This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Water experts and advocates worry that a draft state water strategy released late last month is all talk, offering few specifics and many contradictions when it comes to water management.
The Recommended State Water Strategy is also built on some baseline assumptions — including that Utah should be able to produce enough food to feed its population — that are raising eyebrows, among even those who contributed to the document.
Here are a few of the controversial statements.
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Conserve water, but not too much
• "Find ways to conserve water resources with important economic and ecologic values, particularly the Great Salt Lake."
That sounds nice, said Lynn de Freitas, executive director of Friends of Great Salt Lake and a member of the governor-appointed task force that contributed to the draft water strategy. But she worries the report doesn't have a lot to say about exactly the state ought to do.
"It's really easy to say that these things are important," she said, "but the proof of course is in the follow-up and in the commitment to do something about it."
According to the strategy document, outdoor watering accounts for 60 percent of the state's total municipal and industrial water use. The draft suggests this should be the state's target. It recommends the state pursue additional public outreach, require water meters for all outdoor systems, pass ordinances that encourage or even require low-water landscaping, and adopt inclining water rates.
"Low water rates offer little financial incentive to conserve," the document says.
But at the same time, the strategy also makes assertions that appear to be openly hostile toward the very conservation programs it recommends, said Zach Frankel, executive director of the Utah Rivers Council.
The draft asserts that public outreach and incentives to conserve water can cost more than the development of new water supply, and argues that if residents begin to use significantly less water, it could "undermine the income needed to properly maintain water infrastructure."
"Do you want to save water or not?" Frankel asked. "You can't have it both ways."
Janet Robins, Great Salt Lake Yacht Club commodore, said much of the verbiage the strategy dedicated to water conservation amounts to little more than lip service.
"In a lot of ways they seem to want to say the right thing," she said, "but they keep pushing points like that Utah really values growing our own food. We don't grow our own food. We grow hay."
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Grow your own
• "Study and recommend demand management and other means to prevent permanent conversion of agricultural land and water to other uses."
The importance of agriculture is a recurring theme throughout the draft strategy. It asserts that Utah can currently produce enough grain and protein to feed its population — while acknowledging that it produces only 26 percent of its own dairy, 3 percent of its fruit and 2 percent of its vegetables — and warns that if Utah "simply maintains current levels of production as the population increases, by 2050 the state will not be self-sufficient in any food production sector."
But what Utah farmers really need, said Sterling Brown, vice president of public policy for the Utah Farm Bureau and also a member of the water strategy task force, are better solutions for farming in Utah's challenging environment.
As growth on the Wasatch Front has accelerated, he said, it has pushed more farmers into regions with poor soils. Many of these areas have high concentrations of salt in their soils, which increases a crop's demand for water.
"Sometimes you put a lot of water in the soil, and it forces the salt deep down into the soil away from the roots," he said. "That's the most common practice. But is there a more efficient way to do that?"
The draft strategy does call for such research, and Brown said he was optimistic that the document would represent the needs of Utah's agriculture industry. But assuming that Utah does or ever could produce all its own food is misguided, he said.
"There's no doubt Utah can be self-sufficient in meeting our protein demands," he said, "but Utah has not historically produced a lot of other dietary needs."
While Utah can produce some of its own grains, fruits and vegetables, he said, its climate isn't conducive to self-sufficiency in these areas.
State Engineer Ken Jones said he had mixed feelings about whether water rights currently held by agricultural interests should receive special protection to prevent their conversion for municipal use.
"I have talked to some farmers, and they say, 'Our kids don't want to farm anymore, but the city wants to buy our water rights,' " he said.
"It's hard to come back and say 'No, you have to stay in farming.' "
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Build now, justify later
• "Utah should develop new regional water projects when they are needed, and move forward with planning and permitting now to keep options open and claim Utah's share of interstate river allocations."
One of the 18 baseline assumptions of the report is that there's no way Utah can meet its future water needs without new infrastructure, and the document recommends both the Lake Powell Pipeline and the Bear River Project for construction.
"In order to keep options open to implement these projects when they are needed," it says, "planning, permitting, and property acquisition should be pursued now."
In a later chapter, the document says "failure to increase the infrastructure of water systems in a timely manner may limit population and economic growth … waiting to build projects until the demand occurs is not a feasible solution."
Frankel, who called the water strategy report "a brochure," said he believes the draft favors "massive water infrastructure projects" to "inexpensive alternatives" like conservation and the conversion of agricultural water rights "to make money for the people who wrote it."
"They don't care if water sits in the gutter and collects pollution as it winds its way to lakes and streams," he said. "They want big-ticket spending, and they don't care what it does to the environment."
Frankel and Robins both raised concerns about the strategy's support for ongoing taxes and state funding tied to these projects.
According to the draft report, "state financing will be needed for larger water infrastructure projects, with local entities repaying the financing over time."
Robins said she believes those taxes amount to a state subsidy for grass. If the price of water reflected what it actually cost, she said, Utahns would be more inclined to reconsider their landscaping.
Beyond that, Frankel said, subsidizing water with property taxes allows some of the state's largest water users — public institutions, for example — to avoid some of the costs.
"People in Salt Lake City living on $20,000 a year pay the same amount for water as a massive government agency that uses 100 times the water," he said.
But Tage Flint, general manager of the Weber Basin Water Conservancy District and one of the water strategy task force co-chairs, said he was glad to see the document support funding for water infrastructure.
Flint said his water district, which serves five counties, will likely need funding in the near future to repair and replace its aging infrastructure. The Weber district operates seven major reservoirs built in the 1950s and 1960s that have projected life spans of 70 to 100 years.
"We're sitting on billions of dollars of infrastructure that will need to be replaced and repaired over the next 50 years," he said.
Flint said the draft did include several approaches to water management that weren't necessarily his personal preference. But he said he believed that as the strategy report is refined in future drafts and with ongoing input, "I think a general consensus can be found."
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