AMERICAN FORK, Utah (ABC 4 News) - Jim Cross owns an international marine salvage and construction company. He's got projects going from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Japan. Right now though, he’s focused on a body of water in his own back yard... Utah Lake.
Cross took ABC 4 out for a quick cruise on the lake. “This time, two years ago, this vessel and another were 40-miles off Cuba,” said Cross. Then he had been searching for sunken treasure, now he’s looking for signs of a flood.
It doesn’t take long. In the shallow draft boat staying close to shore, we drift over places that just a few weeks ago were high and dry. “Where our boat is sitting right now at one time was the edge of the sandy beach where kids could walk around,” he explained pointing at a few picnic tables now at the edge of the water.
Utah Lake is the next to final destination for all the water from streams and rivers in Utah County. Even though their flows have yet to peak, the lake is already on a slow, steady rise that is sure to speed up in the coming days and weeks.
Cross said, “It's about two feet over compromise right now and they're expecting another foot and a half to two feet above that."
“Compromise” is the point at which lake water starts going places where it’s not supposed to go. At four feet over compromise, lake water will flood the pump house at the mouth of the Jordan River – Utah Lake’s only relief value. Losing those pumps could choke down the outflow from the lake.
Jim Cross has seen it before. It was 1983 and his fledgling company was in the middle of the damage control effort.
They dredged around the Jordan River pumps; used barges to get to water-logged homes; pulled steel gas lines across the Great Salt Lake to the location of a new pumping station in the West Desert. That pumping station was built too late to help with the flood of ’83, but may still play a roll in flooding in 2011.
Is that what’s happening? Are we reliving ’83? Cross says the signs area there – especially if it warms up. “I expect it will be a rapid change when we see it.”
Cross isn’t just waiting around for the lake to breach levees and flood fields and homes. He’s getting ready. "We have equipment staged at several places around the United States and a lot of equipment in Utah on the ready. If it's not needed, we'll be as grateful as everyone else. But if it is needed, we're ready to go."
