Kennecott water plant is ready for action

BINGHAM CANYON — The pumps are running, the filters filtering and by mid-May, about 3.5 million gallons of reclaimed underground water will begin flowing to homes in southwestern Salt Lake County.

The Southwest Jordan Valley Groundwater Project, a joint effort between Kennecott Utah Copper and the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District, has reached a milestone: Its expanded Zone A water treatment plant on Kennecott land is up and running, and as soon as the water district finishes building the pipeline to ship it out, that newly usable water will become drinking water for residents in West Jordan, South Jordan, Riverton and Herriman — about 4,300 homes.

The plant is the first of two that will constantly work at removing sulfates from a 72-square-mile plume of underground water in the southwestern Salt Lake Valley, contaminated by decades of Kennecott's mining operations. It is part of a deal reached in August 2004 between Kennecott and the district, with the assistance of the state Department of Environmental Quality.

"The water is being put to beneficial use," said DEQ executive director Dianne Nielson, who is involved in her role as natural resource damage trustee. "Without this, the communities would have to bring water in from somewhere else."

The plant — and another to be built by the water district to the east, over the section of the plume known as Zone B — will use reverse osmosis to remove the sulfates, including the heavy metal selenium. The contamination leaked into the groundwater largely from reservoirs that, until the 1990s, had no lining, so the runoff water from the mine seeped into the aquifer below.

The evolution of the project began with a review process that started 16 years ago when the water district decided Kennecott's offer of $12 million in response to a complaint filed by the state wasn't enough.

Under that original proposal, the mining company would have paid a settlement with the state, but the underground water would have remained contaminated and unusable. The contamination would have continued to spread as the aquifer flowed from the Oquirrh Mountains toward the Jordan River.

The project is being financed by a trust fund established in a 1995 court ruling. The fund began with a $28 million line of credit and $9 million cash payment by Kennecott. No money from water users' rate payments will be used for the cleanup.

Money from that fund will be released to the water district so that it can begin construction on its Zone B plant, probably in 2008.