The Ogden Valley artesian reservoir

Abstract

Ogden Valley, in Weber County, Utah, contains an artesian reservoir from which the city of Ogden obtains all except a small part of its municipal water supply. A detailed investigation of the ground-water resources of Ogden Valley, and particularly of this artesian reservoir, was made by the Geological Survey, United States Department of the Interior, in cooperation with the city of Ogden between 1932 and 1934, and the results of this investigation have been reported by Leggette and Taylor. 1 The present paper, which might be termed a sequel to that report, is based on data collected during those years, augmented by records that have been obtained (1935-1940) by the Geological Survey as part of a State-wide project in cooperation with the Utah State Engineer. The conclusions drawn from the study of these records and presented in detail in the following pages are as follows: (1) The artesian reservoir is filled to capacity nearly every year during the spring run-off from melting snow; (2) after the annual freshet, the recharge to the reservoir is insufficient to balance the discharge from artesian wells, which ordinarily is at a maximum during the summer; the reservoir is depleted and is not filled again until the following spring; (3) during the periods when the artesian reservoir is not full the rate of recharge is more or less proportional to the inflow to the valley by streams, except that rain on the recharge area may be of sufficient intensity to contribute some water by infiltration and deep penetration; and (4) the artesian reservoir thus serves to store water that would otherwise be lost to Great Salt Lake in the excess spring overflow, and available records indicate that water used by increased draft from wells would be replenished in normal years by increased recharge during the spring freshet.