Catching waves in the desert: Another surf community is coming to water-strapped southern Utah

It’s always peaky at Zion Shores. At least that’s what Perfect Swell says. The company’s surf pool technology will bring cresting, ocean-like waves to southwest Utah’s arid red rock country sometime next year.

Promotional materials for the new lagoons mimic New Deal-era national park posters. Rather than featuring ranger talks and the large sandstone face of Zion National Park’s Great White Throne, though, the posters advertise bright blue water and men riding “cavernous tubes,” “bountiful peaks” and “playful pockets.”

Zion Shores aims to provide a new water sports opportunity for both locals and the millions of tourists who visit the area’s beloved public lands each year. But Washington County is simultaneously trying to reel in large water users and convince its residents to conserve. For Washington City, the Zion Shores development has surfaced a growing tension between the area’s pro-business politics and the realities of water scarcity.

Zion Shores, which plans to open in Washington City next year, will include lagoons with waves meant to mimic what one normally finds off the California coast hundreds of miles away but with more predictability.

“Every time you catch the wave, you know exactly what it’s going to be: It’s going to be a perfect ocean wave,” Cody Larkin, founder of Zion Shores, said. “You don’t have to count. You don’t have to rely on Mother Nature and the inconsistency that you get with the swells in the ocean.”

Some worry the development strays a bit too far from nature, though.

“Creating large open-water features purely for recreation raises important questions about stewardship, evaporative loss, and long-term water security in our desert environment,” Karen Goodfellow, water program manager for Conserve Southwest Utah, told The Tribune over email.

Zion Shores is not the first surf pool in Washington County. Some of the same team behind Zion Shores recently opened another surf and boating community in nearby Hurricane called Southern Shores.

In both instances, the developer owns the rights to the water for the lagoons. While Southern Shores is using water that could be easily treatable for drinking, surfers at Zion Shores will catch waves on water that’s more difficult to treat, said Zach Renstrom, general manager of the Washington County Water Conservancy District.

Zion Shores’ water is brackish, meaning it’s salty and requires extensive treatment to safely drink or spray across crops.

“It’d be very, very, very expensive and also require a ton of electricity to use that for drinking water,” Renstrom said. Historically, farmers would try to irrigate with the brackish water, Renstrom added, but the salts started building up around the roots of plants and killing them.

The most common method to treat salty water is reverse osmosis, a water treatment technology Washington County currently lacks. The district does plan to build an advanced water purification facility that may include reverse osmosis as part of its regional water reuse program. But the district has not made any plans to use the brackish water in any of its long-term plans, Renstrom said.

“Reclaimed water is cheaper and easier to treat than highly brackish water,” Karry Rathje, the district’s public relations manager, wrote in an email. “In addition, there is more available reuse water compared to local brackish groundwater supplies.”

Zion Shores’ water still needs some treatment for recreational use. The company has had to purchase a water cleaning system that costs about $10 million. “That shows how expensive it is to utilize the water just to make it so it works in a pool,” Larkin said.

That treatment process will turn the brackish water into something similar to chlorinated pool water, he added.

Zion Shores is “very aware” of the lack of water in southwest Utah but it can put water that’s not otherwise being used to “good use,” Larkin said. “Obviously culinary water and irrigation water are the most valuable assets the area has right now, but having the opportunity to recreate on water that’s not being used for those purposes, in my eyes, is equally as valuable now.”

Any large water user in arid southwest Utah faces scrutiny, though.

“While Zion Shores has stated that it will use brackish water from private on-site wells rather than municipal culinary or agricultural supplies, that water is still part of the region’s finite water system,” said Goodfellow. “As water scarcity intensifies, communities will increasingly need to think carefully about how all available water sources are used.”

Reducing impact

Neither Washington City, nor the regional water district, will provide additional water for the lagoons, but because they don’t control the water, they have limited power to rein in the project.

“We could not disallow them from moving forward with an entitlement they purchased, but we did everything we could, and we continue to do everything we can to reduce that impact,” Washington City Mayor Kress Staheli said.

Around twenty years ago, the Washington City Council approved entitlements for a planned community called Stucki Farms, including housing, commercial areas and around 25 acres of ponds. Most of that project never came to fruition. Instead, about a year ago, the developers behind Zion Shores bought Stucki Farms’ water and development rights.

Zion Shores is ultimately just one piece of a larger planned community called The Preserve at Alaia, which will include some attainable housing, resort components and commercial areas, Staheli said.

As developers sought to break ground, the city council and mayor had to figure how they could protect precious water in their community while also honoring development rights approved by their predecessors.

“I’m carrying baggage that I didn’t load,” Staheli said.

The city negotiated a supplemental site plan agreement, signed in April 2025, that added some stipulations to protect the area’s water.

The total water surface area was reduced from over 25 acres to just under 19. Twelve of those acres are for the surf lagoons and the remaining are for stormwater ponds.

The company can’t use any city drinking water in the surf lagoons. The agreement also acknowledges the risks the developer faces, such as drought, and makes clear the developer can’t make claims to the city’s water in the future if it can’t fill its surf pools from its own water.

“We turned off the tap, so to speak, on them being able to access the city or district’s water that is our lifeblood in the desert,” Staheli said.

The city also added rules regarding the treatment of Zion Shores’ brackish water. It prohibits the developer from dumping waste into the city’s sewer system and disallows the use of the city’s drinking water in the treatment process.

The water district will provide water for the residential components of Zion Shores and the surrounding homes, hospitality and commercial areas of the Preserve at Alaia, though.

Zion Shores will include 65 homes, which will primarily be short-term rentals, Larkin said. Those lots are going for $1.6 million and more, according to the project’s website.

“The water that they have does not meet water quality standards,” Renstrom said, “and so to make sure that those homes are being provided safe, reliable water, that water will come from the district.”

‘They haven’t caught the wave’

Zion Shores still needs to receive a building permit for the surf lagoons. In that application process, the company will need to outline which wells they’ll pull water from, how they will transport and treat the water and how they will discharge the brine created in the treatment process, Staheli said.

The company plans to take the wastewater from the treatment process to an evaporation pond on its property. That will create about 10 to 12 truckloads of solids, including salt and other minerals, that the company plans to dispose of at the county dump, Larkin said.

Zion Shores’ engineers have determined their proposed process is environmentally sound, but the city ultimately will make its own determination on the plan.

“They haven’t caught the wave just yet,” Staheli said. “They’re paddling out.”