Dry as the area is, water managers insist they still have time to draft a plan<\/p>\n
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Gunlock Reservoir on Monday, August 11, 2025. <\/p>\n
St. George \u2022 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.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n \u201cSouthwest Utah is in the bottom 10th percentile,\u201d said Glen Merrill, hydrologist with the National Weather Service\u2019s Salt Lake City office. \u201cAnd precipitation in much of the area has been between 45 and 55% of normal for the water year.\u201d<\/p>\n St. George\u2019s \u2018non-soon\u2019 season<\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n \u201cI would call it a non-soon season this year because the monsoons have never really materialized,\u201d the hydrologist lamented.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t anticipate approving until the end of the year.<\/p>\n If it were up to him, Santa Clara Mayor Rick Rosenberg would brook no delay in approving a water plan.<\/p>\n \u201cI go up in the [Great] Basin to look at soil conditions \u2026 and it doesn\u2019t look good, so we need to get a plan approved sooner rather than later, ” said Rosenberg, who also sits on the water district\u2019s board of directors.<\/p>\n So what is the hold-up?<\/p>\n For starters, the urgency to pass a plan is not as dire as it could be. The water district\u2019s storage reservoirs are not yet at risk for running dry, according to district officials. Sand Hollow and Quail Creek reservoir<\/a>s 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.<\/p>\n Water managers chalk up the fairly stable water levels to robust conservation efforts. Since the launch of the district\u2019s Water Efficient Landscape Program<\/a> in December 2022, St. George and surrounding towns have replaced nearly three million square feet of grass<\/a> with water-efficient landscaping. <\/p>\n Another conservation milestone came in 2022, when cities in the district banded together to adopt some of the state\u2019s strictest landscaping ordinances. <\/p>\n \u201cOur residents are doing a phenomenal job with conservation,\u201d Zach Renstrom, general manager of the water district, said.<\/p>\n Mandates don\u2019t hold water<\/p>\n