St. George • Even with temperatures in southwest Utah expected to hit the mid-90s this weekend, Santa Clara Mayor Rick Rosenberg is relatively confident his and other cities in Washington County will avoid the major flooding that has occurred in some areas along the Wasatch Front.
In explaining why he remains confident, Rosenberg sums it up with one word — experience.
“It’s due to the fact that we got our butts kicked seriously in ’05,” said the mayor, who happens to be a flood-control engineer. “It was a wake-up call. If [northern Utah] had a federally declared disaster that claimed 25 homes up there like we did down here, they might have a whole different situation.”
Rosenberg is referring to the January 2005 flood that sent torrents of muddy water rushing down the Virgin and Santa Clara rivers, overrunning reservoirs, taking out bridges, eroding banks and sending homes tumbling into the water.
The damage from the 2005 flood was devastating. All told, the damage tallied up to more than $200 million — roughly $140 million to infrastructure and another $85 million to private property, according to the Utah Division of Emergency Management.
Rather than risk a repeat, Rosenberg — who was then on the City Council — and officials in other cities went to work. Most homes in the area that fell into the river were not allowed to be rebuilt and St. George purchased three or four of the most vulnerable lots along the Santa Clara River within its municipal boundaries.
St. George and Santa Clara, the most flood-prone cities, spent millions of dollars to do extensive armoring along the Virgin and Santa Clara rivers. Workers there have lined long stretches of riverbanks with large boulders of lava and other rock to prevent them from eroding, which is what precipitated much of the major damage in the historic 2005 flood.
“Between 2006 and 2014, we did over 10 projects of bank armoring,” said St. George city engineer Jay Sandberg. “And that armoring [process] is ongoing.”
Workers in St. George have also armored sections of the Sand Hollow and Fort Pearce washes, the latter a major tributary that flows into the Virgin River. Another ongoing effort is dredging area rivers to remove sandbars, blockages from felled trees and problem vegetation that can contribute to flooding.
Most recently, the city has focused on repairing the damage flooding from a major storm did to the Southgate Golf Club, portions of which parallel Dixie Drive, a month ago. That work has included repairing damage to rock walls, removing sandbars and vegetation and dredging the river.
“We haven’t had any real flooding issues with homes or businesses or anything like that,” said St. George Public Works Director Cameron Cutler. “We just have to maintain a close watch and keep cleaning out the rivers to avoid problems because of how wet it has been.”
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Santa Clara River cuts a wide swatch through the town of Gunlock in January 2005. The road leading into Gunlock had been shutdown in both directions when the river destroyed the bridges on the north and south sides of town.
To help pay for the ongoing flood-prevention efforts, St. George, Santa Clara, Washington City and the county formed the Washington County Flood Control Authority in 2014. Each water user in the three cities is assessed $1.50 a month for flood control. The county provides administrative support, according to Rosenberg, who serves as a consultant to the agency.
Sandberg estimates the money allocated through the authority for flood control is about $5 million thus far — money which has been leveraged to obtain another $15 million or more in federal funds from the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Preparing for runoff
Given the level of preparation that has gone into flood control since 2005 and subsequent less damaging floods, county and municipal officials express confidence that they can weather the continued above-average snowmelt flowing into the rivers this spring. That could change if there is another atmospheric river-like storm, sudden spike in temperatures or a warm rain on top of the snowpack that could send it gushing down the slopes and rivers all at once.
Fortunately, there are no storms or major temperature spikes in the 10-day forecast. The Colorado Basin River Forecast Center is not predicting any major flooding in southwestern Utah’s rivers.
Another confidence-boosting factor is that southwest Utah’s snowpack, while high, is not at a record level. Jordan Clayton, supervisor of the Utah Snow Survey, said southwest Utah’s snowpack peaked at 28.6 inches of snow-water equivalent a few weeks ago, well short of the 32.7 inches recorded in 1983, but higher than the 28.1 recorded in the 2005 flood year.
As of late last week, Clayton said, 7.5 inches of the 28.6 inches — an average of all SNOTEL snow-measuring sites in the area — have melted.
“It’s been coming rapidly, but from a flood-mitigation perspective it has been manageable,” Clayton said.
Confident as they are, flood control officials are careful not to sound cocky. For example, the county preemptively declared a state of emergency last week, which expedites the process for receiving state and federal funds should the worst happen.
Jason Bradley, Washington County emergency operations manager, said his office is also staging specialized response trailers and Conex-like boxes of sandbags, shovels and other supplies at strategic locations in the area.
Still, Bradley acknowledged, the county has lucked out with the weather, which has alternated warm and cooler days and kept the snowmelt coming down in an orderly fashion.
“We’re crossing our fingers that we keep that pattern going,” he said. “If we can …, I think we are going to be OK.”
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Destroyed homes along the Santa Clara River in St. George after flooding in January 2005.
For their part, Cutler and Sandberg maintain a list of contractors they can summon on short notice should flood issues surface. In nearby Santa Clara, officials have a flood-control emergency plan they train for on a regular basis.
“There’s a call list in place so that we can get the word out. I also have a list of all the property owners along the [Santa Clara] river on my phone and can alert them via text message,” the mayor said.
Aside from preparation, Rosenberg said there is no substitute for experience. Besides himself, he noted that his city manager and public works director are all battle-tested veterans who have experienced flooding before. He said the same is true of many of the old farmers, ranchers and other property owners living along the river.
If the worst happens, the mayor said they all know the drill and what to do.
Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.
