PIUTE
Utah's wildlife division writes that this reservoir was mostly drained at least four times in one decade. Every figure on this page is quoted from the record it appears in.
Mostly drained at least four times in one decade, and the state wrote it down
A 1938 privately owned dam on a drainage of 2,440 square miles, carrying a condition rating from 1991. And a surface area in general circulation that is about half again the federal one.
Most pages in this series have to work out whether a reservoir is low. Here the wildlife division says it outright .
"Just during the past decade, the reservoir was mostly drained at least four times (2014, 2015, 2016, 2018)."
The live card at the top of this page reads lower than that. This is not a reservoir having a bad year. It is a reservoir that empties, and the agency managing its fishery has said so in two consecutive published reports.
Note what the division divides by. 5,000 acre feet called 7 per cent implies a denominator near 71,400, and the dam inventory gives normal storage as 71,826 . So the percentage on this page uses the same denominator the division used, and the card says so.
The maximum is nearly double the normal. The inventory gives 136,855 acre feet maximum against 71,826 normal , a ratio of about 0.53, so a percentage here depends entirely on which figure you divide by. Both are printed on the card.
The dam record, in full .
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Completed | 1938, earth. Years modified: empty |
| Size | 90 feet high, 1,403 feet long |
| Storage | 136,855 acre feet maximum, 71,826 normal |
| Drainage area | 2,440 square miles |
| Hazard potential | High |
| Condition assessment | Satisfactory, dated 1 January 1991 |
| Last inspected | 13 July 2023, on a one year cycle |
| Owner type | Private. The record names no owner |
| Regulated by | Utah Division of Water Rights. Federally regulated: No |
| Surface area | Field empty |
A Satisfactory rating dated 1991 against an inspection in 2023 is the sixth variation this series has found in that field pair, and it is thirty two years of gap. The correct sentence is that the inventory carries a 1991 assessment in a record transmitted in 2024, not that anyone rated this dam recently.
One field is internally inconsistent: the emergency action plan prepared field is empty while a plan review date of 18 May 2016 is populated . No claim is made here about whether a plan exists.
The dam is on the Sevier River, nine miles from Marysvale . A 90 foot high privately owned dam classified High hazard is an unusual combination, and this page states it exactly as the inventory does rather than characterising it. Maximum discharge 1,220 cubic feet per second, spillway uncontrolled.
Two figures are in circulation and they are a long way apart.
| Source | Surface area |
|---|---|
| The federal water body dataset, as published | 2,226 acres |
| The same polygon, added up by hand for this page | 2,231 acres |
| The dam inventory | Field empty |
| State promotional writing and general circulation | 3,360 acres |
Here is why this one is not a simple case of the popular number being wrong. On the previous page in this series the traced outline and the federal polygon agreed closely and the popular figure was the outlier. Here the traced outline agrees better with the popular figure than with the federal polygon, which is the subject of the outline section under Science. A polygon can be a partial pool footprint and this page does not know that it is not.
The elevation trap. The polygon stamps 1,820 on this record with no unit . As feet it would put the reservoir at 1,820 feet. The federal gauge datum on the reservoir itself is 5,900.80 feet . As metres, 1,820 works out to 5,971 feet, which fits. So it is metres. A reservoir earlier in this series carries 8,083 in the same field and that one is feet. No maximum depth, mean depth or shoreline length is published by anyone.
The advisory names this reservoir and does not apply to it
Utah defines a river reach by naming this reservoir and the one sixteen miles south east. Neither carries the advisory. Under that, the first outline check in this series to fail, and a release nobody has measured since 2003.
Piute Reservoir has no fish consumption advisory. Neither does Otter Creek. But both names appear on Utah's advisory page, in the same heading .
Verbatim:
"East Fork Sevier River (between Otter Creek and Piute Reservoirs; Piute County)"
| Species | Hg Level | Pregnant women and children | Women of childbearing age | Everyone else |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brown trout | 0.619 | 0 four ounce meals a month | 1 eight ounce meal a month | 5 eight ounce meals a month |
This was checked from both ends. The page for Otter Creek made the same statement from the other side, and this build confirmed it independently by transcribing the complete run of entries around where each reservoir would sort. Piute would fall between Pineview and Porcupine. Otter Creek between Newton and Pelican Lake. Both positions are empty.
No date line sits above this block. A line reading "Fish Consumption Advisory (4/23/18)" appears higher on the same page above a different waterbody. It is not this block's date and it is not borrowed here. This series published a borrowed date once and had to correct it.
Brown trout is drawn on this page for that reason, and because the 2020 nets caught exactly one of them . The advisory is about the river, not the reservoir, and a brown trout does not stay on one side of a dam because a heading says so. What this page can say is what Utah published, and Utah published a reach.
This is the first page in this series where the traced outline and the federal polygon do not agree, and the disagreement was large enough to be worth taking apart rather than printing .
| Measure | Traced | Federal | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Width against length, in the drawing's own axes | 0.3845 | 0.2704 | 42.2% |
| Smallest rectangle that contains the shape | 0.2902 | 0.2549 | 13.8% |
| Principal axes of the outline | 0.2787 | 0.2247 | 24.0% |
| Area, matched on the long axis | 3,892 acres | 2,231 acres | 74% over |
So two rotation independent measures were added. The smallest rectangle that will contain the shape, and the principal axes of the outline itself. Both are much smaller than 42 per cent, which means most of the first number was rotation.
But not all of it. Thirteen to twenty four per cent on shape and 74 per cent on area is still a real disagreement, and it is by a wide margin the worst in this series. The traced outline is a fatter reservoir than the federal polygon is.
What this page will not do is decide which one is right. The federal polygon self checks cleanly: adding it up by hand gives 9.0271 square kilometres against the 9.007 it publishes, agreement to about two tenths of one per cent . So the polygon is internally consistent. It may still be a partial pool footprint, and on a reservoir the state says was mostly drained four times in a decade that is not a remote possibility. The traced outline, at about 3,892 acres matched on length, sits closer to the 3,360 acres in general circulation than to the federal 2,226. Three numbers, no winner, all printed.
Ten daily records exist in this county across seven sites, and only four have anything to do with this reservoir .
| Record | Period |
|---|---|
| Piute Reservoir storage, site 10191000, site type LK | 22 March 1914 to 14 September 1995. 22,203 values |
| Sevier River below Piute Dam, site 10191500 | 17 May 1911 to 29 September 2003. 33,346 values |
| Sevier River near Kingston, site 10183500 | 12 June 1914 to today, 40,973 values, still reporting |
| Sevier River near Junction, site 10190500 | 1910 to 1916. 2,191 values |
So the flow card on this page is an inflow, not a release. It is the Sevier River above the reservoir, and the card says so in every state. Nothing found in this build measures what leaves this dam.
And there are two gauges called near Kingston. Site 10183500 on the Sevier River is the one on this page. Site 10189000 on the East Fork Sevier is the one on the Otter Creek page, two and a half miles east, and it is the gauge that sits on the reach the mercury advisory names . Same town in both names, different rivers, one on each page.
The storage figure is monthly and flagged derived rather than observed . The station advertises a daily series and a semimonthly one and returns an empty array for both, which is the same behaviour the station sixteen miles south shows. That is the network and not this reservoir. No 303(d) listing, no pollution budget and no beneficial use class was established here, and the limnological assessment that would carry a depth and a trophic state could not be fetched at all.
Where everything is
Seven places, two of them gauges that stopped, one of them the other reservoir in this county.
Piute is a Utah state park , one of the few waters in this series that is, and so is the reservoir sixteen miles south east.
21 May 2024, bacteria measured below recreational thresholds. 12 June 2024, "Our monitoring team saw visible signs of harmful algae at Piute Reservoir." 18 June 2024, the samples from 12 June showed low levels.
No Health Watch, no Warning and no Danger advisory appears on that page . That is a different programme from the fish consumption advisory above, measures a different thing, and the two should not be read together.
Two state sources were not reconciled and this page says so rather than picking. The environmental department page shows no current advisory . Check with the park and with the health department before you swim, because the local health district is the body that actually issues bloom advisories for this county, from its Junction office . Neither publishes a machine readable feed, so nothing on this page updates itself about algae.
The practical consequence of everything above is short. The usable water here is not a fixed thing.
Another reservoir in this series showed the operational version. In 2021 responders at a drawn down Utah reservoir could not launch their boats, because the water was too low and the dock was closed, and carried out a recovery with kayaks and by swimming.
Any figure on this page describing the size of this water is a figure about a full pool. Six and a half miles long is a full pool number. Two thousand two hundred acres is a full pool number. The live card is the one that is about today.
What could not be sourced about this park. No horsepower or wake restriction, no boat ramp specification or coordinate, no camping fee, no season dates and no accessibility information was established from an agency page in this build. Utah state parks sub pages have served the wrong park repeatedly in this series, including a fees address that returns a golf course at the other end of the state, so nothing is quoted here that was not confirmed to be about Piute.
Two surveys, six nets, three species
The reports name ten fish and the nets held three. The most abundant one is a sucker, and the division says so in its own words.
Rainbow trout
56 caught in the 2020 nets and 5 in 2019. The fish this reservoir is managed for, and the one that comes back when the water does.
Brown trout
One. A single brown trout in the 2020 nets. It is also the species Utah names in the mercury advisory on the river below, at 0.619.
Named in the advisoryUtah sucker
98 of the 103 fish the 2019 nets held. The division writes that suckers came to dominate this fishery, "comprising up to 99% of fish biomass".
The dominant fishUtah's wildlife division has published two trend net surveys for this reservoir, for 2019 and 2020, both by Mike Hadley . Between them the nets caught three species.
| Survey | What the nets held |
|---|---|
| 2 and 3 April 2019 | Rainbow trout 5, Utah sucker 98. The catch was about 95 per cent sucker |
| 8 and 9 April 2020, six gill nets, four floating and two diving, fished overnight | Rainbow trout 56, brown trout 1, Utah sucker 60. About half |
The division on the bass, wipers and catfish: they "were absent from the trend net catch" . On the chubs: they "have been relatively absent from the catch" and none were observed in 2020 . White crappie is a request filed for 2021 . Tiger muskie and saugeye appear once each, in a sentence about what "likely present the best chance to establish a sport fishery" , which is a plan.
Drawing a fish because a report contains its name would have put seven species on this page that no net has held. This page draws what was caught.
2021 through 2025 do not exist at the same addresses, tried in the same pattern. So the newest agency survey of this water is six years old, and the reservoir has been through at least two more drawdowns since . The file naming is also not what the neighbouring reservoir uses: these sit under fishing rather than fish, with the year last rather than in the middle. Recorded because it cost this build several attempts to find them.
The division, on what happened here :
"Utah suckers came to dominate the Piute Reservoir fish community, comprising up to 99% of fish biomass."
The reason is the water, and the division says that too. Repeated drawdowns favour a fish that tolerates them over trout that do not, and "the minimum pool left does not provide consistently sufficient conditions for successful trout fishery" .
The 2020 numbers are the interesting half. After a refill the nets came up 56 rainbow trout, 1 brown trout and 60 suckers . The trout come back when the water does. That is the argument for caring what the storage card at the top of this page says.
Utah chub is not drawn, and that is a deliberate difference from the neighbouring page. Sixteen miles south east the chub is one of six species drawn, because the division caught them there. Here the division writes that none were observed in 2020 at all . Two reservoirs in one county, both managed by the same biologist, with different problems.
The two reservoirs in this county were given the same idea and it went differently.
At Piute the same idea was tried, and the division writes that attempts to establish wipers that could prey on suckers and chubs "were also hampered by variable water levels" .
Same predator, same county, same biologist, opposite outcome, and the stated difference is the water. A fish stocked to eat another fish has to survive long enough to do it.
Stocking continues. The division records that "An annual quota of 50,000 fingerling channel catfish was added in 2019" . No channel catfish has appeared in a net in either published survey . This page does not draw one. The stocking application could not be read either: it truncates alphabetically well before P and ignores its own filter parameters.
Three things a fishing page is expected to answer.
The guidebook. This page states no fishing rule. The document has returned a fabricated entry with a correct county elsewhere in this series, and a strict existence question confirmed the fabrication rather than catching it . Check the current guidebook yourself.
Blue Ribbon. Not confirmed and not denied. The programme page publishes no list and no count , and the most recent funding release states 41 waterbodies and does not name this one . A water the division describes as unable to sustain a consistent trout fishery is unlikely to hold the designation, and that reasoning is not evidence, so it is not published as a finding.
What to watch for
Nothing found in the incident record, said carefully. A reservoir at about four per cent of normal storage. And a name that is a county, a reservoir and two other reservoirs at the same time.
No drowning, boating fatality, vehicle in the water, ice incident or submerged debris recovery at Piute Reservoir was found in agency or press sources.
And the search here is unusually hard, for one reason. The county is called Piute, the reservoir is called Piute, and there is a second large reservoir in the same county. An incident at Otter Creek Reservoir is an incident in Piute County, and press writing routinely compresses that into a phrase that reads like this water.
The neighbouring page carries two recorded recoveries, one of them a body recovery in which dive crews from two hundred miles north assisted the county team. Both were in Piute County and neither was at this reservoir.
No sheriff or state posting for any incident at this reservoir was retrieved, so nothing on this page is in agency voice on that subject. Absence of a record is not absence of an event, and on a water with no boat ramp specification, no published depth and no gauge on its own release, that gap is worth naming rather than reading as safety.
The single most important condition here is on the live strip at the top of this page .
The July 2026 reading is lower than the previous year's August low, a month earlier in the season. Against the inventory's normal storage of 71,826 that is about four per cent .
What that means for anyone going in the water. On a reservoir six and a half miles long the shoreline moves a very long way, the ramp position changes, and structure that was in thirty feet of water is in five or in none. The division has already told you what it does to the fish.
The neighbouring reservoir held 5,483 acre feet in the same month, against a normal of 52,660. Two reservoirs in one county, both at roughly a tenth or less of normal pool in July 2026, and only one of them is under an emergency fishing order . This page does not know why and does not guess.
The name is doing three jobs, and only one of them is this reservoir.
| Thing | What it is |
|---|---|
| Piute Reservoir, this one | Water body 120027911, reach code 16030001001402, on the Sevier River |
| Piute County | The county, which also contains Otter Creek Reservoir |
| Two other Piute Reservoirs | Federal records return three water bodies of this exact name nationwide |
The spelling is a separate trap. Piute, Paiute and Pahute all appear in American place names, and the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah is a distinct entity from the county and from this reservoir. The dam inventory records no tribal land status for this dam .
To pin this water down, use a number rather than a name. Water body 120027911, names identifier 01444469, reach code beginning 16030001 , dam UT00249 , storage station 10191000 . Every figure on this page was pulled by one of those.
Utah says this reservoir was mostly drained four times in a decade. In July 2026 it held about four per cent of normal storage.
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 PiuteEvery figure on this page is quoted from the source named beside it.
Sources
How these were checked
Numbered sources are agencies. The single lettered source is a figure rather than a claim: 3,360 acres, which state promotional writing publishes and the federal polygon does not support, and which this page prints alongside the federal number instead of choosing.Where sources disagree, all of them are printed. Two surface areas. A 1991 condition rating against a 2023 inspection. An empty emergency action plan field against a populated review date.
Three method notes. First, the species list on this page was cut from ten to three by reading the two surveys for what the nets caught rather than for which species are named; the seven removed appear in stocking records, absences and proposals. Second, the outline check on this page failed, and two rotation independent measures were added to work out how much of the failure was rotation and how much was shape; all three are printed. Third, the incident section reports a search based negative and says so, which is a weaker statement than the fetched negatives elsewhere on this page.
National Inventory of Dams, federal identifier UT00249, name Piute. County Piute, river Sevier River, owner type Private with no owner named, state regulated Yes by the Utah Division of Water Rights, federally regulated No. Completed 1938, earth, 90 feet high and 1,403 feet long, maximum storage 136,855 acre feet, normal storage 71,826, drainage area 2,440 square miles, maximum discharge 1,220 cubic feet per second, surface area field empty, spillway uncontrolled, purpose Irrigation, hazard potential High, inspected annually. Condition assessment Satisfactory dated 1 January 1991, last inspected 13 July 2023, years modified empty, record last updated 28 March 2024. The emergency action plan prepared field is empty while the plan review date reads 18 May 2016
Piute Reservoir trend net survey, 2020. Author Mike Hadley, Regional Sport Fish Biologist. Six experimental gill nets, four floating and two diving, set 8 April 2020 and fished overnight. The nets caught 56 rainbow trout, 1 brown trout and 60 Utah suckers. States that "Utah suckers came to dominate the Piute Reservoir fish community, comprising up to 99%" and that "the minimum pool left does not provide consistently sufficient conditions for successful trout fishery". Records that reservoir capacity reached 7 per cent, 5,000 acre feet, in September 2020, that Utah chubs were not observed at all, and that attempts to establish wipers "were also hampered by variable water levels"
Piute Reservoir trend net survey, 2019. Same author. The nets caught 5 rainbow trout and 98 Utah suckers. States that "just during the past decade, the reservoir was mostly drained at least four times (2014, 2015, 2016, 2018)", that "Utah suckers came to dominate the Piute Reservoir fish community, comprising up to 99% of fish biomass", that "smallmouth bass, wipers, and channel catfish were absent from the trend net catch", and that cool and warm water predators "likely present the best chance to establish a sport fishery"
Utah fish consumption advisories. There is no block for Piute Reservoir and none for Otter Creek Reservoir. The name appears once, inside the heading "East Fork Sevier River (between Otter Creek and Piute Reservoirs; Piute County)", whose single row is brown trout at 0.619 under a column headed Hg Level. No date line sits above that block
Piute reservoir storage, station 10191000:UT:BOR, county Piute. The monthly series is flagged derived rather than observed, and the daily and semimonthly series it advertises both return an empty array. Its record begins March 1914
Sevier River near Kingston, site 10183500, at elevation 5,989.02 feet, hydrologic unit 16030001. Daily discharge since 12 June 1914, 40,973 values, still reporting. Upstream of the reservoir
Sevier River below Piute Dam near Marysvale, site 10191500, at elevation 5,920 feet. Daily discharge from 17 May 1911 to 29 September 2003, 33,346 values, and nothing since
Piute Reservoir near Marysvale, site 10191000, site type LK, at elevation 5,900.80 feet. Daily reservoir storage from 22 March 1914 to 14 September 1995, 22,203 values, and nothing since. The same site number that the soil conservation service still publishes monthly
Every daily record in Piute County, listed with its period of record. Ten records across seven sites. Four concern this reservoir, two concern Otter Creek, and one is a combined flow record that ended in 1977
National Hydrography Dataset. Piute Reservoir, permanent identifier 120027911, geographic names identifier 01444469, published at 9.007 square kilometres with a stamped elevation of 1,820 and reach code 16030001001402. A query for this name returns three features nationwide
Emergency change to daily fishing limits at seven waterbodies, 2 July 2026. The seven are Canyon View Park Pond, Minersville Reservoir, Otter Creek Reservoir, Palisade Reservoir, Pineview Reservoir, Red Creek Reservoir and Vernon Reservoir. Piute Reservoir is not among them. The entry for Otter Creek reads "Otter Creek Reservoir, Piute County", so the county words belong to Otter Creek and not to this reservoir
Piute Reservoir recreational monitoring. Three dated updates in 2024: bacteria below thresholds on 21 May, visible signs of harmful algae seen on 12 June, and low levels of harmful algae confirmed in those samples on 18 June. No Health Watch, Warning or Danger advisory appears on the page
Central Utah Public Health Department, the local authority that issues harmful algal bloom advisories for this county from its Junction office
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 waters, and does not name this reservoir
Blue Ribbon fisheries. The programme and its criteria, with no list and no count on the page
2026 Utah Fishing Guidebook. The document this build could not read reliably, and which has returned a fabricated entry with a correct county elsewhere in this series
Otter Creek Reservoir trend net survey, 2022. Same author as the Piute surveys. Records that "Based on these results, the addition of wipers to the Otter Creek Reservoir fishery commenced in 2011" and that the division considers Otter Creek "Utah's best RBT sport fishery". The same management idea was tried here and the division says variable water levels defeated it
Point forecast over the reservoir. Forecast office Salt Lake City
The figure of 3,360 acres for this reservoir, which appears in state promotional writing and in general circulation. The federal water body polygon publishes 9.007 square kilometres, which is 2,226 acres, and the dam inventory leaves its surface area field empty. Both figures are printed on this page and neither is preferred
Why the flow card is an inflow, and why there are two gauges called near Kingston
Nothing has measured the release from this dam since 2003.
Site 10191500, Sevier River below Piute Dam. Daily discharge from 17 May 1911 to 29 September 2003, 33,346 values . That is the gauge this card would use if it still reported.
Site 10191000, Piute Reservoir. Daily storage from 22 March 1914 to 14 September 1995, 22,203 values . The storage card on this page is alive only because a different agency publishes the same site number monthly .
Site 10183500, Sevier River near Kingston. Daily discharge since 12 June 1914, 40,973 values, still reporting . This is the card. It sits above the reservoir, so it is what is going in.
And there are two gauges called near Kingston, on two different rivers. Site 10183500 is on the Sevier River and it is the card on this page. Site 10189000 is on the East Fork Sevier River, two and a half miles east, and it is the card on the Otter Creek page . Reading one as the other would put the wrong river on the wrong reservoir.
The storage series is monthly and flagged derived rather than observed . The daily and semimonthly series the station advertises both return an empty array, and so does the station sixteen miles south east on the identical query. That is the network and not this reservoir.