'Kind of scary': Pineview visitors discover grenade on previously submerged reservoir shore

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Two visitors to Pineview Reservoir in Weber County found a grenade on the exposed rocky shore of the lake.
• The Weber County Sheriff's Office Bomb Squad safely detonated the device.
• Pineview is being partially drained as part of a pipeline project, exposing portions of the reservoir shore and bed that had been submerged in water.

OGDEN VALLEY, Weber County — Add "grenade" to the list of things found as Pineview Reservoir has been drained, unearthing previously submerged items.

Weber County Sheriff's Office officials said Sunday evening that two visitors to the reservoir reported the discovery of the explosive. The Weber County Sheriff's Office Bomb Squad responded, detonating the item in place, said Sgt. Danielle Goodell. The detonation occurred without injuries.

Landen Waite and his older brother Conner Waite, both of Clinton, had gone to Pineview to go bow fishing on Sunday when Landen said he stumbled upon the rusty device. They were clambering along the steep, rocky bank of the reservoir near the dam structure on its western end.

"I was kind of like, 'Conner, a grenade,' and he didn't really believe me," Landen told KSL on Monday.

Landen actually picked up the device, thinking it was a downrigger ball, a weight used in fishing. "Then I saw the pin and stuff like that and I was kind of like, 'Oh dang. This is actually a grenade,'" he said. Needless to say, he put it down and they informed an official at the nearby dam structure, leading to the involvement of the county bomb squad.

Conner Waite said he had and his brother noticed "all kinds of old junk," including an old safe that had been cut apart. "Honestly, it looked like nobody had been walking around that area in a very long time," he said.

They were initially drawn to the area because they had heard the water level was so low that fish were visible in the water. Discovery of the grenade came as an unexpected surprise.

"Definitely not something you expect to find while you're out bow fishing on a Sunday morning," Conner said.

Video of the detonation supplied to KSL by Cody Spencer shows an explosion near the water's edge, the dam structure visible in the background. "Fire in the hole, fire in the hole," someone says.

Landen said he and his brother left Pineview soon after coming across the grenade. "That's kind of scary. I don't really want to be in that area," he said.

Ogden officials announced last June that the water level in Pineview would be drawn down to allow for installation of a water pipeline along the reservoir bed near Port Ramp Marina. It's part of the broader $100 million project to replace 6.4 miles of pipeline that hauls drinking water from well fields abutting the reservoir west through the Ogden Canyon to Ogden.

As the water level has declined, workers have discovered a once-submerged pickup truck. Likewise, treasure seekers with metal detectors have scoured the exposed bed searching for loot. Numerous aluminum cans, among other things, have been unearthed.

A temporary roadway is being installed across the bed of Pineview where the new section of pipeline is to be installed. Justin Anderson, director of public services for Ogden, said last Friday that the new pipeline section across Pineview should be done by next January.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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Tim Vandenack

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Tim Vandenack covers immigration, multicultural issues and Northern Utah for KSL. He worked several years for the Standard-Examiner in Ogden and has lived and reported in Mexico, Chile and along the U.S.-Mexico border.