Two years ago, leaders of Utah’s Garfield County put the U.S. Forest Service on notice that overgrown timberlands on the Markagunt Plateau posed a dire threat to the town of Panguitch.
“Tinder box conditions” on the lands surrounding Panguitch‘s springs “translate to an imminent threat to the quantity and quality of the public drinking water supply,” officials wrote to managers of the Dixie National Forest.
Now, the rural county’s predictions are proving prescient. Hardly six weeks after the 77,000-acre Brian Head fire stopped burning last month, testing has shown unacceptable levels of E. coli bacteria in most of the springs that Panguitch taps, according to town manager Lori Talbot.