Jordanelle growth distressing Heber

JORDANELLE, Wasatch County — Millions of gallons of sewage will ultimately flow south to Heber Valley as thousands of homes, condominiums and hotels are eventually built here.

But deciding where to treat all that wastewater has created a political firestorm in this otherwise sleepy valley and has left government officials deadlocked over a solution.

The controversy centers on the county's only wastewater treatment facility, capable of treating the effluent of nearly 4,400 connections.

Yet Scott Wright, manager of the Heber Valley Special District, the agency overseeing wastewater treatment, said the current system is already operating above capacity. It currently treats the wastewater of Heber Valley's 4,600 homes — most of the connections in Midway and Heber cities.

And although Heber's current facility is capable of expanding to nearly double its present capacity — the district recently purchased 45 acres of property for expansion — most future connections were anticipated to come from growth within Heber and Midway cities, not pricey second homes in Jordanelle.

"The kind of connections that they are expecting to build out in Jordanelle, there is no way we can handle it," Wright warns.

If Wright is correct, big trouble looms based on Jordanelle's master plan, which calls for nearly 13,000 units to overlook the reservoir in the next 20 years.

According to some engineering estimates, more than 2,700 Jordanelle connections could be tied to Heber's facility by 2005. In addition, a main trunk line tying Jordanelle to Heber Valley has the capacity of handling the reservoir's west-side growth, where more than 6,000 units are planned.

But Wright contends Heber Valley Special District never agreed to handle the wastewater of thousands of Jordanelle units.

"According to what was given to us (in 1998), there were only going to be 1,640 connections coming out of Jordanelle in the next 20 years," Wright said.

Building a new treatment plant is easier said than done and faces several hurdles.

Heber's current facility was designed as an aerated, land-application treatment process — where semitreated wastewater is sprinkled over nearly 400 acres of alfalfa fields, averting a discharge into the sensitive Provo River and Deer Creek Reservoir.

"That basically removes the phosphorous and nitrogen because they are taken up in the crops," said Jay Pitkin, assistant director of the state's Division of Water Quality.

"They are very sensitive about phosphates in the Provo River drainage," Wright said.

In fact, regional plans stemming from the Federal Clean Water Act prohibit any surface discharges into the Provo drainage, Pitkin said.