Does Herriman flood?

Herriman flooding is real, but it is almost never the kind people imagine. There is no major river running through town. The water that damages Herriman houses comes off hillsides and out of small creeks during heavy storms, and it usually gets in because of how a lot was graded.

That is good news for a buyer, because grading is something you can inspect. A river you cannot move. A swale that sends water toward a foundation can be fixed, and more importantly, it can be spotted before you own it.

What the city itself says about flood risk

Herriman publishes its own flooding guidance, and it is unusually direct for a city page. The city says flooding is most likely to affect property on hillsides that slope toward structures, or property that does not have proper landscape grading. It describes creeks overflowing their banks and threatening homes in the valley as possible but unlikely (Herriman City, herriman.gov/flooding, checked October 20, 2026).

The same page notes that homes inside a FEMA regulated special flood hazard area carry a higher chance of flooding, and it points residents to a lookup tool to check a specific property.

Two things follow from that, and they are the whole post in miniature:

1. Most Herriman flood risk is site-specific, not neighborhood-specific. Two houses on the same street can have very different exposure.
2. The city expects you to check your own parcel. There is no blanket answer for the town.

What happened on Midas Creek

Herriman does have a creek story, and it is worth knowing because it shapes how people talk about this locally.

In June 2021, a flood advisory was issued for Herriman due to flooding along Midas Creek. Floodwater overflowed at the bridge over 3600 West, and neighbors near 11900 South reported at least one home with basement flooding. In later reporting, a group of Herriman residents blamed the city for a flood that damaged homes after a berm failure, and the city’s insurer determined the city was not liable.

That last detail is the one I point clients to, because it answers a question people do not think to ask. If stormwater damages your house, the assumption is that somebody else pays. Often nobody does. You are left with your own insurance, and a standard homeowners policy does not cover flood damage from an outside source of water. Flood coverage is a separate policy, generally through the National Flood Insurance Program.

The three things to check on a specific Herriman lot

This is the part that actually protects you, and all of it can be done before you write an offer.

Check the flood maps, all three of them. The county, the state and FEMA each publish a map, and they do not always agree, because FEMA remaps tributaries periodically and the designations change. Look at the Salt Lake County Flood Control interactive map, the State of Utah flood risk map, and the FEMA Map Service Center. If any of them puts the parcel in a special flood hazard area, that is not automatically a reason to walk away, but it changes your insurance math and it changes your lender’s requirements.

Walk the lot and watch where water would go. Stand at the back property line and look downhill. If the slope runs toward the house rather than around it, you want to know what is intercepting that water. Look for a swale, a drainage easement, a curb cut, a window well with a drain. Then look at the neighbors uphill, because their grading becomes your problem. In a newer subdivision on a bench, this takes about as long as walking the yard once.

Look at the window wells and the basement, specifically. Herriman has a lot of finished basements, and that is where this shows up. Efflorescence on the foundation, a fresh coat of paint on one wall only, a sump pump that looks newer than the house, a musty smell in one corner. None of those are proof, and all of them are worth asking about in writing. What a home inspection should look for in Herriman covers the rest of the local list.

Hillside lots and open space change the calculation

Herriman keeps growing uphill toward the Oquirrh foothills, and the views are the reason people buy there. The tradeoff is that a hillside lot has more water moving across it during a storm than a flat lot does, and the undeveloped ground above you behaves differently than a landscaped yard.

Backing to open space has the same double edge. It is quieter and nobody builds behind you, and it also means the water coming off that ground arrives at your fence first. Whether to buy next to open space in Herriman goes through the full set of tradeoffs, and drainage belongs on that list alongside weeds and wildlife.

What I actually see is that buyers evaluate the view and skip the drainage, then discover the issue during the first big August storm. It is not usually catastrophic. It is usually a wet basement corner and a four-figure landscaping bill that nobody planned for.

How this compares to flooding elsewhere in Utah

Worth a note for anyone moving in from southern Utah or considering both ends of the state. The mechanism down there is different. In Santa Clara, the river itself is the hazard, and the 2005 flood took homes by eroding the ground they sat on rather than by rising over them. Whether Santa Clara floods covers that, and it is a genuinely different risk from what Herriman has.

Herriman’s version is smaller, more common, and more preventable. That is the honest framing.

Who should be more careful than average

Be more careful if you are buying a hillside lot with upslope ground above it, a home at the bottom of a street that collects runoff, anything within sight of Midas Creek, or a house with a finished basement and no visible drainage plan. Also be careful with brand-new construction on a graded pad, because landscaping has not been installed yet and the final grade is the thing that decides this. Ask the builder for the grading plan.

Be less worried if you are on a flat interior lot in an established subdivision with mature landscaping that visibly drains to the street, and the maps put you outside a hazard area.

What to do next

Pull the three maps for the address before your inspection, not after. Then have the inspector specifically asked about grading and drainage rather than assuming it gets covered, because a general inspection may note it in passing or not at all. If the lot is on a slope, a few hundred dollars for a drainage opinion is cheap against a finished basement.

I am Kelsey Earl, a Realtor with Keller Williams South Valley working this side of the valley, and I would rather tell a client to pass on one house than watch them fight water for five years. If you send me an address, I will pull the maps and walk the drainage with you before you spend money on an inspection. Send me the address and I will take a look.

Note: City guidance, the Midas Creek reporting and the insurance points here were checked October 20, 2026. FEMA remaps tributaries periodically, so confirm the current designation for any specific parcel rather than relying on this page.