Harrison Epstein, Daily Herald

After seven weeks in place, Spanish Fork ended the city’s emergency flood declaration Tuesday.

The declaration was signed May 1 by Mike Mendenhall, the city’s mayor, to reallocate resources and prepare for flooding due to spring runoff.

Spring runoff was especially heavy early this year after a high winter snowmelt left record-setting amounts of snow in mountains and canyons throughout central and northern Utah. By signing the declaration, the city gained access to state resources for flood mitigation while city workers and volunteers cleared debris from the Spanish Fork River.

“We reached, I think, a significant point probably more around the beginning of this month where we saw the peaks in river flow happen. But since then we’ve been pulling back the sandbags and different things. We’ve had tremendous community effort there,” City Manager Seth Perrins said during the Spanish Fork City Council meeting on Tuesday.

Flooding was seen in parts of the city and along riverbanks in Spanish Fork, but Perrins said the city was lucky flows never hit dangerous levels in the city. Perrins also noted what has been a relatively tame start to the summer, temperature-wise, with the city not yet seeing a day over 90 degrees.

Courtesy Spanish Fork City

“With how much snow we had up in the mountains, we experienced the ideal melt. We experienced a miraculous melt,” Perrins said. “If we had a different melt, if we had a different heat wave, the story’s different.”

Council member Jesse Cardon expressed gratitude for city employees and volunteers who cleared the Spanish Fork River of debris, filled sandbags and prepared for potential flooding in other ways. Perrins said volunteers spent at least 5,000 total hours filling sandbags.

While the Spanish Fork River is still two to three times higher than typically seen in June, he said, its current level would be considered normal by residents. While a lot of the danger is likely gone, Perrins did say the water still looks “pretty chocolatey.”

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the highest flows in the Spanish Fork River at Castilla were recorded May 15 with a gage height of 8.55 feet. The gage height was measured around 7 feet on May 1, the day Mendenhall signed the declaration, and around 3.6 feet on Tuesday.

“Get in the river, still be careful, but get in the river if you need to (or) want to,” Mendenhall said.

Flooding responses were a priority throughout the Wasatch Front this spring as Gov. Spencer Cox issued an emergency declaration across the state — later extended and funded by the Utah Legislature — with declarations signed by Utah County, Salt Lake County, Weber County and several other individual cities including Salt Lake City, Sandy and Logan.

In Utah County, flooding also caused a temporary closure of Highway 89 in Spanish Fork Canyon and washed away part of Nebo Loop Road in Payson Canyon near the Shram Creek trailhead.