Utah County aim: Avert floods

PROVO — Clyde Naylor doesn't claim to be an expert on flooding, but the Utah County public works director recognizes a pattern when he sees one.

Deseret Morning News graphic Potential flood danger Requires Adobe Acrobat.

Record snowpack followed by heavy snow melts resulted in flooding up and down the Wasatch Front in 1952. About 30 years later, it happened again.

"We're on a 30-year cycle," Naylor said. "We had floods in 1952 and 1983 — and 2012, 2013 is coming up."

In an effort to make sure Utah Valley is ready if and when heavy rainfall or snow-melt events occur, the Utah County Commission, with support of elected city officials, is pursuing a countywide flood-control program, including a potential countywide tax increase to defray the cost of the work that needs to be done.

County officials have identified about a dozen places that need work, such as clearing debris from basins, removing trees, replacing culverts and restoring channels. There are also 15 others that have yet to be looked at with a critical eye.

Some of those channels and basins haven't been serviced in 20 years, Naylor said.

"We need to get them all in shipshape and bring ourselves into a situation where if we have a flood we can manage it," he said, "because it will come."

Brian McInerney, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Salt Lake City, encourages such flood preparations but said he doesn't subscribe to the flood-every-30-years theory.

"Weather is definitely cyclical and there are patterns," McInerney said, "but there are a lot of variables."

Chief among those, he said, is the spring climate. The floods of 1952 and '83 both featured the dangerous combination of above-normal snowpack and abnormally warm weather.

"There have been years when we've had excessive snowpack and didn't have any flooding at all," McInerney said. "And we've had other years that have had near normal snowpack that caused all sorts of problems."

Still, preparedness is always a plus, he said.

Naylor drafted the proposal for a countywide flood-control program and first presented it in November to the Utah County Council of Governments, a body of elected leaders from Utah County and its cities and towns. With 15 new mayors joining the COG in 2006, Naylor said he decided repeating the presentation was necessary and did so earlier this month.

Naylor also highlighted three areas of potential problems: the overused Dry Creek basin; the Provo River with its collection of dead trees; and the Santaquin debris basin, which lacks an overflow channel.

The prevalent response from officials at both meetings: A countywide flood-control program would be beneficial to all — but how do we pay for it?