CEDAR CITY — Cedar City Council approved a bid Wednesday night to drill one test well in the Green Hollow area and plans to send other projects back to bid.
The project’s budget is $1 million and the city received a single bid from KP Ventures on 11 proposed test well sites.
The highest bid came in at $551,330 for a potential site of an 8-inch test well near the Cedar City Wastewater Treatment Facility, according to information Cedar City News received in the council packet, which can be viewed here.
The city desperately needs at least one new well, Cedar City Mayor Garth Green said at the Oct. 19 council meeting. And he said he hopes to drill up to five in the future to allow current wells to rest.
The city budgeted about $3 million to drill a production well, Green said.
“If we hit water, we can immediately start building,” he said.
The two sites City Council members and staff focused on are in Green Hollow. Each received a bid of $412,020 for an 8-inch test well near the water tank on Greens Lake Drive. One area is city-owned, while the other belongs to the Bureau of Land Management, Green said.
The city will choose one of these locations to move forward based on the current bid, he said.
City Manager Paul Bittmenn said the city is in the process of getting permission to drill from the BLM should that location be chosen.
While 6-inch test wells cost less money, the 8-inch well can accommodate a larger pump and it’s “easier to see what it will produce,” Green said. The well is expected to be 1,200 feet deep.
Green Hollow was chosen because” it’s the one that works for us,” Green said, adding that it is near the city’s highest water tank.
The tank is about 80 feet higher than the one near Walmart, and water from the higher tank can be moved via gravity to those at lower elevations and then the rest of the system. This will reduce the overall pressure on Cedar’s water infrastructure, Green said.
Some lines in the city’s water system are handling about 400 pounds of pressure, which is both costly and potentially dangerous for staff working on those pipes, Green said.
“It’s staggering – a problem of high magnitude,” he said.
Seeking new underground water sources
The site was chosen based on a study the city commissioned from Willowstick Technologies to find new, potentially high-yield, underground water sources, Cedar City News previously reported.
The company used a variety of techniques to pinpoint possible test well locations, including analyzing lightning strike data and using rapid acoustic profiling to measure sounds created by motion in the Earth’s crust.
The study found that the higher of the two sites, labeled the “preferred drill target” at Green Hollow exhibited “strong and multiple” gamma and rapid acoustic profiling patterns. Additionally, it is located at the base of a mountain drainage channel that originates in the east.
“We expect this site to yield high quantity and quality groundwater with minimal impact on the valley aquifer,” the study states.
The second drill target was identified should the city need an additional production well at the site or if issues are encountered during the process of drilling a well at the preferred location, according to the study.
Future test well projects
Councilmember Tyler Melling said he had “a lot of faith” in the site and while the city doesn’t need three or four test wells immediately, it will need that number of “pricey” culinary wells in the next few years.
“I think it’s low-hanging fruit as far as proximity to our infrastructure and all the other ramifications that has for pressure in our system,” he said. “But we do need to move forward on other sites.”
Initially, Green said the bid was too high but later said it’s “probably a really good deal” at the Oct. 26 meeting. Council Member Terri Hartley compared it to a recent bid the Central Iron County Water Conservancy District received that was over $360,000 to drill a 6-inch test well 1,000 feet deep in the Iron Springs area.
The council shouldn’t necessarily feel rushed to approve more than one test well right away, Melling said, adding that he feels torn about recycling the bid proposal and said the city’s money could go farther if it waits a few months.
“It is a very competitive bidding environment,” he said. “If it stays this competitive — maybe we want to invest in a drilling rig ourselves.”
Hartley said that she spoke to another contractor who didn’t bid because the proposal was for 11 sites, which was over the limit their bond would allow them to submit bids for.
They suggested that if the city were to put the project up for bid again, it should choose fewer locations so more contractors could participate, Hartley said.
Green suggested rebidding test well projects at Shurtz Canyon and Martin’s Flat, as well as the second site at Green Hollow.
The council voted unanimously to approve the bid from KP Ventures for one of the sites at Green Hollow, with a direction to city staff to determine which would be preferable to drill first.
The company will likely begin work next year, Green said.
To watch the final discussion and vote, view the recording on Cedar City Council’s YouTube channel here.
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