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Utahns would be willing to give up their lawns and live on smaller lots in smaller homes if the conserved water helps save Utah's farms, according to the results of Envision Utah's survey on water use.
Almost 90 percent of Utah residents who took the regional planning group's online survey said they would be willing to use less water for their own landscaping to avoid taking water away from agriculture.
And it's not just that they'll find ways to water their lawns more efficiently — 89 percent of respondents said they would be willing to invest their own money to change their landscaping in ways that would conserve water, and 76 percent said they wanted to see future Utah developments feature smaller lots with smaller homes and yards.
Their reasoning? Thirty percent of respondents said they believed it was important to ensure there is enough water available in the state for farms and food production. The second most popular reason, conserving lakes and streams as habitat for wildlife, garnered 24 percent of the vote.
Randy Parker, CEO of the Utah Farm Bureau Federation, said he sees the results as a vote of confidence in Utah's farmers.
"That really says a lot about the values and the trust Utahns put in their farmers and ranchers," he said. "It really is a nice compliment."
Still, Parker has little faith Utahns will follow up on what they say they are willing to do.
"We've been raised where we have our little quarter-acre piece of land and our castle on it, and that's our little piece of heaven," Parker said. "The poll says that they are willing to live in smaller homes and maybe even change that dynamic to have more living space going into the air, but I'm going to have to see it."
Like the other sections of Envision Utah's widely circulated online survey, the water section offered five different visions of what Utah could look like in 2050, and then asked respondents to vote for the scenario they most preferred.
Options in the water section asked respondents how much they were willing to cut back on their own water use, how many large-scale water development projects they were willing to support, and which trade-offs they were willing to make.
The most popular scenario, which garnered 33 percent of the vote, required a 25-percent cut to per-capita water use and limited lawns to 30 percent of the area of any given yard. According to the survey, under that scenario, Utah would be forced to build the Lake Powell Pipeline project to meet demand, but the Bear River project could be delayed by a decade or more.
The plan also called for moving agricultural water rights to residential users as those farms are replaced by neighborhoods.
The least popular scenario, which got 12 percent of the vote, was essentially identical to the most popular scenario. It too called for a 25-percent cut in personal water use, a 30-percent lawn limit and required the completion of the Lake Powell Pipeline. But it called for a "significant portion" of water to be taken from agriculture as farms are replaced by homes.
Zach Frankel, executive director of the Utah Rivers Council, criticized the scenarios offered to the public. For example, he said, four of the five suggested water plans required major development projects like the Lake Powell Pipeline, and the one that did not was what Frankel characterized as a "draconian, Mad Max-like, post-apocalyptic" vision that had Utah running out of water by 2045.
That suggested, he said, that major water developments will be absolutely necessary to sustain growth in the state because Utah is on the verge of running out of water. Nothing could be further from the truth, he said.
"Envision Utah has misled Utahns to believe Utah is facing a water crisis, when in fact the recent legislative audit has found the contrary," he said. That audit, released in May, found a water surplus on the Wasatch Front where housing developments have already overtaken large swaths of farmland.
"This process was stacked at the outset by the water industry salesmen who are pitching Utahns billions of unnecessary debt we do not need," Frankel said. "Envision Utah is proposing that America's most wasteful water [using state] build the most expensive water projects in the nation, instead of implementing inexpensive alternatives. It's disappointing."
Envision Utah Chief Operating Officer Ari Bruening said the survey "never claimed that Utah is running out of water."
And he believes the survey is a step forward in collaboratively forging a "water vision for the future that takes into account what almost 53,000 Utahns...said was best for Utah's future."
But the criticism of the group's methodology doesn't end there.
Frankel said the survey also poses false dichotomies, like asking whether residents want water for their yards, or for farmland that grows food. The reality, he said, is that 85 percent of Utah's water is already dedicated to agricultural uses, and that more than half of that goes to water alfalfa.
"It's not about food," he said. "If we're going to save farmland, then let's save farmland. But no one thinks that what is driving farmland loss is water policy. That's nonsense."
Ross Ford, the executive vice president of the Utah Home Builders Association, said he too had serious doubts about the statistical integrity of Envision Utah's survey. But, he said, the survey's results do seem to accurately reflect current trends in the real estate market. Developments that include smaller lots, walkable elements and shared open spaces are hot right now, he said.
"Whenever those opportunities open up, we tend to see more developers gravitate toward that," he said.
But what the survey results seem to throw into relief, Ford said, is the disconnect between Utah residents and the state's leaders.
"We see an interest in exactly that" — small, sustainable communities, he said. "What we see as the problem, though, is that city zoning is in opposition to that. More and more cities want bigger lots. Builders and developers want to do projects that sell."
And right now, Ford said, what sells is housing projects that emphasize small lots, efficient use of space and of other resources — including water.
Twitter: @emapen