St. George Emergency Watershed Protection

On August 23, 2020, a summer thunderstorm moved into the St. George, Utah area and rain began to fall throughout the City of St. George (City) and neighboring cities. This intense rainfall event caused significant flooding in the urban areas of St. George City damaging homes, causing erosion to the waterways, and leaving a significant amount of sediment for the City to clean up. The Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) contacted the City to provide funding through their Emergency Watershed Protection (EWP) Program to help mitigate the damages from this August 2020 storm event. Bowen Collins & Associates (BC&A) worked with the City and NRCS to identify four sites to construct flood mitigation and damage repairs for this St. George EWP Project. These sites/projects are identified as follows:

Site 1 – Virgin River Restoration – erosion bank protection along the Virgin River in Bloomington area of the City.

Site 2 – Middleton Floodwall – a new floodwall near the Middleton area of the City.

Site 3 – Red Hills Debris Basin – a new debris basin near the intersection of Hwy 18 and Red Hills Parkway.

Site 4 – Industrial Park Debris Basins – One new debris basin and improvements to existing basins in the St. George Industrial Park. This site is further subdivided as follows:

• North Industrial Park Debris Basin – a single 45.6 ac-ft debris basin constructed from an embankment placed on Rim Rock Wash in the northern portion of the St. George Industrial Park.
• South Industrial Park Debris Basin – improvements to two existing excavated debris basins located at the southern end of the St. George industrial Park, near the storage yard for the St. George City Water and Energy Services departments.

BC&A’s services on this project included environmental permitting and all required surveys, hydrologic and hydraulic design, structural design, and construction observation and management.