Diamond Fork tunnel ready for water

DIAMOND FORK — Officials had an up-close and personal visit with the newly completed Diamond Fork tunnel that will soon be ready to funnel thousands of gallons of Strawberry Reservoir water to the Wasatch Front.

The officials gathered Thursday for a walk-through of the concrete-lined tunnel that is part of a 13-mile complex of tunnels and pipelines that will be operated by the Central Utah Water Conservancy District.

The next step is connecting the tunnel to a flow control structure that will regulate whether the water will go into the Diamond Fork River or through a 96-inch pipeline that will carry it to the mouth of the canyon, said Lee Wimmer, construction manager for the CUWCD project.

The tunnels and pipelines will eventually carry 100,900 acre-feet of water annually from Strawberry Reservoir to Utah County as part of the Central Utah Project's Bonneville Unit. It is the final part of the federally funded $2.3 billion CUP, conceived four decades ago to distribute Utah's portion of Colorado River water.

Water officials are currently discussing plans to build a Utah Lake system that would split the pipeline at the mouth of Diamond Fork Canyon. That system would divert 84,510 acre-feet of the water into Utah Lake to meet exchange contracts for Jordanelle Reservoir water that is contracted for delivery to Salt Lake County. The remainder would go to south Utah County, Wimmer said.

The Diamond Fork tunnel is the middle link in the Strawberry delivery system. The lower portion at the mouth of Diamond Fork Canyon was built in 1995-97 and has been idly waiting for the rest of the project to be constructed. Crews completed the upper portion earlier this year. That link will bring water from Strawberry Reservoir through the Syar tunnel to Sixth Water and the Tanner Ridge tunnel, about 13 miles east of U.S. 6.

The Upper Diamond Fork tunnel that was toured on Thursday by south Utah County city leaders and representatives from the water conservancy district, the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Reclamation, was the site of a multi-million dollar loss in October 2001 when crews ran into a pocket of sulphur. They eventually had to back out and bury 7,000 feet of tunnel, including a $2.6 million-dollar boring machine.

Despite delays from that mishap, the project is now 60 days to 90 days ahead of schedule, said Jim Stevens, project manager with contractor Obayashi Corp., which is in partnership with W.W. Clyde Co. of Springville in constructing the $133 million water delivery project.

"We're still working on the final cost," he said.

After crews backed out of the sulphur-flooded tunnel, they bored a 180-foot shaft straight up taking a new path that eventually connected to the Tanner Ridge Tunnel and the Sixth Water diversion structure.

"This will insure future federal water to Utah Lake," said Dave Pitcher, who oversees water treatment plants in Orem, Duchesne and Vernal. The project started in July 2000 and has a target completion date of October 2004. Officials are pleased with the progress.

"That's crucial," said Ron Johnson, project director with the Department of the Interior, "because water contracts require that we deliver it in 2005."

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