The unseen flooding danger, rising ground water

SALT LAKE CITY — Never did James Naylor think he would be famous on TikTok. “My 13-year-old got me into it,” he said. 

However, the videos he has been posting lately are starting to get him a lot of attention.

“Sometimes they get really big,” he said with a smile.

That’s because his videos deal with groundwater flooding.

Naylor works with Utah Disaster Kleenup, a restoration company, and because of all the snow melting in the mountains and running into the valleys, he has been getting lots of calls lately about groundwater flooding.

“We haven’t seen a snow season like this season and some people might be experiencing ground flooding for the first time,” Naylor said. 

He figured why not make the videos and post them on his social media site to show people why groundwater flooding is happening.

With as much snow as Utah has received this winter, the melt is over-saturating the ground in many areas.

That causes the water table to rise, and for some homes, brings the water up higher than the lowest point of your foundation.

“It will just slowly bubble up into your basement,” said Naylor. “I mean, if your house is a box and you set it inside if a pond, the water is going to come in.”

It is difficult to prevent, but there are some things that can be done to protect your basement, such as a sump pump, French drains, and making sure the slope of the ground around your home slopes away from the foundation.

“I know it sounds like a no-brainer, but the best way to avoid groundwater is to keep the water away from your house,” Naylor said.

In the Salt Lake Valley, the water table is already close to the surface. 

“It is flowing through these sandy and gravel areas underneath the surface and it stays fairly shallow,” Jessica Castleton said. She is a senior geologist with the Utah Geological Survey.

Castleton agrees installing a sump pump is one of the best ways to try and protect your basement from groundwater flooding.

“That directs all the water into that area and it can pump it out into the gutters or the street or anywhere that’s appropriate for that water to go,” she said.

The Utah Geological Survey is also mapping groundwater all across Utah, but that takes years to complete.

For now, it’s all about being prepared for something many people might not even know can happen.

“The idea is to just get the water away from your house one way or another,” Naylor said.

You can get more information on the flooding threat here. KSLTV.com also posted a river flow tracker so you can get daily updates on the runoff threat.