Uintah Water Conservancy District General Manager William Merkley shared on Thursday that there is a plan in place to have water delivered to their irrigators by the first of next week. On May 19th, the new section of the Steinaker Service Canal pipeline had a section of the pipe fail during a pressure test. “The pipe manufacturer, the pipe supplier, the contractor, and the water district all met on site and the discussion was just focused on getting the pipeline up and running as fast as possible,” Merkley explained. “There has to be an investigation on what happened and some sort of assignment of responsibility but at this point all the energy is focused on how to fix it as quickly as possible.” All parties have been working together and it is anticipated that the repair will be in place today. Merkley says this gives the water district the weekend to charge the line so that water deliveries should happen by the first of next week. “We have every confidence in the world that the pipeline itself is sound and we do not anticipate any other problems,” shared Merkley. “Because we are well into the irrigation season and people need this water, we’ve elected to do another pressure test in the fall after the irrigation season is over so if there are additional problems we can address them at that time and it is not impacting our customers.”
