By VERNON ROBISON
The Progress
The Virgin Valley Water District (VVWD) Board of Directors authorized the execution of a task order for the design and construction of the Sun City Booster Station during a meeting held on Tuesday, March 21. The task order would enter an agreement with Civil Science Infrastructure, Inc. in the amount of $143,700 to complete the project.
The project is located on Hardy Way just west of Falcon Ridge Parkway. This is a crucial location for the distribution of water into the large Sun City area, said VVWD Engineer Steve Hall. Hall explained to the board members that the project would provide redundancy to the water delivery in the area.
“There is that stretch on Falcon Ridge where we do not have a double feed to a large portion of Sun City,” Hall said. “So if there is ever an issue in that area, we would have to back feed through and have basically no pressure for those folks.”
Hall explained that the booster station would give the ability to pressurize the Sun City area in the event that mains in that area needed repair or maintenance or if a well in that area had to be taken out of service.
Hall said that the timeframe for completing the project was simply as soon as the contractor could complete it. He pointed out that the project was originally scheduled in the next fiscal year’s budget.
“We had budgeted this to be done next year,” VVWD Financial Officer Wes Smith confirmed. “But because we have some excess capacity capital-wise this year, we figured we could use those capital resources to get this taken care of sooner and get the project going.”
VVWD General Manager Kevin Brown added that the project has0 a dual purpose. The district is also putting a monitoring well onsite for gauging groundwater levels in the aquifer. He said that engineering firm Bowen and Collins is currently getting specs to start drilling the well.
“We are hopeful to bid those out in May or June,” he said. “But we have got to get all the earthwork done before they can get the drill rig on site. So that is another reason we are moving this along a little bit quicker.”
Board member Brian Bingham made a motion to authorize the task order. The motion was approved with a unanimous vote.
River flow put in perspective
Later on, during the board comments and questions portion of the meeting, board member Gary Elgort asked about the flood stage event that had taken place on the Virgin River during the week before.
Elgort said that he had stood on the Riverside Bridge on Thursday, Mar. 16 and watched the river flowing wildly at flood stage. It made him curious about the status of the district’s water main distribution line which passes under the river.
“Is there any risk of that line being exposed by a flooding event like that?” he asked.
VVWD Hydrologist Aaron Bunker explained that the pipeline had been installed 40 feet below the baseline of the river; well below the traditional scour level of the stream.
“We purposely built that line below what has been the historic scour level of the river,” Bunker said. “We have had 100 year and close to 500 year flood events on it. The line is below that. In addition to that, that part of the pipeline has a liner that reinforces it against that. So we are pretty comfortable with it.”
As a point of interest, Bunker then placed the previous week’s water levels on the river in perspective with historic flooding events. He said that the peak flow on Thursday, March 16 was about 12,000 cubic feet per second (cfs).
“That is running pretty high,” he said. “In fact, at that moment, it was a higher flow than the average flow of the Colorado River between Lakes Powell and Mead.”
Bunker added that in the flood event of 2010, a flow gauge located just below the I-15 bridge at Beaver Dam, showed the river flowing at about 31,000 cfs. In the flood of 2005, it was at 37,000 cfs.
“So last week it was under a third of the flow from those events,” Bunker said. “So the river is dynamic. It is pretty flashy.”
