Central Utah Project Bonneville Unit
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Central Utah Project Bonneville Unit Project Location............................................................................................................................ 3 Historical Setting........................................................................................................................... 3 Project Authorization ................................................................................................................. 12 Construction History .................................................................................................................. 23 Starvation Complex .................................................................................................................. 24 Starvation Dam ..................................................................................................................... 24 Knight Diversion Dam.......................................................................................................... 25 Starvation Feeder Conduit .................................................................................................... 26 Bottle Hollow............................................................................................................................ 27 Strawberry Aqueduct and Collection System........................................................................... 28 Water Hollow Tunnel – Channel Number 2............................................................................. 28 Soldier Creek Dam.................................................................................................................... 30 Layout and Currant Tunnels ..................................................................................................... 33 Jordan Aqueduct Reach I and II................................................................................................ 35 Currant Creek Dam................................................................................................................... 39 Vat Tunnel ................................................................................................................................ 42 Stillwater Tunnel....................................................................................................................... 45 “Hit List”................................................................................................................................... 48 West Fork Pipeline- Vat Diversion Dam and 404 permits ....................................................... 49 Hades and Rhodes Tunnels....................................................................................................... 51 Supplemental Repayment Contract Jordan Aqueduct-Reach III and IV-TPA Lawsuit .......... 52 Upper Stillwater Dam ............................................................................................................... 56 North Fork Siphon .................................................................................................................... 58 Doc’s, Hades, Win, and Rhodes Diversions and Feeder Pipelines........................................... 59 Jordanelle Dam ......................................................................................................................... 60 Diamond Fork Power System – Syar Tunnel and Sixth Water Flow Control Structure ......... 70 CUP Completion Act ................................................................................................................ 73 Post Construction History.......................................................................................................... 79 Bonneville Irrigation and Drainage System – Utah Lake System ............................................ 79 Diamond Fork System .............................................................................................................. 81 Settlement of Project Lands....................................................................................................... 86 Uses of Project Water ................................................................................................................. 87 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 88 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................ 96 Index........................................................................................................................................... 101 The Central Utah Project, Bonneville Unit Historic Reclamation Projects Book Adam R. Eastman Page 1 The Central Utah Project (CUP) is a massive and complicated water development project. It is the largest in the State of Utah. The ultimate plans for the CUP were among the largest and most complex contemplated by the Bureau of Reclamation. To make the project more manageable, Reclamation broke the initial phase of the CUP into four independent projects which could be united by the ultimate phase. Of the four units authorized by Congress as the initial phase, the largest and most complex is the Bonneville Unit, which itself is broken into interconnected parts. Reclamation’s plans called for ten new reservoirs; enlargement of two existing reservoirs; 140 miles of aqueducts, tunnels, and canals; three power plants; nine pumping stations; and 200 miles of pipe drains. Because of its size and complexity, it is the Bonneville Unit that people most frequently associate with the CUP, sometimes to the exclusion of the Vernal and Jensen Units, which have been constructed to benefit communities in the Uinta Basin.1 The history of the CUP is as large and complex as the project itself. And as with the project, the popular notion is that the history of the Bonneville Unit is the history of the CUP. There is some validity in this assumption. Certainly the history of the other units of the CUP, particularly those that were not built, includes colorful stories of the struggles to push forward a vision—engineering challenges, political intrigue, battles with opponents, courtroom drama, and the like. But the history of the CUP is filled with all of these. The history of the CUP is a microcosm of the large history of the battles over the Colorado River, wrapped with a thick layer of its own unique history. The Central Utah Project, Bonneville Unit Historic Reclamation Projects Book Adam R. Eastman Page 2 Project Location Because of its size and complexity, Reclamation divided the planning for the CUP into six units. The Bonneville Unit is the largest and most complex of the six. Reclamation designed the unit to provide irrigation water for the Uinta Basin and to collect, store, and divert water from the Uinta Basin into the Bonneville Basin. The areas served by the Bonneville Unit included lands within eleven counties in central and eastern Utah—Duchesne, Garfield, Juab, Millard, Piute, Salt Lake, Sanpete, Sevier, Summit, Utah, and Wasatch Counties. The project proposed the development of water in the Colorado, Bonneville, and Sevier River Basins. The Bonneville Unit essentially proposed enlarging Reclamation’s Strawberry Valley Project by developing additional water supplies in the Colorado River Basin on the Duchesne River and its major tributaries; Strawberry River, Currant Creek and Rock Creek. The original Strawberry Reservoir would be enlarged. A new diversion tunnel would convey Strawberry water into the Spanish Fork River drainage in the Bonneville Basin. A series of dams, tunnels and pipelines on Diamond Fork Creek, a tributary of the Spanish Fork River, would regulate the flows and would provide hydropower generation. Water delivered into the Bonneville Basin would be used for irrigation in Utah, Juab, Millard and Sevier Counties, and by exchange in Garfield, Piute, Sanpete, and Salt Lake Counties. Additional water supplies would be developed by the construction of dikes across two shallow bays on Utah Lake. Pumping would convey part of the water to project lands on the southwestern shores of the lake. The balance of the water saved by diking would be stored upstream on the Provo River at a dam above Heber City. This water would be used as a municipal supply for northern Utah and Salt Lake Counties. Historical Setting The Central Utah Project, Bonneville Unit Historic Reclamation Projects Book Adam R. Eastman Page 3 Ages ago an inland sea teeming with aquatic life covered most of what is now the Uinta Basin. Dinosaurs prowled the tropical swamps. Today, the one-time abode of the dinosaurs has been set aside by the Federal government as the Dinosaur National Monument where paleontologists pick away to free rock-embedded bones. Additionally, rich deposits of coal, gas, oil, and oil shale are found in the area. In successive geologic periods, the collision of land masses resulted in massive uplifts creating the Wasatch and Uintah Mountain Ranges. In more recent geologic time, the regional uplift of much of the western North American continent raised Utah to its present elevation, on average about one mile above sea level. Steepened river gradients greatly accelerated erosion, and several rivers still sculpt the great canyons of the Colorado Plateau. The different rates of movement between the tectonic plates separated by the Wasatch Mountains formed the terminal basins and mountain ranges of the Great Basin. Because these basins have no outlet to the sea, intermittent