Brigham City hears options to raise water rates after spring supply scare

Brigham City's council spent its 5 p.m. work session on May 21 reviewing options to shore up the water utility after a spring infrastructure failure and years of underfunded replacements.

City engineer Brett Jones said the city's sources average about 20,000,000 gallons per day — roughly 9,400,000 gpd from Manaway springs, 2,000,000 gpd from wells in the canyon and about 8,700,000 gpd from in-town sources — and that seasonal demand can spike to about 17,000,000 gpd in summer. He said a failed deep corrugated-metal drain line at a wetland mitigation site near Manaway temporarily threatened sewer infrastructure and the penstock lines that deliver spring water; staff kept water service running but incurred significant emergency costs.

"Those springs and wells are really the backbone of our system," Jones said. "We produce about 20,000,000 gallons a day on average, but in the summer demand gets close to that supply and when you have a failure you get nervous." Jones added that the city secured a large grant to replace penstock lines in the canyon but still faces aging mains and other deferred replacement needs.

Jones framed water-rate discussions around three funding categories: operations and maintenance (O&M), system replacement and capital projects. He said the current $23 monthly base fee covers O&M, but the replacement category is dramatically underfunded. "We're only covering about $2,000,000 of replacement; we're about $6,000,000 short a year to fully replace the system," he said, adding that a full-recovery base would be near $78'$80 a month.

The mayor's proposed budget includes a $30 base fee. Staff said that level would free roughly $1,000,000 a year for waterline capital projects and materially improve the fund, while acknowledging it would not fully close the replacement gap. Council members discussed alternatives: raising the base fee, increasing tiered overage charges, or a staged approach. Multiple council members said they were sensitive to affordability, particularly for fixed-income residents.

Council members and staff traded specifics: how many customers fall in the 0'to'7,000-gallon tier (about 59% of connections, by staff's account), how overage changes affect summer bills, and whether to shift park irrigation to secondary (nonculinary) water to reduce culinary demand. Jones noted the city has roughly 40,650 linear feet of 4-inch mains (state minimum is 8-inch), a major long-term replacement need estimated at about $3.2 million for those small mains alone.

No formal vote was taken; the council asked staff to return with more scenarios and spreadsheets. Council members scheduled continued deliberations on the water-rate proposal as part of upcoming work sessions and asked staff to provide customer-impact breakdowns and prioritized capital-project lists so the council could weigh revenue options against which projects could be deferred.

What happens next: staff will provide more detailed scenarios and project priorities in follow-up meetings; final council action on rates is scheduled as part of the budget process in June.