Selection of Conduit Material for the Provo Reservoir Canal Enclosure Project

In October 2010, the Provo River Water Users Association, which currently operates the 21-mile-long Provo Reservoir Canal (PRC), also known as the Murdock Canal, and the US Bureau of Reclamation, the owner, broke ground for the Provo Reservoir Canal Enclosure Project, a monumental 3-year, $150 million undertaking that will enclose the PRC into a 126-inch steel pipe with the capacity to carry 400 million gallons of water per day. The enclosure of the canal will save approximately 8,000 acre-feet, or 2.6 billion gallons, of water annually from evaporation and seepage, increase safety along the canal's length in areas that are heavily populated, and offer a number of other benefits. When the project was conceived, several materials for the enclosure conduit were considered, including a precast concrete box culverts with gasket joints, cast-in-place concrete box culverts, non-cylinder reinforced concrete pressure pipe, welded steel pressure pipe, and fiberglass reinforced polymer pipe. A systematic analysis of the suitability of each material for the application was conducted, which included availability in the necessary sizes, history of each material in similar applications, hydraulic and other engineering properties, available joint types and the ability of each material to reduce leakage, economic feasibility, and the constructability of each. This paper provides a detailed discussion of each of these parameters from the unbiased viewpoint of the project owner as well as the design engineer.