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Hogup Pumping
Facility
Box Elder County, Utah
The large water pumping
facility is a project that was mused by several governors of Utah. The
lucky governor who was faced with making the project happen was Norm Bangerter
in 1983. The canals were dug and the station built to prevent water in
the Great Salt Lake from rising to unmanageable levels during abnormally
wet years, such as was the case in 1983.
Canal from lake
to pumps
The floods of 1983, when spring run-off water was so high that Salt Lake City's State Street became a river, accelerated approval of the project. The massive pumps are powered by natural gas and are maintained to this day in anticipation of another flood year. Water is taken from the lake at over a million gallons a minute and pumped into the hardpan to its west--the one surrounding the Newfoundland Mountains.
"The pumping station was built in 9-1/2 months at a cost of $71,700,000. Three pumps with 10 ft. diameter impellers are each powered by a 16 cylinder natural gas powered engine. Pump output reaches a combined 1.2-1.6 million gallons/minute into a 4.2 mile outlet canal."
Text from "Freinds of the Great Salt Lake" web site at: http://www.xmission.com/~fogsl/education/IIWhatAb.html
The canal that carries
the water out onto the desert.
Mike explained how, just a few miles west of the pumps, was a town with a general store and numerous modular homes for canal and pump workers. After completion; the town was literally picked up and hauled away..
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