Heber City nears phase one completion of $49 million Central Heber water and sewer replacement project

Matt Brower, Heber City manager, told attendees at a regional Sewer Summit that Heber City is wrapping up phase one of a six-year, $49 million project to replace water, sewer and pressurized irrigation lines in Central Heber. "This was a Herculean lift, and we are close to completing phase 1," Brower said.

The work covers roughly 120 blocks in the historic central district east of Highway 40 and targets the oldest, most failure-prone infrastructure. Brower said much of the sewer network dates to before 1953 and many water mains were installed before 1977; staff documented more than 100 water breaks between 2018 and 2020, concentrated downtown, and city water loss that reached about 20 percent.

The project scope and funding were shaped by a multi-year scoping and data-collection process that included sewer-line video inspections, contractor consultations and rolling cost updates during design. Brower said staff videoed about 55,000 linear feet of sewer on Heber’s east side and another 36,000 feet on the west side to help prioritize replacements. The city decided to focus first on a roughly 60-block East Side area and phased construction across four seasons, beginning in 2022.

Heber will replace about 50,000 linear feet of sewer pipe affecting 711 service connections, install nearly 48,000 linear feet of pressurized irrigation lines serving 652 connections and replace about 42,000 linear feet of water mains serving 573 connections, according to Brower. Phase-one construction started after a January 2022 bidding process and a March 2022 award; Brower said construction began in 2022 and is expected to finish in Oct. 2025.

On financing, Brower said the city used a layered capital stack: rate increases adopted beginning in 2021, multiple market financings, loans and state sources. The city adopted two rate increases in 2021 and continued annual increases guided by a 10-year plan prepared with Zions Bank. Brower said Heber secured a 0% loan of about $3 million from the Division of Water Quality and used Community Impact Board financing and roughly $3 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds for design costs.

Procurement and partners named by Brower include Sunrise Engineering (project engineer, public information officer and inspection), BHI (construction manager, general contractor and design services) and Strata Networks (fiber installation). Brower said the city negotiated fiber installation within the same trench, bringing new telecommunications capacity to the central district.

Brower described several risks and constraints the city encountered: COVID-era inflation and supply-chain delays (notably brass fittings and precast manholes), a record snow season that delayed work, and the need for large material staging (the city used an underused section of a cemetery as a storage yard). Brower said the city purchased major materials early to hedge inflation and worked with police to secure the staging area.

He identified public outreach and political support as decisive. Sunrise Engineering served as the project PIO and the city maintained a public project webpage, regular city council updates, neighborhood open houses and resident barbecues; Brower credited consistent outreach and council support for enabling the rate strategy. "We could not raise any rates to do the project without the political will," he said.

Brower summarized lessons learned for other municipalities: meet contractors early; video and data collection are critical for scoping; hire high-quality engineering and construction firms; maintain weekly project meetings; keep an active public information officer; plan for rapid emergency response; and align the financing stack to what the city can sustain. He also cautioned against taking on too many concurrent projects, noting that state-mandated metering of pressurized irrigation and other capital work increased the city’s workload.

Questions from the audience prompted clarifications: Brower said storm-drain and culvert replacements were not the primary scope but were identified and addressed where trenching required them; some mid-block sewer runs are being lined rather than fully excavated because of cost and disruption; and the city provided information and referrals to homeowners about private-service lateral work but did not offer low-interest loans for those replacements.

The presentation combined operational detail and fiscal context: how condition surveys, outage frequency, and rate modeling informed scope, and how procurement and financing decisions were staggered to manage cost and supply risks. Brower emphasized that the East Side work was intended to benefit the whole city and thus the rate impacts were citywide.

The project remains in implementation. Brower said the city believes it will finish the current phase on time and on budget, while acknowledging some scope adjustments and the potential for further work on the West Side in a later phase.