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Park City waterworks project yells ‘Fore!’

by Jay Hamburger THE PARK RECORD
Jade Lee, a COP Construction superintendent, left, and Ismael Tapia lower a lid onto a concrete vault Thursday on Lowell Avenue. The work is part of a pipeline project running from Old Town to a water treatment plant on Three Kings Drive. Christopher Reeves/Park Record
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Park City officials earlier in April restarted building a pipeline that will take water from the upper reaches of Old Town to the edge of Thaynes Canyon, one of several waterworks projects planned this year.

Gravity will carry the water though the pipeline, which will run from a pump station located just south of the end of the pavement on Daly Avenue to the Spiro water treatment plant on Three Kings Drive. It will stretch for 2.3 miles. The work started last fall, but most of the project remains to be done this year. The pipeline is expected to cost $4 million, with a federal grant funding nearly half of the sum.

Clint McAffee, the Park City water manager, said the pipeline will carry water from the Judge Tunnel drinking water source to the treatment plant. It will be treated for antimony, arsenic, lead and other contaminants. McAffee said the pipeline is part of a broader effort to meet state drinking water standards. It will also assist in increasing the quality of water in Silver Creek and McLeod Creek, he said. Water from the Judge Tunnel has not been put into the drinking water system since the middle of 2013 based on antimony concerns.

The pipeline route crosses approximately 2,500 feet of the Park City Golf Club. McAffee said the route will cross the fairways of holes 12, 13, 14 and 15. The route will run parallel to the hole 16 fairway.

He said the work paralleling the hole 16 fairway is planned between July and September. The work involving the fairway crossings is expected to occur between October and February. McAffee said golf play should not be impacted, but golfers should expect the noise of heavy machinery and a temporary construction fence around the work. He said the cross-country skiing track on the golf course could be slightly modified while the work is underway.

Workers, meanwhile, have started a separate project across Park City from the pipeline route. McAffee said the irrigation systems at the Quinn’s Junction recreation complex, the North 40 field and a portion of the Park City School District fields complex will be converted so they tap a raw water source instead of one used for drinking water. Doing so lessens the demand on drinking water and frees up tank, pipeline and treatment plant capacity, he said. Heavy machinery is cutting a route through the grass across from the Wyatt Earp Way intersection. The project is anticipated to be completed in the middle of May. The work includes building a filter station below the ground just west of the entrance to the North 40 field.

There are two additional waterworks projects planned. Crews will replace a pressure-reducing valve vault in Old Town and move it to the small parking lot at the Main Street-Hillside Avenue intersection. The work is planned in June. The parking lot will be closed temporarily. The other one, also starting in June, involves replacing approximately 400 feet of line on Rossi Hill Drive close to the intersection with Deer Valley Loop.

More information is available on City Hall’s website, http://www.parkcity.org. Select ‘April Community News’ in the News section on the front page. Scroll to ‘Judge Pipeline Construction Update.’ The website lists a phone number of 565-0109 for the project team.

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