St. George • Storms over the past week have brought welcome relief to drought-plagued Washington and Iron counties, where river and stream flows have been hovering at near-record lows.
Currently, 85% of Washington County is in extreme drought conditions, compared to 95% prior to the recent spate of storms, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. The storms also cut in half the area in Iron County mired in drought from 40% to 20%.
Washington County Water Conservancy District general manager Zach Renstrom, water district manager, said spring rains have sprung some hope for more wet weather to further ease the drought.
The rain “helps put moisture in the soil overall, and that’s a beneficial thing,” he said. “Then our temperatures are cooler and our landscapes need less water.”
Tempering that optimism is the fact that this time a year ago, roughly 15% of southwest Utah was abnormally dry and none fell into the extreme drought category, according to Julie Cunningham, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Salt Lake City Office.
“This is due to the lack of snowfall that we saw this winter, especially in that southwestern corner of Utah. The Pine Valley mountains, for example, barely saw any snow this year,” she said.
As a result, according to Utah Snow Survey supervisor Jordan Clayton, the spring runoff in southern Utah from now through July is forecast to be below 50% of average. In Iron and Washington counties, the outlook is even worse. The Santa Clara River’s spring runoff is forecasted to be 24% of normal and the forecast for the Virgin River is so dismal it has a 30% chance of the snowmelt setting a record low.
Citing data from the United States Geological Survey, Clayton noted current stream flows in some areas are flirting with record lows, such as Kanab Creek in Kane County and the Virgin River in Washington County.
“More broadly,” Clayton added, “almost all the rivers in southern Utah are in the bottom 10th percentile for current stream flow, even if they are not breaking records.”
Renstrom said the spring runoff in the area is running fairly dry. The district is no longer adding water to its reservoirs and is beginning to draw them down as the temperatures continue to climb. Still, he added, water levels in district storage reservoirs are at relatively healthy levels.
Sand Hollow and Quail Creek reservoirs are at 86% and 77% of capacity, respectively. Gunlock Reservoir, at 65% capacity, is lagging a bit behind.
“Fortunately, we were able to store a lot of water over the previous couple of [water] years that were above average,” Renstrom said.
District officials say conservation has also helped shore up reservoir water levels. Since the launch of the county’s Water Efficient Landscape Program in December 2022, residents have replaced well over 2 million square feet of grass with more water-efficient landscaping, an annual water savings of more than 90 million gallons.
Hammering out a water shortage plan
Despite the continued drought, water managers have still not nailed down a water shortage contingency agreement, although mayors and city managers on the water district’s administrative action committee voted late last month to recommend approval of a draft plan conditional upon some further discussion and revisions.
Washington City Mayor Kress Staheli said that approval to move forward, which was not unanimous, came despite a few committee members’ reservations over some of the plan’s restrictions and other recommendations.
Ivins Mayor Chris Hart, who voted with the majority, was one of the members who said the current drought conditions and low spring runoff in southwest Utah will brook no delay in taking action.
“I was pretty vocal about the fact that we would be completely irresponsible as elected officials to not adopt some version of this,” he said.
One sticking point that has prevented approval of a final plan is that officials of some member cities are opposed to uniform water restrictions being imposed at various drought stages. Hart said some argue that each city is different and should be given some leeway to draft and impose their own restrictions to meet whatever target water reductions are set for each drought category.
“I don’t know that the district should necessarily care how each city gets to a 10, 20, 40 or 60 percent reduction,” Hart said. “What the district should care about is that each city can demonstrate that they are hitting those [water-reduction] targets.”
The draft plan will be taken up by the district’s board of trustees, which is expected to further discuss and tweak the plan and could ratify a final version at its June 2 meeting, according to Staheli.
