CENTERVILLE—Centerville City is applying again for a federal WaterSMART grant from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to help fund the replacement of the Porter Lane Well. The well has been nonoperational for some time. (A previous 2022 application was unsuccessful).

“This is an application for water resiliency,” City Engineer Kevin Campbell told the city council Oct. 3. “So they’re accepting applications that help your water system become more drought tolerant and resilient to the drought. I think it’s most of the western states that are eligible.”

“We’re hoping that we might be able to get funding to drill a new well in the Centerville Canyon area,” he said. “We have the old Porter Lane Well that has been out of use for quite some time … We want to try to replace that well somewhere south of Porter Lane and somewhere between maybe 200 East to 400 East.”

City staff had considered six different locations for the new well before narrowing it down to one preferred location, Campbell said. He would be meeting with the owner of that property the following day and hoped to get a letter of consideration from the property owner to submit with the grant application, he said.

The new well which is anticipated to cost around $3 million would produce 800 to 1,000 gallons of water per minute, which would be about 15 percent of the city’s water supply and would provide an alternative water source. 

“We feel like we’ve had pretty good success with alternating our wells and letting the aquifers recover,” Campbell said. “That’s been a strategy that we’ve used; we know that it’s been working.” 

Some neighboring communities such as south Davis County have not had an alternative option and their aquifers are dropping dangerously low, he added. 

“We’re calling it the Porter Lane replacement well or Centerville Canyon area well,” he said. “We think we’ll probably have to go down about 500 to 700 feet similar to the most recent well we drilled, the Chase Lane well on the Griffiths property.

Former Congressman Chris Stewart expressed his support for the project in a letter he sent to Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton prior to his resignation. “I strongly support this project and request you give full and fair consideration to the city’s application,” he wrote.

Centerville City officials are hoping to get similar endorsements from state and county representatives. If Centerville City is approved for the grant, which would fund 50 percent of the project, city officials would probably receive notification by the end of the year, Campbell said.

“Maybe fall of 2024 you would try to drill the well and then maybe the following year, it might even take a year and a half to get the well drilled and another year to get the pump house built,” he said. The water department could possibly have the needed funds in its enterprise fund but if not, the city might need to hold off until 2025 before drilling the well, he added.

City Councilmember Gina Hirst thanked Campbell, Public Works Director Mike Carlson and the city’s lobbying group for their efforts on obtaining the grant.

“Kudos to you guys and Ferguson Group for doing this,” she said. “These are complicated grants and if we can get that funding that's a huge benefit to the city, huge but it’s a lot of work. I know they are extremely difficult to work through.”