The upshot, according to a just-released study, is that while Utahns are getting better at conserving water, they still have a long way to go to match their peers in the region.
The report, issued by the University of Utah's Bureau of Economic and Business Research, surveyed daily per capita water use in 25 metropolitan areas in the interior West. Three of the top five, and four of the top seven, are located in the Beehive State.
St. George ranks No. 1, ahead of even Las Vegas, gulping 391 daily gallons, per capita. Logan is second (370), Salt Lake City is fourth (288) and Provo-Orem sixth (281).
In sharp contrast, Albuquerque's per capita water use is 178 daily gallons, Boise's is 192 and Denver's is 207. The region's average per capita use, based on 2000 figures from the U.S. Geological Survey, is 243 gallons per day.
"It's pretty clear that we need to do better, and that we can do better without making a lot of drastic changes," study author Alan Isaacson, a research analyst with the bureau, said this week. "Just better planned sprinkler use in the summer and higher rates will discourage high water use. And that's coming because we're continuing to grow and the water supply is not."
Prompted largely by a six-year drought, Utah is making headway on the water conservation front, according to state officials.
Eric Klotz, the Division of Water Resources conservation director, says statewide per capita consumption is down 17 percent since 1995. The state's goal is to eventually cut water consumption by 25 percent.
But, except for Ogden, which is below the regional average (221 gallons), Utah cities still consume significantly more water than most of their Intermountain counterparts. And that troubles local water conservation advocates.
"We've built our entire water system, policies and laws around the notion that conservation just isn't very important," said Jeffrey Steadman, water conservation coordinator with the Utah Rivers Council. "We're at the point now that we need to re-evaluate those things, not only in building policies but building in incentives for people to conserve. In terms of water conservation, we've really just hit the tip of the iceberg."
Utah's location and geography have played a large role in its history of profligate water consumption, according to Klotz. Though ostensibly a Great Basin state with an arid climate, Utah's largest cities are all located at the base of towering mountain ranges, where the snowfall is plentiful and so is the runoff. Dry? Yes. But with plenty of water to go around, at least compared to the region's other metro areas.
"The bottom line is, we live in a desert. Salt Lake City gets only 15 inches of precipitation a year," said Klotz. "But a half-hour east, the precipitation is 60 inches, which is more than Seattle or New Orleans - places we think of as wet. So there is a lot of supply up there."
And because the state's water resources are so close to its major cities, delivering it is also less expensive. Plenty of water, combined with historically cheap water rates, translates into high water use. And that's not just a Utah phenomenon.
"Utah is at the high end, but so are places like Reno, Grand Junction and Pocatello," said Isaacson. "All of these areas have one thing in common: they're all in arid regions with nearby mountain ranges that get a lot of runoff. There's at least the perception of a good water supply."
Without such attributes, other Western cities were forced long ago to use their water in much more modest quantities - and price it much more aggressively. Albuquerque and Tucson, for instance, derive virtually all of their water from aquifers. Denver gets 96 percent of its water from surface sources, but because most of that water falls on the other side of the Rockies, transporting water to the Front Range is much more costly.
As a result, most of these cities use much less water than Utah's major metro areas - and have much pricier rate structures in place. Only recently have Beehive State water providers, most notably in Salt Lake City and Sandy, shifted to a use-based system that charges based upon consumption.
But with the state's population continuing to swell and new water resources - such as the Bear River project and the Lake Powell pipeline - in the works, Utah residents can expect higher water rates in the years to come.
"These cost for these projects will be much higher than anything previously built, so water costs will go up," said Klotz. "At that point, the rate structure has a very good chance of working."
jbaird@sltrib.com
