For the past 10 years, Woods Cross City officials have been working to assist residents in the Farm Meadows subdivision whose homes are sinking due to soil subsidence. The city became aware of the issue in 2015 and launched an investigation to identify the cause and the extent of the structural distress.

“The water table goes down and the soil collapses,” said City Administrator Bryce Haderlie. “It’s like a sponge under the weight and stays collapsed.”

It happens in soil in other places, he said. “They condemned a subdivision in Enoch that was sinking. It’s kind of an act of God.”

The subdivision sat there for 15 years with no problem, said Haderlie. “The water table went down and we started seeing the problem. It’s a challenging situation.”

The city established a Community Reinvestment Area (CRA) to help support the repairs of homes in the area. 

“We have roughly $200,000 in RDA money a year to help with homes,” Haderlie said. “We’ll use the money to hire a contractor to raise the home up using an approved method.”

The county recently approved a 2024-2025 Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) contract with the city for a Soil Subsidence Home Stabilization Project in the subdivision. 

“The homeowner has to qualify at below 80% of median income,” said Haderlie. “The county pays $115,000 and the city pays the rest. The homeowner doesn’t have to pay if they qualify under HUD standards.”

Stopping the loss of water in the aquifer is critical to prevent more homes from being damaged, he said. “We have to slow down pumping from a number of wells. There have been wells drilled by Weber Basin, North Salt Lake and there are industrial wells. A lot of water is being consumed. ”

Haderlie said if the state approves water reuse, it would allow the cities to capture the clean water coming out of the South Davis Sewer District treatment facilities and treat it again to be for industrial use instead of going to the Great Salt Lake.

“The health of the lake is important but if we’re further depleting (lowering) our aquifer it could cause salt or other minerals below ground to contaminate our drinking water,” he said. “We have to be careful that we don’t allow it. We want to try and slow that draw down of the aquifer.”  

A homeowner for the CDBG contract has already been selected, said Haderlie. “We’ll have an updated 2025 application in the next few months. We had about 24 applications for 2024.”

The process isn’t going as quickly as some hoped, he said. “There were some homeowners who said ‘I’ll just get it done myself.’ We don’t know how long the money will last because funding doesn’t last forever.”

The money can only be used in the CRA area, said Haderlie. “It could expand in the future if it needed to. We’ll continue as long as the money is available.”

Haderlie said the city will continue to make aggressive efforts to stabilize the aquifer. “The big thing that’s important to us is that we want to save those homes.” λ