The Bear River

INTRODUCTION

A reservoir on the Bear River in Box Elder county near the city of Honeyville has been proposed since the late 1950's. The State of Utah, Department of Natural Resources, and Division of Water Resources has continued interest in constructing a reservoir in this area. The proposed dam would be an earthfill embankment, with materials comming from the surrounding area. The reservoir would extend up stream for approximately 13 miles, with a width ranging from 500 feet to just over a mile. The reservoir would inundate several aspects of the surrounding area. The highway, springs of culinary water, local parks, historic Hampton's Ford areas, several homes, and utility lines will be effected by the reservoir.

Potential Inundated Land

Specifications for the reservoir and dam are as follows:

The stored water in the reservoir is designated to be used first by the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge and second use will occur along the Wasatch-Front(Municipal and Industrial use). Box Elder County will be given priority for agriculture and if needed for municipal and industrial use. The construction of this reservoir is intended to benefit Utah by creating an added surplus of 150,000 acre-feet of water annually will help with existing and future needs for the counties of Box Elder, Weber, Davis, and Salt Lake. Below is a table that shows the supply, demand and year of future need for water in each of these counties.

County            Developed         Present          Year Additional
                   Supply(ac-ft)     Demand(ac-ft)    Water Needed
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Box Elder          785,900           781,900           2010

Weber              681,300           604,400           >2025

Davis              300,000           285,700           >2025

Salt Lake          596,900           504,800           2021

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OBJECTIVES

Incedently, there has been no GIS approach taken by the Division of Water Resources to help in their presentation of this proposed action. Our foucus for our project is to show how GIS can be used and applied to this proposed action.

Independent variable:

Dependent variables:

METHODS

Reservoir Boundary

The reservoir boundary was created using ArcInfo. The boundary is digitized from the Tremonton 1:100,000 quaddrangle, at the highest water level, due to the fact that the water level is known to fluctuate. The resevoir boundary is overlaid with a roads coverage which was copied from the /auto/utah database and clipped to the area of interest. Only interstate and major highways are shown. A rivers coverage taken from the AGRC was also overlaid to show the location of the Bear river in it's present state. Also an elevation lines coverage was copied from the AGRC and clipped to Box Elder county boundary to show location of the Wellsville mountains. All coverages were digitized at 1:100.000 scale.

Vegetation Analysis

The reservoir boundary was overlaid with the vegetation coverage derived as part of the Utah Gap Analysis to show innundation of general vegetation types. Vegetation types that will be covered by the resevoir include wetlands, lowland riparian zones and agriculture.

LOWLAND RIPARIAN - Riparian areas generally lower than 5500 feet. Principal woody species include fremont cottonwood Populus fremontii, Salt Cedar
Tamarix pentandra, netleaf hackberry Celtis reticulata, velvet ash Fraxinus velutina, desertwillow Chilopsis linearis, sandbar willow Salix exigua and squawbush Rhus trilobata.
AGRICULTURE - Row crops, irrigated pasture and hay fields, dry farm crops.
WETLAND - Low elevation marsh and wetland areas. Principal species include cattail Typha latifolia, bullrush Scirpus spp. and sedge Carex spp..
SALT DESERT SCRUB - Shrublands principally dominated by shadscale atriplex confertifolia, gray molly Kochia vestita, mat-atriplex Atriplex corrugata, castle valley clover Atriplex cuneata, winterfat Ceratoides lanata, budsage Artemesia spinescens, fourwing saltbush Atriplex canescens, halogeten Halogeten glomeratus, mormon tea Ephedra spp., horsebrush Tetradymia canescens, snakeweed Gutierrezia sarothrae and rabbitbrush Chrysothamnus spp. Primary associated shrub species include greasewood Sarcobatus vermiculatus, sagebrush Artemisia spp. and blackbrush Coleogyne ramosissima. Primary associated forb species includes halogeten Halogeten glomeratus.

Locations of farmlands along the Bear River using satelite imagery.

Use of Landsat TM 30 meter resolution bands 6,4,2, image, and Spot 10 meter panchromatic images, to show vegetation density and farmlands along the present Bear River. Farmlands can be located on both sides of the river.

Typical farmlands located on the floodplains along the Bear River. These will be inundated by the reservoir.

Spring Locations

Below is a coverage showing the location of springs in relation to the reservoir boundary. In addition the springs will only be inundted during high water levels. However, the springs that serve as sources of culinary water for Garland and Tremonton would be inundated, and the replacement of culinary water would be required.

Road Location

Roads and bridges that will need to be expanded due to the reservoir. Two bridges will have to be elongated. The highway 13 bridge will increase to .7 miles in length and highway 102 to .9 miles. Some intermediate roads will also be inundated including access roads to Hamptons historical farm and the restaurant itself.

Canals used to irrigate present farmlands will be inundated.

Computerized aerial view of the proposed reservoir area.

This image was produced by overlaying TM data and 90 meter DEM data using Imagine.

CONCLUSION

By using ARC/Info we have been able to accurately display the project area. Within this area we have successfully shown the effects on vegetation, roads, springs, land ownership. With the use of imagery, we were able to locate farmlands within the project boundary. The DEM was implemented to show the general releif of this area. Despite all of our efforts to help in contributing information to this action, the proposed action for the Honeyville reservoir has been canceled. This plan would have supplied additional water to the wasatch front, but the quality of the water is poor and the cost for water treatment would have been to high. Future plans for water supply will come from other sources along the wasatch-front. These plans also include the CUP (Central Utah Project) which has already begun. The Honeyville Reservoir would have lessened the demand for the CUP, by increasing additional water needed by communities along the Wasatch Front.

REFRENCES

Department of Natural Resources, Division of Water Resources, Proposed Action for the Honeyville Reservoir.

Utah AGRC Database.

TM - 30 meter Resolution IMAGE, Tremonton IMAGE.

SPOT - 10 meter Panchromatic, Cache Valley, south.

DEM's /auto/utah/ , Tremonton quadrangle.

Biowest - conclusion information.

Tremonton, 1-100,000 USGS guadrangle