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Salem City Councilperson and Chairman of the SUVPS board of trustees Kelly Peterson watches Reclamation Upper Colorado Basin Regional Director Wayne Pullan sign documents transferring ownership of 35.5 miles of the Strawberry Valley Project 46-kilovolt power transmission system to Southern Utah Valley Power Systems on Thursday, March 13, 2025.

Courtesy Bureau of Reclamation

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In this undated photo, tour attendees look at the opening of the historic tunnel that provided irrigation to southern Utah County as part of the Strawberry Valley Project.

Daily Herald file photo

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A power transmission system that provides electricity to southern Utah County is officially under local government control, paving the way for a system overhaul.

The Bureau of Reclamation transferred ownership of 35.5 miles of the Strawberry Valley Project 46-kilovolt power transmission system to Southern Utah Valley Power Systems, or SUVPS, in a signing ceremony Thursday.

SUVPS, a nonprofit political subdivision made up of city power representatives from Payson, Salem, Spanish Fork, Springville and the South Utah Valley Electric Service District, will now have full control of the transmission system without federal oversight.

“The benefit to SUVPS and to the residents of southern Utah County is the ability of SUVPS to now upgrade their lines and manage the project without additional oversight from the Bureau of Reclamation,” Bureau of Reclamation Area Manager Rick Baxter said. “That provides them with more flexibility to manage it according to their needs and wants.”

Ben Woolf, Bureau of Reclamation deputy area manager, added that handing the title over to SUVPS gives the subdivision the necessary collateral to receive a loan to make upgrades.

Nearly $100 million could be spent on upgrades in the next five years to meet the needs of the growing population, according to SUVPS Operational Manager Blake Anderson. The plan is to increase the voltage of the power transmissions line from 46 kv to 138 kv, or 138,000 volts, and insert new poles and a major power substation.

“It’s hard to spend a lot of money on something you don’t own, right?” Anderson said. “So that’s the whole thing. It is a very, very good thing for us that it’s transferred into our name, and we have total ownership of it. … And with the growth, we just need to upgrade the system, and our number one thing is that we serve reliable power to this area.”

SUVPS has discussed how to claim ownership of the transmission for the last 25 years, but a transfer became an increasing possibility within the last five years, Anderson said.

The passing of the Dingell Act in 2019 made a title transfer possible without requiring separate legislation from Congress.

“We sent a package to Congress to give them a chance to give comments back or to oppose it, but short of any comments from them the authority or the permission from Congress is implied, and we’re able to move forward,” Woolf said.

The transfer is a significant development in what has been a historic partnership between the Bureau of Reclamation and power in south Utah County.

Back in 1906, the bureau began building a 3.8-mile tunnel under the Wasatch Divide to divert Strawberry Reservoir water from the Colorado River Basin to the Bonneville Basin to provide irrigation to the Wasatch Front.

According to Baxter, the bureau powered the drilling of the tunnel by generating electricity through water at a power plant at the base of Spanish Fork Canyon. They began to distribute the extra power they generated, and the southern Utah County cities took advantage. SUVPS utilizes that power to this day.

“It was kind of ancillary to the original project,” Baxter said, “because the project was really about water. The power was an indirect benefit they needed, and then they kept it going for the last 100 years to generate some revenues by continuing to run water through those power plants right there at the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon.”