Most residents voice support for Murdock Canal, trail plan

LINDON, Utah County — Few people pay attention to the "No Trespassing" sign that warns people off the maintenance road along the Murdock Canal.

Every day, walkers, runners and cyclists can be found using the dirt road, and no one stops them.

"I walk that trail in the mornings," said Lindon Mayor Jim Dain, who lives near the canal. "There are a lot of folks that walk that trail in the morning, and they are not criminals."

Over the next few years, the canal will be transformed into a 10.5-foot-diameter underground pipe and 16 miles of urban trail — the longest in Utah County.

If comments at a series of public meetings to explain the project to local residents are any indication, the plan is a hit with most, including those who live with the canal in their backyard.

"I've been hoping for this ever since we moved in," said Diane Berrett, who moved into her Lindon home 20 years ago. "I think it will be good for the community."

The 21-mile canal was built in 1911 to carry water from the Provo River to irrigators and municipalities in Salt Lake County. It was enlarged in the 1940s. Officially, it is named the Provo Reservoir Canal, but for people living nearby, it's always been known as the Murdock Canal, and its history is checkered.

Over the years, the canal has been the site of multiple drowning deaths, usually the result of bizarre accidents, like the paraglider who landed in the canal in 1999 and was pulled into a syphon by his waterlogged parachute, or the two brothers who died in 2003 while trying to negotiate one of the canal's syphon tubes in scuba gear.

People who live near the canal tend to treat it with respect.

Preston Black, of Pleasant Grove, said his family uses the trail, but "it's off limits to our kids unless we are with them."

There are other issues. Where the canal runs along the hillsides of Lindon and Pleasant Grove, flooding is a constant concern, even though only one major break has been recorded recently.

In 1988, rodent holes and high water collapsed the canal bank in Lindon, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to homes flooded with water and mud before the canal was shut down.