MOAB, Utah (KUTV) — Guests at Sorrel River Ranch in Grand County are under a “Do Not Use” order after Utah regulators determined the resort’s drinking water system posed an immediate risk to public health, citing failures in water treatment, monitoring and certified operation.
On July 31, the Utah Division of Drinking Water issued an emergency administrative order directing Sorrel River Ranch Water Company to immediately stop operating its surface water treatment plant, stop providing culinary water through its distribution system and provide an alternate source of potable water to full-time residents.
The agency also rated the system “Not Approved,” the state’s lowest compliance designation for public water systems.
The order, first reported by Axios, states the community water system serves about 260 people through 48 service connections and relies on a single surface water intake from the Colorado River.
State officials said the treatment plant had been operating without a certified operator and identified multiple failures that they concluded created an immediate and significant danger to public health.
According to the order, state officials were alerted July 29 after receiving reports that the system was without water, staff had been instructed to wash dishes with swimming pool water, and storage tanks had reportedly been filled with hauled water from an unknown source without authorization from the Division of Drinking Water.
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The Division of Drinking Water sent an inspector who found the water system no longer had a certified operator on record and that employees currently operating the treatment plant were not certified.
The inspector concluded chemical feed pumps had likely failed before July 28, causing additional treatment failures.
The order also describes a significant treatment failure involving aluminum sulfate, or alum, a chemical used in the treatment process.
Investigators found the alum had converted into a thick gel instead of remaining a liquid, indicating a mixing system had failed.
According to the state, that failure likely allowed untreated surface water to bypass clarification and filtration, compromising the plant’s primary barrier against waterborne pathogens.
State regulators cited numerous deficiencies, including failure to report an emergency, failure to maintain administrative contact information, operation without a certified treatment plant operator, missing operational and chemical dosing records, failure to monitor required chlorine disinfection levels, malfunctioning instrumentation, uncalibrated turbidity meters and interruptions in the treatment process that could allow contaminated water into the distribution system.
The emergency order requires Sorrel River Ranch to post a Tier 1 “Do Not Use” public notice within 24 hours, provide bottled drinking water to residents, obtain state approval before hauling water, hire a certified operator, restore required monitoring and recordkeeping, install a functioning chlorine analyzer and complete all required compliance sampling before service can resume.
The state’s public notice instructs customers not to drink or use the water for any culinary purposes, including food preparation, brushing teeth, showering or drinking, until the system is determined to be safe.
The emergency order took effect immediately and will remain in force unless stayed or modified through the state’s administrative process.
A request for comment from Sorrel was not immediately returned.
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