Utah reservoirs are filling as rivers remain near flood stage

WEBER COUNTY, Utah — Utah water managers are trying to balance filling reservoirs while minimizing flood damage as the warmer weather sets in and summer crowds begin.

At the Pineview Reservoir, Scott Paxman, general manager and CEO for Weber Basin Water Conservancy District, said it’s up 20% from a couple of weeks ago and still rising.

“There is a very fine balance,” Paxman said. “We fill them too soon, and there’s the potential of either releasing more water than we want to and getting above the flood stage in the Ogden River and the Weber River.”

He explained that the whole situation is a balancing act keeping everything in check. If they let too much water stay in the reservoirs for people to enjoy, they risk flood damage.

“The fuller we get, the quicker it’s going to potentially spill and then be uncontrolled, the uncontrolled releases we don’t want,” Paxman said.

Though there didn’t seem to be many complaints for people on the lake, especially for people like Joe and Astrid Carroll, who recently moved to Utah from Texas.

“Water’s a little cold for us, but we enjoyed it a lot. It was refreshing,” Joe said. “Little bit of floating debris because it’s still getting the runoff, but other than that, it’s great.”

Paxman said they often get the argument of why not keep the reservoirs at 90 percent full, and it’s just not that easy.

As of Sunday, he said the Weber and Ogden Rivers are running right around flood stage, and if the reservoirs were to spill over, that would only add to it.

“We get a lot of armchair quarterbacks who say, ‘Start filling! Fill those reservoirs! Keep them at 90%!’ Well, it’s not that easy because the inflows get to be much more than the outflows can be,” Paxman expressed.