LAYTON -- At least there isn't the worry of snowmelt flooding this year.

But that's because the remaining snowpack is so low, says Tage Flint, general manager of Weber Basin Water Conservancy District, here.

"It's not looking good. This is much worse of a snowpack than we had during the six years of drought we've just gotten out of," he said.

Based on a scale of 100 being normal anticipated snowpack for early April, it stood at 43 percent in the Weber Basin Drainage as of late Monday morning.

"The south (of the state) is terrible as well," Flint said. It's down to 20 percent in the Virgin River area around St. George.

"They (Virgin River) have only a few stations with measurable snow left," he said. Bear River is at 50 percent, Green River at 46, and Duchesne drainage at 42 percent.

"All (Weber Basin) stations still have some snow, all but Beaver Divide between Kamas and Trial Lake," Flint said. Those stations range from 6,000 feet on the low end to Trial Lake at 9,960 feet above sea level.

"We are still OK this year because of where our reservoirs started in the fall, and the fact we'll still get some runoff," Flint said.

Last Easter, for example, "We had all kinds of troubles with the lower Weber (River) through Weber County (flooding)," he said. "We haven't even seen a rise this year."

Of the overall water condition, Flint said "we haven't seen anything like this since the 1930s," with 1977 as bad, 30 years ago.

When moisture levels are particularly low, the storage at Willard Bay has been tapped.

"We do pump from Willard Bay for exchanges, so we keep more water in the upstream reservoirs," Flint said. "We have a limited capacity in the bay this year, but still may pump some to try and preserve as much upstream as possible."

With gravity always in play, he said it's much easier to keep water at the higher levels than to pump it up there from lower elevations.

"Conservation is going to be talked about a lot this summer, as we try to talk about next year's levels," Flint said. "We have an added component of growth that wasn't even in there five years ago."

New reservoirs don't come easily or frequently, he said. "The last new one for us was Smith & Morehouse, in the late 80s. Before that it was in the 60s. They (reservoirs) are very few and far between, now."

Homeowners will be asked to limit watering again this year, foregoing in between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. "For our outdoor watering, we will have some college students going around reminding people not to water in the middle of the day, watching for anyone who might violate that repeatedly," he said.

After a third warning, secondary water will be turned off.

Farmers won't have to cut use by 20 percent, as in some years in the past, Flint said, but will keep their allocation. "We'll ask for voluntary conservation, generally get a real good response from that request."

And although Northern Utahns aren't getting their water from the Colorado River, which is experiencing low levels of runoff, Flint said it does impact this area.

"It does impact the water available for hydroelectric power," he said. Weber Basin generates its own power, that way.

"It's difficult to say" what is causing the frequent droughts, he said. "The Weather Service folks do chart some extremes historically happening every 70 years. Is this a part of a longer-term drought? Is it much like the one that drove a lot of indigenous people out of the Southwest, or is this something new? It's very difficult to say."



tbusselberg@davisclipper.com