surface.
WATCH | Ogden City says drinking water pipeline replacement project ahead of schedule
After this phase of the project, there will be two pipes under Pineview Reservoir — one will go through the existing steel pipe and the other new one will have room inside, if another pipe needs to go through it in the future. He said the pipes are made of high-density polyethylene material, which he said is more durable than the current steel one.
“In this way, we can actually take one of these lines off, under a controlled environment and maintain and do maintenance where the line before, it just ran all the time, we had no idea the condition or anything on it,” Anderson added.
Ogden City is doing a $10 million multi-year project, which is why water levels at Pineview Reservoir are at an all-time low. He said the added redundancies and ability to make improvements in the future, would help reduce the chance of needing to draw down water at Pineview reservoir, like officials did this year. The project was supposed to happen next year, but was moved up because of the low snowpack which meant water levels would be lower than usual anyway.
“We expect the infrastructure projects that we’re doing right now, none of us will be alive when this needs to be replaced, probably none of our kids will be alive when this needs to be replaced, so we’re really proud of that,” Anderson added.
More improvements are coming to Port Ramp too — with a new day use area, more parking, and replacing the ramp itself.
The Division of Wildlife Resources said they don’t know if any fish populations were impacted by the lower water levels. Chris Penne, aquatics program manager for DWR, said they also planning to add about 1,300 new fish habitats to help future populations.
“This is really a once in a lifetime opportunity to actually place these structures on the reservoir bottom while its dry so we can get them exactly where we want,” Penne added.
Jeff Salt with the Utah Anglers Coalition said he is looking forward to the improvements that come from these projects. “It’ll be good for fish for hiding from predators, it’ll be good for spawning, it’ll be a place where some predators will be able to find fish to eat and hopefully that will improve the diversity and the fishing satisfaction here at Pineview reservoir,” Salt said.
“A lot of thought that goes into making sure people have reliable drinking water, and that when they turn on their tap, it comes out,” Anderson added.