Water managers make room for snowmelt which could make rivers unsafe

WEBER COUNTY – Water managers say the levels in creeks and rivers in northern Utah will be more dangerous than we’ve seen in several years.  Starting today, crews will be releasing a lot more water into the rivers to make room for the huge amount of snowmelt they expect to see.

“This is the first year in about half a dozen that we had to exercise flood criteria at this level,” according to Weber Basin Water Conservancy District General Manager Tage Flint.

This season, the Ogden River below Pineview Reservoir could run at about 13 hundred cubic feet per second.  Flint says, “Typically, it would have been half that over the last few years at this time of year.”

Crews at the conservancy district have been releasing as much water as they’ve take in, if not more so.

“In the case of the Pineview Reservoir, we’ve actually dropped it a little bit over the last few weeks making even more room for the big push,” he says, adding, “Those two rivers, the Weber and the Ogden rivers… citizens need to watch for increasing flows possibly on a daily basis.”