IVINS — With a full auditorium that overflowed into another room, Ivins residents and their leaders discussed how to keep the water flowing in their city even with projections that within decades, there won’t be enough water for everyone in the city.

The event at Rocky Vista University filled just about every seat of the 220-seat auditorium last Wednesday, with spillover attendees seated in a separate room and additional questions being fielded by Zoom. 

The discussion ultimately led to whether Ivins will get a bigger bang for its buck from a separate water system designed just for agriculture and non-drinking water or build a new treatment plant and add water from the Gunlock Reservoir to the city’s drinking water. 

During the town hall, Washington County Water Conservation District General Manager Zach Renstrom presented a graphic that showed that at the current rate without any measures to prevent it, the demand for water in Washington County will exceed the supply by 2028. 

Ivins City Council member Mike Scott laid out the choices for his city at the start of the “Talkabout.”

“We can increase water supply in three ways: Conservation, find more sources of water and reuse,” Scott said.

At the same time, the council member pointed out another chart showing that without any conservation efforts, Ivins would be using 10,000 more gallons per year than the 60,000 gallons per year it is using now. 

“Conservation does work,” he said. “Conservation does help.”

Questions from those in attendance and on Zoom leaned toward curbing growth as being something to focus on as far as saving water in the future – something also garnering much support in the recent survey of residents. 

But Ivins Mayor Chris Hart cautioned that local cities rely on growth to provide the revenue toward resident services including police and fire. There are also legal ramifications as developers can sue the city if it puts roadblocks on what they can do with the land they have purchased.  

“A lot of you believe the answer is to eliminate growth altogether,” Hart said, drawing applause from some in the audience. “As with anything, there’s the idea of what needs to be done and the ramifications from it. It’s a little more complicated than you would like it to be.”

Hart added there is a middle ground that allows for some growth but also lets developers know that the city and county are not responsible for their own water. But while he has pushed for developers to receive a will-serve letter saying they had to get a guarantee of water from the water district, rather than the city, Hart said other local cities have rejected such an idea. 

“The huge thing that needs to be done in this county is … we need to develop a developer beware situation,” Hart said, “that we don’t guarantee the water.”

When asked for his own response, Renstrom said he can only do what the local cities ask him to do.

“The problem is in some cities, there is friction,” Renstrom said. “Right now, if a home is built in this county, we have water for the house. I have water for the next five years. I hope the cities can line up together.”

There are some developments in Ivins where the property relies on its own water supply and wells and doesn’t use any water from the county or city. Kayenta, and the under-construction Black Desert Resort and its golf course are examples. 

For the rest of the city, Ivins Public Works Director Chuck Gillette told the audience it will come down to one of two plans.

The first would have the city building a second system of water pipelines that would reuse water from homes such as that from sinks and showers/baths and use it as irrigation for agriculture and other non-drinking uses. The water would be pooled in a new reservoir where Center Street ends and pumped out from there.

The second would expand the amount of culinary/drinkable water by using water from the Gunlock Reservoir and wells that are presently only used for irrigation/non-drinking. That would be accomplished by building a water treatment plant at Gunlock. 

“I know it sounds like a pun, but the idea is a little fluid,” Gillette said. “A treatment system would make our culinary system more robust.”

Gillette said a secondary water system would be more expensive up front, costing $30 million to connect the entire city. 

“Creating a system to reuse the water is three times more expensive than just taking water from the Virgin River,” Renstrom said. 

Neither said how much a treatment plant would cost, but according to the Washington County Conservancy, the Quail Creek Reservoir cost $15 million to build in 1989, which according to a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator would be $26.6 million in 2023 dollars. It has cost an additional $52.2 million to operate since then.

A smaller treatment plant was built at Gunlock in 2019 for $10 million ($11.9 million in 2023 dollars) but it only removes arsenic from the water. 

Ivins Council member Lance Anderson voiced support for the treatment plant proposal, saying the city would reduce the value of the culinary water it has if it’s reused and said water isn’t the only resource that should be focused on. 

“I’m thinking every resource we have has a problem. What is the value if we reduce our culinary line in half? At some point, the cost is greater than the value,” Anderson said. “It’s not just how to get water here but how to do it in the most efficient matter. Gravity is our best resource. I remember the light bulb debate … LED or the light bulbs in the closet. We have to keep in mind our resources.”

But residents in the audience commented that the water in Gunlock and other local aquifers isn’t an infinite supply and reusing water is a better long-term solution. 

That was echoed by Ed Andrechak, the water manager for the conservation group Conserve Southwest Utah.

“We can build a water conservation culture with less use, reuse and recycle,” Andrechak said. 

He said a model for Ivins and Washington County can be what was implemented two hours away in Las Vegas, which now reuses 40% of its water and also instituted mandatory watering times and bans on new decorative grass. 

Andrechak said Vegas, with a population of about 646,000, now uses 110 gallons of water per household per day compared with more than 200 gallons per household in Washington County with 191,000 people.

 “When you get a decoupling, you actually use less total water with a higher population. This county can do it,” Andrechak said. “If 200,000 individuals can each do a little bit, they can do more than a big capital project.”

But Hart said the numbers are misleading since there is not a universal way to determine per capita and Utah calculates such numbers differently than Nevada. That will change if the governor signs a bill passed by the Utah legislature last week. Hart, also noting that Vegas authorities reduce the per household number by the amount of water reused, contends Ivins and Las Vegas households actually use the same amount of water.  

And when a question came in over Zoom as to how soon Ivins might adopt a Las Vegas model, Renstrom said that people and the political landscape in Southern Utah are such that people might not be keen on mandatory rules concerning water usage and how they maintain their lawn. 

Renstrom said when one local builder was told they could be paid to rip the lawn off their property, they said, “I would be damned to rip out grass so another Californian can move in here.”

“I’ve lived in Las Vegas and we moved from there,” Renstrom added. “There are people who have strong opinions that we don’t want to become another Las Vegas.”

Last Wednesday night was the first of three Ivins 7 p.m. “Talkabout” events planned for the same site. The March 22 town hall will focus on local housing needs, followed by an April 19 talk about the city’s finances.

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