An electronic archive of field drains was created to assist city leaders in land use planning. Elwood City, Utah is a rural community with a population of approximately 700 individuals and encompasses approximately 4050 hectares. The historically agricultural area is dominated by drained soils with a major drainage project occurring in 1923. Drainage lines had been added prior to the major project and others since.

The drainage system had become low functioning due to several reasons. The drainage flows have been reduced due to lack of, or inadequate maintenance. Current development pressure has also strained the system. Urban residents, and their contractors, were many times unaware of the drainage lines and community planners had no resource to identify precise locations of drainage lines. In several instances, drainage lines have been severed during the excavation of new homes. This only became apparent in subsequent years.

This presentation details the process used to identify the drainage system used in the Elwood City area. To accomplish the project, historical data was reviewed at the University of Utah Historical Archives. This provided original engineering plat maps of the 1923 project. The project team also interviewed landowners, took aerial photography during the spring ‘green up' to ground truth drainage line locations, used GPS/GIS technology to create georeferenced locations for important drainage system components (i.e. cleanouts and terminal locations), and created management zones according to distinct drainage areas.