MILLSITE
A rebuilt dam the federal record says was never modified
A new spillway, a raised crest and a seismic berm, against an empty years modified field and a condition rating from 1991. And a reservoir losing capacity to its own creek while gaining it from the rebuild.
In July 2023 the soil conservation service announced the completed rehabilitation of this dam. Its own list of the work, verbatim :
"downstream toe excavation and stability berm for seismic protection, zoned internal drains and pipes for seepage control, dam crest raise for increased storage capacity, reinforced concrete labyrinth weir spillway for overtopping protection, and modernized outlet works"
A new spillway, a raised crest, new outlet works and a seismic berm, and the national inventory of dams records no modification at all. Every other page in this series has used that field to say whether a dam has been rebuilt. This is the page that shows what the field is worth.
And the condition rating is older than most of the readers of this page. The inventory rates this dam Satisfactory and dates that assessment 1 January 1991, against a last inspection of 20 June 2023 . Thirty two and a half years, and it is the largest gap this series has measured. It also means the published rating predates the rebuild by three decades: whatever Satisfactory described in 1991, it was not this structure.
In April 2023 the Corps of Engineers published a permit application for this reservoir. The numbers in it are the clearest description of what is happening here :
"Millsite Reservoir has lost an estimated 2,600 acre-feet of the original 18,000 acre-feet capacity due to sedimentation."
The proposal was to "dredge approximately 115,000 cubic yards of accumulated sediments from the Millsite Reservoir forebay, using suction dredging methods" .
And the sediment was not to be hauled away. The application states it "would be re-introduced into the downstream portion of Ferron Creek", in a design meant "to mimic the historic natural function of Ferron Creek and restore the stream to a more natural turbidity regime, while maintaining the capacity of the reservoir" . The dam interrupted the creek's sediment load, and the fix is to put it back.
This page states the application and not the outcome. A public notice is a proposal. No agency document was found confirming that the dredging was carried out, so this page does not say that it was. The drainage above this reservoir is 157 square miles of Wasatch Plateau , which is where the sediment comes from.
Nobody publishes a current capacity for this reservoir, and the reason is unusually interesting: it has been losing capacity and gaining it at the same time.
| Figure | What it is | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 20,000 acre feet | maximum storage | the dam inventory |
| 18,000 acre feet | normal storage, and also the figure the Corps calls the original capacity | the dam inventory and the Corps |
| minus 2,600 acre feet | lost to sedimentation as of 2023 | the Corps |
| plus an unstated amount | from the "dam crest raise for increased storage capacity" | the soil conservation service |
One observation that is not a resolution. The storage gauge read 18,194 acre feet in May 2024 , which is above the inventory's normal storage of 18,000 and two months after the inventory's record was last updated . That is consistent with the crest raise having taken effect and the inventory not reflecting it, and it does not prove it.
If you are planning to be on the bank here, this is the paragraph that matters. The land manager states it plainly :
"The shoreline is owned by a number of different agencies, including the BLM, the State of Utah, the Ferron Canal and Reservoir Company's."
The golf course is a fourth arrangement again. It sits on federal land, 157 acres, which Ferron City has leased since 1985, and in April 2026 the federal government opened public comment on selling it to the city outright . It is not part of the state park, which calls it "a nearby golf course" .
A number worth not confusing. The golf course is 157 acres . The reservoir's drainage area is 157 square miles . Same number, completely unrelated quantities, and they appear within a mile of each other.
The owner's name is written four ways by four agencies. The state water rights file and the land manager both write Ferron Canal and Reservoir Company; the soil conservation service writes Ferron Reservoir and Canal Company; the Corps writes Ferron Canyon Canal & Irrigation Company . This page calls it a private local canal and reservoir company and prints the renderings rather than choosing one. All of them carry the name of the town four miles east , as do the creek, the canal and the city that leases the golf course.
One advisory, an odd classification, and the closest outline in the series
Splake at 0.416 with meal limits that are not zero, a water classified for nongame fish, and a traced outline that matches the federal polygon to seventeen hundredths of one per cent.
Utah's environmental department lists this reservoir for a single species .
| Species | Mercury | Pregnant women and children | Women of childbearing age | Everyone else |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Splake trout | 0.416 | 1 four ounce meal a month | 2 eight ounce meals a month | 7 eight ounce meals a month |
The block carries no date. The environmental department prints a line reading "Fish Consumption Advisory" with a date above some of its waterbody blocks and not others . This one is the name, the county and the table. So this page gives the figure and does not give a date, and does not borrow one from another block on the same page. That is the third water in this series found undated on that page.
The health department's twelve water list does not name this reservoir , which is the ordinary direction for this disagreement: on the environmental department's longer list and not on the health department's shorter one.
Utah classifies this reservoir 2B, 3C and 4 . The middle one is the surprise.
| Class | What it protects |
|---|---|
| 2B | Infrequent primary contact recreation, the lower of the two recreation tiers |
| 3C | "Protected for nongame fish and other aquatic life" |
| 4 | Agricultural uses |
This page flags that and does not resolve it. A use classification is a regulatory designation and not a description of what lives in a water, so the two are not strictly in conflict. But it is odd enough to print, and this page will not write "protected for game fish" about a water the state classifies 3C.
And the classification itself is a non agency source here. Utah's own rules site returns errors for the text of this rule, so this page is quoting a federal reproduction of the state standards , which carries no printed effective date and whose file path says 2014 while its text references later reviews. Both the class and the definition are chipped as non agency for that reason.
The shape in the header is traced from the Fathom print artwork and checked against the federal water body polygon .
| Measure | Traced | Federal | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Width against length | 1.2852 | 1.2874 | 0.17% |
| Share of its bounding box | 0.391 | 0.363 | 7.7% |
| Area, stretched on both axes | 453.9 acres | 420.8 acres | 7.8% over |
The area gap has a clean explanation and it is not disagreement about the shape. The federal polygon carries two hundred and eighteen points of crenellated shoreline; the traced outline smooths them. A smoother line around the same shape encloses more, which is exactly what the fill ratios show: 0.391 against 0.363. The drawing is right about the shape and slightly generous about the edges.
The self check is clean: adding up the federal polygon by hand gives 1.7031 square kilometres against the 1.6979 the dataset publishes, agreement to about three tenths of one percent.
And unlike the last three lakes, this polygon is at a working pool. It carries a stamped elevation of 1,893.1 metres , which is the signature of a real pool rather than a drought snapshot. It computes to about 420 acres and there is nothing to check that against: the dam inventory leaves its surface area field empty and the state park publishes no size at all . No maximum depth, no mean depth and no shoreline length is published by anyone.
This page cannot tell you the current bloom status of this reservoir, and the reason is worth setting out rather than glossing.
| What was checked | Result |
|---|---|
| The environmental department's per water monitoring page for this reservoir, on both of the two URL patterns it uses | Closed to automated reading on every path tried |
| Its statewide harmful algal blooms index | A 2018 archive listing twenty four waters, and this one is not among them |
| The regional health department that would issue an advisory | States "There are currently no reported algal blooms", but the statement is undated, covers the whole district, and does not name this reservoir |
What cannot be said. That there is no advisory here, in the environmental department's voice, because its pages for this water could not be read. Absence from the statewide index proves nothing: that index has not been updated since 2018, and at another reservoir this series found a local health department carrying a danger advisory while the state page for the same water displayed an all clear two years out of date.
Check the health department before getting in.
No impairment listing and no watershed plan naming this reservoir could be retrieved either. The environmental department's pages for that programme are also closed to automated reading. That is unresolved rather than clean, and it is listed with the other gaps.
Where everything is
Seven places, two of which are lakes in other states with the same name.
Millsite is one of Utah's forty six state parks, and its park page is unusually thin .
| On the park page | Not on the park page |
|---|---|
| Boating and fishing as activities, camping availability, hours and contact | Any fish species |
| The golf course, as "a nearby golf course" | Size, depth or elevation of the reservoir |
| Fees, season, and any motor, wake or swimming rule | |
| Anything about the dam or its rehabilitation |
No horsepower limit and no wake restriction was found in any agency source read in this build. That is an absence in the record and not a permission.
The land manager's own description of the setting is worth quoting : "Millsite is a large impoundment of a midelevation desert at its interface with high, mountainous plateau and high bluffs providing a spectacular backdrop to the reservoir."
Two gauges sit on Ferron Creek either side of this reservoir, and only one of them is working.
| Gauge | Daily discharge record |
|---|---|
| Ferron Creek upper station, above the reservoir, site 09326500 | 1 October 1911 to today, and still reporting |
| Ferron Creek below Millsite Reservoir and diversions, site 09327000 | 8 May 2014 to 7 January 2020. 693 values |
So the flow card on this page measures what comes in, not what goes out, and it says so in every state. Nothing has measured the release from this dam since January 2020, which is also the period during which the dam was rebuilt and the dredging was proposed.
One fish, and a guidebook entry that never existed
The only species any agency names here is on a mercury advisory. And a first reading of the state guidebook produced a rule for this reservoir, in the wrong county, that is not in the book.
Splake
The only species any agency names in this water, and the agency that names it is Utah's environmental quality department, in a mercury consumption advisory . An advisory takes tissue sampling, so it is about as hard as species evidence gets, and here it is the only species evidence of any kind. Mercury 0.416.
The whole evidenced listThat is the entire evidenced list. One species, named once, in a warning about mercury .
So a state park with a boat ramp, on a reservoir with a well known fishery, has exactly one species that an agency has written down. A page that drew four plausible trout here would be making them up.
What a splake is, and what this page will not infer from it. Splake is a brook trout by lake trout hybrid. Drawing one is not evidence that either parent is in this water, and neither parent is drawn. Nor does a hybrid appear on its own: somebody stocked it, and no stocking record for this reservoir could be found.
Millsite Reservoir has no entry in Utah's fishing guidebook. Not in the 2026 edition and not in the 2023 one . Statewide limits apply.
Three checks killed it. The county was wrong, and five agency sources put this reservoir in Emery. The alphabetical order failed: the read placed Millsite after Minersville, and Mil sorts before Min. And the 2023 guidebook has no Millsite either, with different neighbours.
Two further strict questions, phrased so that no was the easy answer, both returned no . The entry was confabulated. It is on this page because a reader who searches for Millsite fishing regulations may well find the same invention somewhere else.
The coverage control matters here. The guidebook does carry entries for Electric Lake, Huntington Creek, Huntington North and Joes Valley, all in Emery County . So the absence is a real absence and not a gap in the reading.
This reservoir is not named on the wildlife division's Blue Ribbon page or in its most recent funding release, which states verbatim that "There are currently 41 waterbodies, including two mountain areas" and names four project waters .
Nothing here came from the division's fishing application. It builds its content in the browser and the served document contains no waterbody data for any water. A search engine's stored title of it is not a source, and this series learned that by publishing one and having to withdraw it.
What to watch for
A 2021 recovery in which the ramp was unusable, a bottom that is accumulating a hundred and fifty seven square miles of plateau, and a drawdown of sixty nine per cent in two years.
On 27 August 2021 a man drowned at Millsite State Park. He was not wearing a life jacket and was last seen about thirty yards from shore .
The detail that belongs on a page like this one is what happened next, verbatim :
"Millsite Reservoir is at a very low level due to Utah's exceptional drought and the boat dock is closed, making it impossible to launch large search and rescue boats."
Eight feet of water, thirty yards from shore, and the ramp unusable. That is the practical shape of a recovery at a drawdown reservoir, and it is the clearest illustration in this series of why launch access and water level are operational facts rather than trivia.
This is a news report and it is chipped as one. No sheriff or state public safety posting for this incident was located, so nothing here is in agency voice. The man is not named on this page and no further detail about him is carried, because none of it is any of this page's business. What is this page's business is the water.
The most specific thing published about the bed of this reservoir is a dredging proposal : 115,000 cubic yards of accumulated sediment in the forebay, 2,600 acre feet of capacity lost.
And the plan is to put that sediment back into the creek, to restore "a more natural turbidity regime" . Turbidity is visibility. This page does not know whether the dredging happened, but the design intent is on the record.
The water level moves a long way too. The storage record runs from 18,194 acre feet in May 2024 to 5,709 in July 2026 , a loss of about 69 percent in twenty six months. A drawdown of that size moves the shoreline, the ramp and the bottom contour all at once, and the 2021 response is what that looks like when somebody needs a boat in a hurry.
No other incident at this reservoir was found in searchable press: no boating fatality, no vehicle in the water, no ice incident, no submerged debris recovery and no dive operation beyond the 2021 search.
So a list assembled from search results would carry incidents from two other states and another Utah county. The publishable sentence is "no other incident found in searchable press".
Two gaps in this build, stated rather than hidden. Emery County sheriff records and Utah public safety records were not queried directly. And no source states which agency has primary water rescue responsibility here, which is a live question at a water with a state park, a federal day use area and a private shoreline owner all on the same bank.
In 2021 the responders at this reservoir could not launch their boats, because the water was too low and the dock was closed.
Fathom Restoration is a Utah 501(c)(3) that runs volunteer dive cleanups and is built to pull what does not belong out of Utah water, statewide.
Donate to Protect MillsiteEvery figure on this page is quoted from the source named beside it.
Sources
How these were checked
Numbered sources are agencies. The two lettered sources are a local news outlet, which is the only source for the 2021 incident, and a federal reproduction of Utah water quality standards, used because the state's own rules site returns errors. Where sources disagree, all of them are printed: that happens over the capacity, over the owner's name, which four agencies render four ways, and over the elevation. One method note is specific to this page and it is the most important thing in this box. A first reading of the state fishing guidebook returned a rule for this reservoir that is not in the book, complete with a county, a size limit and a gear restriction. It was caught by three independent checks: the county was wrong, the alphabetical order was wrong, and the previous edition disagreed. Two further strict questions confirmed the entry does not exist. Nothing invented reached this page, and the invention is described on it because a reader may meet the same one elsewhere.National Inventory of Dams, federal identifier UT00212, Millsite. County Emery, river Ferron Creek, owner type Private, state regulated Yes by the Utah Division of Water Rights, federally regulated No, completed 1971, height 115 feet, length 4,150 feet, maximum storage 20,000 acre feet, normal storage 18,000, drainage area 157 square miles, surface area field empty, hazard potential High, inspected annually. Condition assessment Satisfactory dated 1 January 1991, last inspected 20 June 2023, years modified empty, record last updated 3 April 2024
Rehabilitation of Millsite Dam leaves legacy, 5 July 2023. Lists the completed works as "downstream toe excavation and stability berm for seismic protection, zoned internal drains and pipes for seepage control, dam crest raise for increased storage capacity, reinforced concrete labyrinth weir spillway for overtopping protection, and modernized outlet works", and states the dam was originally constructed in 1971
Public notice SPK-2013-00240, 7 April 2023. Application to dredge approximately 115,000 cubic yards of accumulated sediments from the reservoir forebay by suction dredging, stating that the reservoir "has lost an estimated 2,600 acre-feet of the original 18,000 acre-feet capacity due to sedimentation", and that the sediment would be returned to Ferron Creek to restore a more natural turbidity regime
Millsite day use area. States that "The shoreline is owned by a number of different agencies, including the BLM, the State of Utah, the Ferron Canal and Reservoir Company's", describes the water as used for irrigation, recreation and coldwater aquatic habitat, and names no fish species
Utah fish consumption advisories. The block for this water is headed "Millsite Reservoir (Emery County)" and carries one species, splake trout, at 0.416, with three meal limits. Unlike some other blocks on the same page it carries no date line
Millsite reservoir storage, station 09UTMILL:UT:BOR, county Emery, elevation 6,180 feet, record beginning 1 September 1972. It advertises daily, semimonthly and monthly and only monthly returns anything. The monthly series is flagged derived rather than observed
Ferron Creek upper station near Ferron, site 09326500, at elevation 6,290 feet. Daily discharge since 1 October 1911 and still reporting. This gauge is above the reservoir
Ferron Creek below Millsite Reservoir and diversions, site 09327000, at elevation 6,100 feet. Daily discharge from 8 May 2014 to 7 January 2020, 693 values, and nothing since
National Hydrography Dataset. Millsite Reservoir, permanent identifier 78839059, published at 1.6979 square kilometres with a stamped elevation of 1,893.1 metres and reach code 14060009001035. The same query returns two other United States waters named Millsite Lake, in New York and in Florida
2026 Utah Fishing Guidebook. This reservoir has no entry in Rules for Specific Waters. A separately issued existence question, phrased so that no was the easy answer, returned no
2023 Utah Fishing Guidebook. The same absence, three years earlier
Millsite State Park. Names no fish species, gives no size, depth, elevation, fee or season, says nothing about the dam, and refers to the golf course as "a nearby golf course"
Public comment opened on a proposed direct sale of land used as a golf course, 30 April 2026. States that the land is federal, that Ferron City has leased it since 1985, and that the course covers 157 acres
Harmful algal blooms. The statewide index, whose monitoring table is a 2018 archive listing twenty four waters, none of them this one
Environmental health information. States that "The HABs monitoring season begins yearly on June 1st and ends on October 31st" and that "There are currently no reported algal blooms". That statement is undated and covers the whole district. This reservoir is not named on the page
Game and fish advisories. Twelve Utah waters from a 2022 mercury analysis, and this reservoir is not among them
Blue Ribbon fisheries programme allocates over 446 thousand dollars, 15 July 2026. States that "There are currently 41 waterbodies, including two mountain areas", names four project waters, and does not name this one
Blue Ribbon fisheries. The programme and its criteria, with no list and no count on the page
Geographic Names Information System. The City of Ferron, Emery County, feature 2410501
Point forecast over the reservoir. Forecast office Salt Lake City
Man drowns at Millsite State Park, 28 August 2021. Reports a drowning on 27 August 2021, names Utah State Parks, the Emery County Sheriff's Office and Emery County Search and Rescue as responding, and states that the reservoir was at a very low level and the boat dock closed, making it impossible to launch large search and rescue boats
Utah water quality standards, the reproduction this build was able to read. Classifies this reservoir 2B, 3C and 4, and defines 3C as protected for nongame fish and other aquatic life
Why the percentage has a moving denominator
This reservoir has been losing capacity and gaining it at the same time, and no agency has published the result.
The dam inventory gives 20,000 acre feet maximum and 18,000 normal . The Corps of Engineers calls 18,000 the original capacity and states that 2,600 acre feet have been lost to sedimentation . The soil conservation service lists a "dam crest raise for increased storage capacity" among the completed rehabilitation works, and quantifies it nowhere .
So the percentage card is worked against 18,000, the figure two federal sources share, and the card says so. Against the inventory's 20,000 maximum it would read lower; against 18,000 minus the lost 2,600 it would read higher. This page prints one number and shows its denominator rather than picking quietly.
One observation that is not a resolution. The storage gauge read 18,194 acre feet in May 2024 , above the inventory's normal storage, two months after that inventory record was last updated . Consistent with the crest raise being real and unrecorded. Not proof of it.
The storage reading itself is monthly and derived. Station 09UTMILL advertises daily, semimonthly and monthly reservoir contents and returns an empty array for daily and semimonthly . A control station elsewhere in Utah returns full daily data on the identical query, so the query is right and this station's advertised series are not there. The monthly series is flagged derived rather than observed.
And the flow card is an inflow, not a release. The gauge named after this reservoir, site 09327000, ran from 8 May 2014 to 7 January 2020 and stopped . The gauge on the strip, site 09326500, sits above the reservoir and has run since 1 October 1911 . Nothing has measured what leaves this dam since January 2020.