Centerville City and Davis County will continue the piping of Deuel Creek on 400 South this summer. A contractor hired by the county will install a box culvert from 700 West to Main Street. The piping project is expected to take two years.

“They’ve got some hurdles to get through down there on the lower part,”  Public Works Director Mike Carlson told Mayor Clark Wilkinson and the city council at their Feb. 20 meeting. “The power line’s kind of in the way and they’ve got to figure out how to be able to bring a crane in to set it but eventually they'll get all the way up. This will take care of all that.” 

While piping a creek may seem like a simple project when it involves wetlands, the process can become rather complicated. The city has been working on piping Deuel Creek since 2015. From 2019 to 2021 several 300-foot sections of the project were completed including a 300-foot stretch along the north property line of Young Powersports and from 300 feet  from 400 West to the east.

However, after these sections were completed the Army Corp of Engineers (which has a federal mandate to monitor wetlands) prohibited the city and county from proceeding with further work until they obtained a federal permit.

Doing so involved purchasing wetland credits from RP Wetlands & Waterfowl, LLC (dba Machine Lake Mitigation Company) to compensate for the loss of wetland habitat along the previously open creek banks. 

The city paid $60,800 for 0.76 credits of “fresh wet meadow” at Machine Lake Mitigation Bank which is located west of Brigham City. 

“As soon as we get this paid the county can start putting the box culvert in starting on down by Young Powersports and working up the road so this will be eventually to finish up the whole thing,” Carlson told Wilkinson and the city council.

Wetland mitigation banking is the restoration, creation or enhancement of wetlands for the purpose of compensating for unavoidable impacts to wetlands at another location. Wetland mitigation banking is commonly used to compensate for wetland impacts from development, but is also used for impacts from agriculture, according to the National Resources Conservation Service.

Fresh wet meadow is “regularly flooded during late winter and early spring from spring runoff or snowmelt,” Machine Lake Mitigation Bank’s website says. “This habitat class is typically located between the marsh habitat class and uplands. This habitat class is also found along the bottoms of irrigation ditches. Soils within this habitat class typically remain saturated or moist throughout the growing season.”

Once the city obtained the wetlands credit, Centerville was then able to acquire the necessary permits. Davis County will pay for the box culvert and its installation.