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LAKE SHORE — They were far downstream from a powerful thunderstorm that caused major problems in Spanish Fork Canyon Friday, but by early Saturday morning, their Lake Shore neighborhood was covered by flood waters and mud.
Neighbors have said they wanted to know who is to blame for an irrigation dam not being raised, and they hoped those answers might come at a community meeting Thursday evening.
They didn’t.
Though multiple officials from Utah County and the Spanish Fork River Commission attended, property owners still didn’t have a clear picture of who was responsible for opening the dam.
Neighbors said a previous water master had moved.
“We don’t want this happening again!” Lynne Merrell exclaimed during the meeting.
Merrell said prior to the flood waters and mud, her family had just laid down about $2,000 of gravel over a driveway. On Thursday afternoon, the gravel was nowhere to be seen.
Merrell said she wasn’t sure if it was hidden beneath the mud or if it had been washed away.
Multiple sheds on her property also saw damage, and her garden appeared to have been largely wiped out.
“Yep, not sure if they’re going to make it,” Merrell said of her cucumbers, beets and cantaloupe. “My cucumbers definitely didn’t make it.”
She wasn’t the hardest hit.
“(My neighbor)—she had probably two, two-and-a-half, three-feet of water in her house,” Merrell said. “(It’s) all because nobody took the dam out! Simply fix. You just had to go down and take the dam out. It wasn’t that big of a deal.”
Terri Hudson said she had mud everywhere and worked extensively to clean up her property.
“I definitely think it could happen again,” Hudson said. “That’s the thing is there was a lack of communication, I think, with something that could have been prevented.
At Thursday’s meeting, Utah County emergency manager Peter Quittner discussed possibilities to improve electronic notification of neighbors about potential flooding.
He said he would look further into what could be done in that regard.
Spanish Fork River Commissioner Ed Vidmar said he wasn’t responsible for what happened with the dam. He did say the floodwaters were swift and powerful.
“It’s been since 1983 that the Spanish Fork River has gone over 2,000 (cubic feet per second),” Vidmar said. “It actually hit about 2,400 late Friday night.”
Vidmar said when crews saw it start to happen, they opened the gates at the Spanish Fork River, East Bench Diversion Dam and Spanish Fork City dam.
“It’s my understanding that some phone calls were made to notify irrigation companies,” Vidmar said.
It was less definite what happened after that.
“We want somebody to be able down there to take a key and lift the dam up,” Merrell exclaimed during the meeting. Quittner said it did not appear that property owners would be eligible for relief funds.
“It’s probably not what everyone wanted to hear,” Quittner said. “I don’t control this. I talked to the state, I talked to the specialist at the state yesterday who ran some scenarios, and unfortunately there’s nothing that’s in place right now.”
Merrell said she wasn’t seeking money—just answers and a solution so the same problem doesn’t surface again.
“They should have pulled that dam out when they got the other three—that’s all there was to it,” Merrell shrugged. “Simple fix—you just had to go down and take the dam out. Wasn’t that big of a deal.”
