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Reed Mathis, Governor Calvin Rampton, and Rudger
McArthur, sign Gunlock Reservoir contract.
For several years the federal government had been considering possible water
developments in southern Utah under the name of "The Dixie Project." Part
of what they studied was the possibility of building a dam on the Santa
Clara River below Gunlock. Federal engineers had placed a price tag on the
dam project at about $9 million. When, for complex reasons, the federal
government dropped that segment of the project, the City of St. George jumped
right on it. The St. George Water and Power Board believed it was a good
idea to build a dam on the Santa Clara River below Gunlock. If the federal
government didn't want to do it, they would give it a go themselves.
They were given little chance for success by state water officials, but
city leaders pushed forward by first petitioning for and receiving the green
light from the state, from Fish and Game from the Forest Service, and from
the Bureau of Land Management. Jay Bingham was retained by the city as project
engineer for the Lower Gunlock Reservoir. Bingham became a driving force
in moving the proposal along. He helped get permits cleared and the funds
secured, and worked closely with Governor Calvin Rampton for state assistance.
A major obstacle in the process was getting the blessing of, and funding
from, the Bureau of Reclamation in Washington, D.C. Shirl Pitchforth of
the water and power board traveled to Washington and met first with Senator
Wallace Bennett. The senator put him in contact with the right people in
the Bureau of Reclamation, who told him point blank the whole thing was
impossible. But by the time Pitchforth got home, the Bureau of Reclamation
had approved the project and put up $300,000 toward it.
Construction on the Gulock Reservoir began on January 8, 1970. The Reservoir
was officially dedicated on Nov. 21, 1970. The City of St. George built
the project, which is now administered by the Lower Gunlock Reservoir Corporation,
for about $1 million. Plans for the original Bureau of Reclamation project,
which carried a $9 million price tag, had called for a much larger reservoir,
with a dam 12 feet higher than the one the city ultimately built.
The Gunlock Reservoir itself does not supply culinary water. After completion
of the reservoir the city studied and made plans to build a treatment plant
and pipe reservoir water to St. George, but the plans never materialized
as studies showed the annual yield was too low for such a project. While
the reservoir serves as irrigation storage for farmers downstream, and as
an important recreation resource for the area, its benefit to users of St.
George culinary water is less direct. It is believed that the reservoir
helps keep deep sandstone aquifers downstream charged with water and the
city owns six wells just a few hundred yards downstream from the dam.
In the end, it was the wells the water department drilled along the Gunlock
drainage that benefitted the city most. Drilling actually began on some
Wells long the Gunlock drainage in 1964-65. Soon after construction began
on the dam more drilling occurred. With three plentiful wells producing
more than 4 million gallons a day, a 14 mile pipeline, 18 inches in diameter,
was installed. The pipeline connected the Gunlock water to a 1.7 million
gallon storage tank - the green tank on the north point of the black ridge
at Bluff and Sunset Boulevard.
Today, eight plentiful wells are pumping along the Santa Clara River Below
Gunlock Dam, sending in excess of 7 million gallons of water a day to thirsty
St. George residents.
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Articles taken from Making the Desert Bloom
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