City Creek Canyon closing until 2027 to rebuild water plant

SALT LAKE CITY — Salt Lake City hikers may have to find a new trail — the City Creek Canyon is closing until 2027.

Crews will spend the next four years rebuilding the water treatment plant near popular hiking and biking spots. Trails will be closed during the week and there will be limited access over weekends.

However, anything past the water treatment plant is off-limits to bicyclists and pedestrians.

“There’s a lot of trails that come down say from the capitol, from the avenues, into Bonneville Boulevard. Those will all remain open with crossings to make sure people get safely onto or across Bonneville,” said Salt Lake Public Utility Deputy Director Jesse Stewart. “Up the canyon, we’re gonna have some trail closures above the plant and above the turnoff for the Bonneville Shoreline Trail.”

What’s wrong with the water treatment plant?

According to the Salt Lake City Public Utilities, there’s nothing wrong with the water from the plant. They’re just rebuilding it to ensure it will function for years to come.

The plant was Salt Lake’s first water source and minimal upgrades have been made since the 1950s. That, along with some damage from the 2020 earthquake, has made the department’s decision to rebuild easy.

“Part of the reason we’re accelerating this is just because of the age of the infrastructure,” Stewart said. “It’s part of our major water infrastructure to serve  365,000 people in the Salt Lake Valley,”

Stewart said the plant supplies water to some very important areas of Salt Lake City, including LDS Hospital and the State Capitol.

“This is really the first water that the pioneers used when they came into the valley,” he said. “So this water’s resources have been used for quite some time and we want to make sure it can continue that way.”

The department is working on rebuilding and repairing several water treatment plants after the Federal Emergency Management Agency gave it a $36.7 million grant to do so.

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