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Snowfall a blessing to dry Mendon By
Hilary Ingoldsby MENDON -- The recent snowfall in Cache Valley may be cold and annoying to some, but to Mendon residents and officials the precipitation is a long-awaited blessing. The last year found Mendon water levels at an all-time low with the spring that provides most of the city's water running at about 40 percent of normal, Mayor Sydney Larsen said. "We've never been at that low a level before," said Rodney Sorenson, the city councilman over the water department. Although water levels were low Mendon did not run out of water because of a well that extra water could be pumped from. Larsen said the well produced successfully this year and really helped the city's water shortage, but not without a price. With energy rates at all-time highs over the past year it cost the city a lot of money to pump the extra water, Sorenson said. "We had to pump a lot," Sorenson said. In addition to the extra cost, the water shortage has put a damper on growth in the city. "The challenge is trying to determine how much growth we can allow and still have an adequate water supply. How do you build new houses when you don't know if you have enough water for the people in them?" Larsen asked. Not only did the drought place stipulations on people wanting to move and build in Mendon, but also to those already living there. Over the summer residents were asked to only water their yards every other day because if everyone watered too much at the same time the amount of water in the tanks would have been so low it would have compromised fire coverage, Sorenson said. Although many residents were weary and nervous about the water rules, Sorenson said that it did help balance the water levels until school started. "The demand for water drops when school starts, but is pretty high through May and September," Sorenson said. Agriculture was also affected by the water problems. The Oct. 29 Utah Weekly Crop and Weather Report showed that plowing corn and grain was extremely difficult for many farmers because the soil was too hard and dry, Many farmers were said to be just waiting in the hopes for precipitation. "This year we had some periods during the summer where the reservoirs were almost dry," Larsen said. Sorenson doesn't feel that the lack of precipitation is Mendon's only problem however. Mendon was settled about 150 years ago near little streams owned by irrigation companies while Logan was settled on the Logan River, allowing Mendon to have access to about half of a fifth of the total water in the area. "Half of one stream, that's all the water we own as a city," Sorenson said. Larsen hopes in the next five years to build a fairly large storage tank that would store water overnight, so that when people want to move into the community they can. The tank would cost between $1 million and $1.5 million. Funding for the project would come from saving money in the water budget as well as charging an impact fee for people moving into the community and borrowing money from the United States Department of Agriculture, Larsen said. Both Larsen and Sorenson are hopeful that the precipitation over the winter will continue and provide more water for next spring and summer. If not, however, the city is prepared to handle problems. "If there's a lot of water in the mountains we'll be OK, if not we may have to be more restrictive. We've been used to using all the water we want all the time but we do have a short term problem," Sorenson said.
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