Dry as the area is, water managers insist they still have time to draft a plan

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Gunlock Reservoir on Monday, August 11, 2025.

St. George • With just over a month left in one of the worst water years in memory, officials in drought-prone Washington County have yet to approve a water shortage contingency plan.

Currently, roughly 81% of the county is mired in severe drought and another 18% is withering in even worse extreme drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Moreover, the current water year that concludes at the end of September is one of the worst since record-keeping began in the late 1890s.

“Southwest Utah is in the bottom 10th percentile,” said Glen Merrill, hydrologist with the National Weather Service’s Salt Lake City office. “And precipitation in much of the area has been between 45 and 55% of normal for the water year.”

St. George’s ‘non-soon’ season

Further exacerbating matters, Merrill noted, St. George-area skies have produced lots of sun, but not much monsoonal moisture that typically pops up in July and August.

“I would call it a non-soon season this year because the monsoons have never really materialized,” the hydrologist lamented.

Still, the Washington County Water Conservancy District and its eight-member cities have been unable to seal the deal on a water shortage plan they expected to have in place last June, but now don’t anticipate approving until the end of the year.

If it were up to him, Santa Clara Mayor Rick Rosenberg would brook no delay in approving a water plan.

“I go up in the [Great] Basin to look at soil conditions … and it doesn’t look good, so we need to get a plan approved sooner rather than later, ” said Rosenberg, who also sits on the water district’s board of directors.

So what is the hold-up?

For starters, the urgency to pass a plan is not as dire as it could be. The water district’s storage reservoirs are not yet at risk for running dry, according to district officials. Sand Hollow and Quail Creek reservoirs are at 76% and 60% of capacity, respectively, down from 90% and 68% recorded this time last year. Gunlock Reservoir, which stands at 36% and supplies irrigation water to farmers, is not faring as well.

Water managers chalk up the fairly stable water levels to robust conservation efforts. Since the launch of the district’s Water Efficient Landscape Program in December 2022, St. George and surrounding towns have replaced nearly three million square feet of grass with water-efficient landscaping.

Another conservation milestone came in 2022, when cities in the district banded together to adopt some of the state’s strictest landscaping ordinances.

“Our residents are doing a phenomenal job with conservation,” Zach Renstrom, general manager of the water district, said.

Mandates don’t hold water

Concerns over the latest iteration of the draft plan the district drew up earlier this year have also caused delays, according to Rosenberg and Washington City Mayor Kress Staheli, who also sits on the district’s board.

As currently outlined, the draft consists of several stages that require increasing cuts to water usage and ever more severe restrictions the grimmer the water outlook becomes.

In the most extreme scenario under the plan, all irrigation would be shut down, car washing banned and outdoor water-recreation facilities suspended.

Rosenberg said his city, St. George, Washington City and Ivins are fine with a district plan setting the water-reduction percentages for each stage, but not imposing one-size-fits-all mandates that cities must follow to reach the targeted reductions.

“That should be left up to [each] city because every city is different,” he said. “Some have golf courses, others have a lot of commercial business and others are primarily residential. So the method that each city chooses to conserve is going to be different. I don’t want the district to tell Santa Clara what we need to do. I want the ability to say, ‘OK, we need to cut our water use by 10%. This is how we’re going to do it, and I’ll work with my staff to achieve it.’ ”

Based on his conversations with colleagues, Mayor Staheli said most cities in the district want to preserve some degree of flexibility in dealing with severe drought and water scarcity.

“If a [severe drought] hits and cities are asked to make sacrifices, residents are going to reach out to their respective mayors and city councils,” he said. “That’s why mayors and city councils should be the ones to decide how to meet those reduced levels of water consumption in their individual communities.”

District officials argue it is better to take the time to get the plan right than to do it quickly and get it wrong. Fortunately, Renstrom said, the district has some time due to residents’ conservation efforts and the water levels in the area reservoirs.

“If we have another really dry year, we will be fine next summer,” he said. “But if we had another one, then we would be in dire straits.”