Home Care In Pine Valley, UT

In this file photo, a view of a snow-covered Pine Valley Mountain from Sand Hollow Reservoir, Hurricane, Utah, Jan. 25, 2023 | Photo by Mori Kessler, St. George News

ST. GEORGE — Utah is experiencing one of its best winters in 20 years with January ending at 200% above average precipitation levels. This year’s snowpack has also been compared with levels not seen since 1984 and 1997.

According the National Resources Conservation Service, Utah is now guaranteed to have an above-normal snowpack. Every additional inch of snow that falls between now and when melting starts, further adds to that, and with it, more potential for runoff that will be used to fill reservoirs.

In the southwestern part of the state, snowpack is currently listed at 185% above average, though that will likely change with the onset of a new storm system passing through the state Tuesday night and later on this week.

“This is our opportunity year,” Candice Hasenyager, director of the Division of Water Resources, said in a statement issued Tuesday. “In order to take full advantage of our plentiful snowpack, we must continue to use our water wisely. One good snow year won’t pull the state out of drought. And by using less water, we will become more drought resilient.”

While recent storms have helped diminish the severity of the drought across the state, water managers have said it will take multiple years of above-average snowfall to bring the drought to an end.

The majority of Utah was in a state of severe-to-extreme drought in September 2022. The areas under extreme drought have reduced significantly between then and mid-February due to the storms. Currently, most of the state is listed as experiencing moderate-to-severe levels of drought.

Most of Washington County is under moderate drought conditions while Iron County is listed as moderate-to-severe like the state overall is.

More significant impacts wrought by the snowpack likely won’t be known until it starts to melt. Runoff for snowpack in Utah usually occurs in March and April. This can be frustrating if warmer weather causes runoff to occur much faster or extreme dryness causes any runoff to be soaked into the ground before reaching waterways.

If warmer weather causes fast runoff, there are concerns among local water managers and elected officials it would lead to flooding similar to what was seen on the Santa Clara River in 2005.

“A lot of the water we have received this winter has been held within the snowpack,” Hayden Mahan, a forecaster to the National Weather Service out of Salt Lake City, said in an email to St. George News.

“We have been cold this winter so a lot of that water has not yet melted off and contributed to rivers and reservoirs yet,” he said. “So we will have a better understanding of how well our drought will improve once we start to melt this snow off (and depending on how high above normal we end the season). So, although it’s hard to say where we will be going exactly, it’s clear that we are in much better shape this winter going into the summer compared to where we were last winter.”

Runoff from snowpack that fills the state’s reservoirs provides Utah with over 90% of its drinking water.

Thus far, 24 of the 47 reservoirs the Utah Division of Water Resources monitors are below 55% capacity, which is about the same as last year but still about 10% lower than normal for this time of year.

Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2023, all rights reserved.

For Immediate Release, March 7, 2023

Groundwater Pumping Threatens Species Amid Catastrophic Drought

TUCSON, Ariz.— The Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit today against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to force it to decide whether to protect Utah’s least chub and Nevada’s Fish Lake Valley tui chub under the Endangered Species Act.

Today’s lawsuit, filed in federal court in Tucson, says the Service is violating the Act by delaying action on the imperiled fishes, which are threatened by groundwater pumping in a region experiencing catastrophic drought. The lawsuit also seeks decisions relating to the protection of 10 other plants and animals.

“These small fishes are an incredibly important part of the Great Basin’s natural heritage, and they’re teetering on the brink of extinction,” said Krista Kemppinen, Ph.D., a senior scientist at the Center. “The longer the Service waits to protect these fishes the greater the chance that they’ll disappear forever. We’re in the midst of an extinction crisis and these little minnows are running out of time.”

The Center sought Endangered Species Act protections for the least chub and the Fish Lake Valley tui chub in 2021. However, the Service has yet to make a final determination on whether these two fishes should be protected under the Act, leading to today’s litigation.

Species background

Least chub is a gold-colored minnow, typically less than 2.5 inches long, endemic to Utah’s Bonneville Basin. It’s the only species in its genus, Iotichthys. The main threat to the least chub is proposed groundwater pumping to support human population growth in Cedar City, Utah. The proposed Pine Valley Water Supply Project would pump billions of gallons of groundwater from Utah’s West Desert, threatening springs the chubs depend on.

Fish Lake Valley tui chub is an olive-colored minnow, less than 5 inches long, found in just one spring system in Nevada’s Fish Lake Valley, in Esmeralda County. The springs that the fish relies on are threatened by groundwater over-pumping. Most of the groundwater pumped in Fish Lake Valley is used in the production of alfalfa. Other threats include lithium and geothermal energy development.

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.7 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

It’s been a tale of two winters across Utah.

The mountains around Provo, Salt Lake City and Logan are currently enjoying above average snowpack levels. Southwest Utah, however, has not been so lucky.

The Santa Clara River watershed near St. George, for example, has less than half of its normal snowpack. It’s the same for the Paria River basin next to Bryce Canyon National Park. Overall, southwestern Utah has 64% of the snow it normally has at this time of year — and just 27% of what it had this time last year.

Even the higher elevations are lagging.

Utah Snow Survey Supervisor Jordan Clayton said Gardner Peak in the Pine Valley Mountains is normally one of the region’s highest-accumulating sites. Right now it's at just 56% of normal.

“There's not a lot of snow there at all, and the snow that's there is much denser than it would normally be,” Clayton said. “So we've got something between snow and ice up there right now that's not terribly deep.”

That icy mixture could spell trouble down the road, he said, because a denser snowpack requires less energy to start melting. So unless it gets buried under some layers of fresh powder, it could lead to an earlier-than-desired melt this spring.

Hayden Mahan, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Salt Lake City, said southwest Utah’s winter has gotten off to a slow start for a couple of reasons.

First, the region missed out on two major storm systems that delivered much of northern Utah’s snow in December and early January. And the snow clouds that have crossed southwestern Utah haven’t stuck around long enough to do a whole lot.

“We have seen storms, but typically they come in and then they go out pretty quickly,” he said. “That's not very conducive for building a deep snowpack.”

On top of that, he said, temperatures have stayed on the warm side. St. George just experienced its fourth-warmest December on record, with an average temp of 45.5 degrees. So, much of the snow that’s fallen melted away before the next round of flakes can pile on.

A few days of snowfall in late January only increased southwest Utah’s average snowpack total from 3 inches to 3.8 inches — well short of its 6-inch historical average for this time of year.

So, what might the rest of the winter hold?

The most likely outcome, Clayton said, is that snowpack remains below average between now and its peak in mid-March — probably ending up around 70-80% of normal. But the estimates vary widely, from reaching far above average snowpack levels to setting a new record low.

“We've got a lot of winter left, so there's reason to be hopeful,” Clayton said.

One reason for his optimism is the El Niño weather pattern that’s taken hold since last summer, which can have a loose correlation with increased winter storm activity in the southwestern U.S. That hasn’t materialized in Utah yet, but Mahan said the outlook for February — which favors above-average precipitation across southwest Utah — gives him hope that it might finally arrive.

“We can really catch up quickly if we have a really active pattern. So, really a couple of decent storms could easily put us back to where we are [normally] this time of year.”

And there is some good news. Leftover moisture from last year’s record-setting wet winter is still helping southwest Utah get by.

Many aquifers and reservoirs remain full. Sand Hollow and Quail Creek near St. George, for instance, are at 96% and 75% capacity. This time last year, they were 70% and 66%, respectively.

Utah’s soil also remains saturated, Mahan said. So even an average snow season this year could lead to exceptional runoff because a bigger share of that water would make it into streams and community water supplies.

“It’s probably for the best that we don't have the volume of water [this year] that we did last year because we’d run into some pretty big problems,” he said. “We don't have a lot of capacity to hold a bunch of additional water.”

An environmental group filed a formal notice to sue to the U.S. government over claims that a proposed water pipeline in southern Utah could threaten a fish species subject to protection under the Endangered Species Act.

The Pine Valley Water Supply Project, which managers in Iron County say is needed in the fast-growing Cedar City area, threatens the habitat of the least chub, a small minnow found only in Utah, according to representatives with the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Tucson.

The Center plans to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to protect the fish under the Endangered Species Act.

“The least chub is in the crosshairs of the Pine Valley Water Supply Project," said Krista Kemppinen, Ph.D., a senior scientist at the Center. “If this desperately imperiled fish doesn’t get federal protections, the repercussions could be catastrophic.”

The small fish, which is less than three inches long, once lived in rivers, marshes and ponds across Utah's Bonneville Basin, but survives in only seven wild populations, having lost much of its habitat to human development and predation from non-native species. It was placed on a "candidate list" for ESA protections in 2010.

The Center filed a petition in 2021 asking the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to explain how it would protect the species, especially with the Pine Valley project potentially impacting as much as half of the existing population. A draft filing of the project's potential environmental impacts suggested it could dry up some of the springs and habitat the fish needs to survive.

The agency didn't respond by a September deadline, prompting the Center to move forward with its legal action.

Water managers say the 66-mile pipeline project would send water that Iron County already owns from rural parts of Beaver County to the growing population in and around Cedar City. Water users in Iron County are already running low on water, having overdrawn their underground aquifer.

The county has eyed the Pine Valley project as the solution, and already owns the rights to more than 26,000 acre-feet of water between the Pine and Wah Wah valleys. That amount of water could roughly double the amount of water currently available, which proponents say could help the Cedar City area to keep up with population growth that has surged in recent years to as much as a 6.2% increase in 2021. State demographers say the county could double in size to some 100,000 population by 2065.

The project has been controversial with many locals, with concerns about the potential costs and protests from Beaver County and from some members of the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, which has had rights to water in some of the areas identified in the pipeline plans. Some Iron County residents started a petition opposing the project.

Iron County has searched for years to find new sources of water, increasing its conservation efforts, implementing reuse plans and improving local infrastructure, but managers have long contended that those types of efforts to save water won't be enough.

The county was once part of plans for the Lake Powell Pipeline, a larger and also controversial project that would pipe water out of Lake Powell and send it to southwestern Utah, but the county backed out of that project a decade ago over cost concerns and amid hopes an alternative could be found.

Utah has a unique mix of scrub brush, desert and forest landscapes that makes it different from most other western states.

That means wildfires don’t act the same way here as they do elsewhere, said Utah State University wildland resources professor Jim Lutz. Yet, a lot of past fire ecology research has traditionally come from states like California or Arizona.

That’s why he put together a study that sorted through four decades of satellite imagery and wildfire reports to help Utah fire managers weigh their options for controlling a fire or letting it burn.

“It's not like we're in northern Arizona and we have 10,000 acres of Ponderosa pine burn,” he said. “The science of fire and management actions we might decide to take or not are just a little different in forest types like Utah has.”

So, what makes the landscape different?

For starters, much of Utah’s forested land is not contiguous — meaning it is broken up by valleys — which could reduce the risk of megafires, he said. And the places that do have larger continuous forest cover are at higher elevations where the winters are wetter.

Utah’s plant life also tends to produce less fuel for wildfires than other parts of the West, he said. Ecosystems on the western slope of California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range, for instance, constantly produce pine needles, branches and small trees that can build up and make fires burn stronger. Much of Utah’s vegetation, from forests to grasslands, isn’t that productive.

“That's not to say that we're out of the woods,” he said. “If we get one of those weather patterns where it's dry and windy for about two weeks, just about any place in Utah will burn.”

Understanding Utah’s unique dynamics matter, he said, because fire managers have a tough job. Beyond considering the safety of firefighters and nearby residents, they also have to weigh the environmental impact a fire might have.

Allowing smaller fires to burn, rather than immediately extinguishing them, can be beneficial to the ecosystem, he said. This data could help show what the landscape could look like after a blaze and whether or not a fire might leave the habitat in better shape.

In a grassland or sagebrush area, for example, plants might grow back quickly. In a high-elevation, low-productivity forest, repopulation could take decades.

Losing too many trees in a fire can also have ramifications beyond the forest, he said. Disrupting the way their roots hold soil could lead to erosion, and the loss of shade might cause mountain snowpack to melt all at once, threatening communities’ ability to use that water as it runs downstream.

Paula Imlay, a fire prevention specialist with Utah Forestry, Fire and State Lands based in Cedar City, said local managers already know their landscapes well. But studies like this one could help them better prepare for wildfires and know what to do when blazes start.

“The more information the better when it comes to wildfire, because nobody's ever going to really understand or know how to prevent it 100%.”

When a fire pops up, she said they have three basic options. They can try to put it out completely. They can try to confine it to a specific area. Or they can manage the fire, letting it burn away from people and property as part of the ecological cycle.

On state land, the decision is often made for them, she said. If a fire is human-caused, for example, the state will always put it out. A lot of state-managed land is also located close to homes in the wildland-urban interface, which means there are fewer opportunities for managers to let natural-caused fires burn safely.

These decisions often become even more complicated, she said, because so many different managers — such as the state, the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service or the Bureau of Indian Affairs — might need to be involved, depending on where the fire spreads.

“Utah is so complex with the different agencies that have land,” she said, “a lot comes into play when they decide to manage it.”

Lutz hopes this research can help more people view wildfire as a nuanced part of our environment, rather than a danger that’s always bad.

Still, decades of suppressing wildfires has allowed fuel to pile up higher than we’d otherwise see, he said. And paired with years of megadrought and aridification in the West, that creates a dangerous recipe that could allow Utah’s wildfire numbers to creep up in the future.

“We've got more fuel and it's drier. Those are not things that make your fire smaller.”