SALT LAKE CITY — A bill that will make significant changes to how you pay for water in the future is advancing in the Utah State Legislature.
House Bill 341, sponsored by Rep. Casey Snider, R-Paradise, sets in motion the ability for more cities across the state to enforce "tiered water rates."
"We’re going to treat it like a utility moving forward," Rep. Snider said in an interview with FOX 13 News on Thursday. "So if you don’t use a lot of water? You shouldn’t have to pay a high price. But if you’re going to use an excessive amount that’s going to put impacts on the rest of the system? You probably should pay more."
You get a monthly water bill, but a lot of your water use is actually covered by property taxes. A state study encouraged the change to force conservation to help deal with drought and the crisis facing the Great Salt Lake and Colorado River.
On Thursday, Rep. Snider's bill found support from local water districts, who rely on property taxes to cover critical infrastructure projects.
"It requires some action, but it doesn’t tell them how the action is to be done," said Mark Stratford, general counsel for the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District.
The Senate Natural Resources Committee voted unanimously to support another expansion of agriculture water optimization, a program that offers incentives to farmers to switch to new water-saving technologies. Rep. David Schallenberger's House Bill 243 includes a data-gathering component to gauge its success. An analysis by the Great Salt Lake Collaborative (of which FOX 13 News is a member) found that a lot of farmers have signed up for the incentives, but there has been no good way to track what happens to water that is saved.
Beaver County Commissioner Brandon Yardley, a farmer himself, testified in support of the bill and insisted agriculture water optimization is working.
"We are moving the needle. We are saving some water," he said.
But other bills on Utah's Capitol Hill on water are having mixed success (the House Speaker put a "pause" on major water bills to evaluate what's working and what's not which has frustrated environmental groups). A bill that would ban a specific type of sprinkler that was considered by its sponsor to be "water wasting" failed to pass, as did a bill that would restrict turf at state-owned buildings after some pushed back on a "war on turf" in public comments.
The study that recommended more aggressive tiered water rates also suggested an end to another issue: nonprofits like churches, schools and cities are exempted from property taxes, so they essentially get "free water." That could impact The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a major property owner in Utah, as well as colleges and universities with a lot of lawns.
Rep. Snider told FOX 13 News he is open to looking at that.
"Churches and schools and higher ed? They don’t pay property taxes. So I do think a tiered system helps us get to a better place of fairness," he said. "Those discussion about property tax and the mechanism are ongoing. But not this session."
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints declined to comment on the idea of changing property tax and water use, saying it would wait until an actual bill was introduced. One conservation group FOX 13 News spoke with said it would support a change for nonprofit institutions.
"We’re really supportive of the tiered pricing bill that’s moving through the process now," said Jake Dreyfous with Grow the Flow. "We’d like to see added legislation in future sessions that addresses institutional water users and creating an alternate fee structure for them to pay for water by use. Just like we all should."
