Award: Engineering contract for water infrastructure project
Value: Unspecified, $750 million project total
Location: Utah and Juab counties, Utah
Client: Central Utah Water Conservancy District
A joint venture team will soon work to transform a Utah canal built in 1916 into a modern, pressurized system, according to a news release.
The Central Utah Water Conservancy District tapped a JV of Dallas-based Jacobs and Draper, Utah-based Bowen Collins & Associates to provide engineering services for the proposed Strawberry High Line Improvement project, a critical water infrastructure program in the state.
The future project, which carries an estimated $750 million construction value and is still awaiting final approval, would update the Strawberry High Line Canal via new pipelines and related infrastructure, such as a new pump station, according to the Aug. 11 news release.
The Department of Interior allocated $100 million in federal funding earlier this year to the project, according to a news release. Construction of the Strawberry High Line Pipeline project could begin as early as 2027 and become operational by 2032, assuming “completion of environmental compliance and other legal requirements,” according to a May 2026 environmental assessment document.
Plans call for the replacement of the open-water canal with a buried pipeline, and then the repurposing of the corridor with an integrated regional trail. The updates would provide a recreational amenity and improve community connectivity, according to the Jacobs release.
The water conveyance project would ultimately serve both agricultural users and urban communities across south Utah County and eastern Juab County. When complete, the new water infrastructure system will support water delivery to an approximately 420,000 population, according to Jacobs.
“Modernizing critical water infrastructure is essential to managing community vitality,” Tom Meinhart, executive vice president at Jacobs, said in the release. “With Utah’s significant growth, the Strawberry High Line Improvement Project would improve system performance delivering water for agriculture, communities and future development.”
The award tacks on to Jacobs’ other recent major water infrastructure modernization wins in the West.
For example, the cities of San Jose and Santa Clara, California, selected the contractor earlier this year as the progressive design-build contractor on a $200 million modernization on the second largest advanced wastewater treatment facility in the western U.S., according to a release.
Elsewhere in California, the Los Angeles Sanitation & Environment and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power also tapped Jacobs as the progressive design-build contractor for the $500 million Donald C. Tillman Advanced Water Purification Facility.
