Water reuse – water recycling – is touted as one of the ways Washington County will be able to meet its water supply needs over the next 20 years. Water reuse is a subject repeatedly brought up by county water officials as a part of the county’s long-term water conservation plans – but what do those plans entail? What does it look like?
“From a public standpoint, the thing they will see is the reservoirs because that’s very visible,” Zach Renstrom, the water district’s general manager, told St. George News. “The vast majority (of the infrastructure) the public will never see … . We try very hard to minimize the impact of what the public would see.”
Currently visible to the public, the overall system includes the St. George Regional Water Reclamation Facility southwest of Bloomington and the Chief Toquer Reservoir, which is currently under construction.
Future infrastructure to be built over the next two decades includes a 60-plus mile truck line between the St. George reclamation facility and the LaVerkin-Toquerville area, with hundreds or even thousands of miles of piping branching out to reach across the county. The St. George reclamation facility will be expanded, and one to two new reclamation facilities will be built, along with a new advanced water purification facility as the project progresses. Multiple pump stations are also set to be built as a part of the system.
Several different alignments for the 60-plus mile trunk line are currently being examined, with one following the course of Southern Parkway receiving the most attention for now, Renstrom said.
Four new reservoirs are planned as a part of the system, while two existing reservoirs will also be tapped into. The incoming Chief Toquer and Graveyard reservoirs are among those slated to be attached to the overall reuse system.
Once completed, the regional water reuse system is estimated to supply up to 24,000 acre-feet of water annually to Washington County by 2042. The price tag for the overall project is estimated to be around $1 billion.
“This is going to be a very long project,” Renstrom said. “It’s going to take 15 to 20 years to complete, but this really will preserve our water for the future. It's going to make us more drought-resistant. It's going to make us more reliant on local water.”
Currently, according to the water district’s 20-year plan, only around 2,400 acre-feet of water is used by the city of St. George annually, with another 2,000 committed to the Shivwits Band of Paiutes for use.
While the 2,4000 acre of water goes through St. George, it is also contracted out to other public and private entities, Renstrom said. The reuse water is presently applied to golf courses, large parks and some agriculture, he said.
An additional yearly output of 1,450 acre-feet of reuse water is anticipated to come online between 2026 and 2029 with the completion of the Dry Wash and Graveyard reservoirs, according to the water district’s 20-year plan. A significant jump in reuse water use is projected for 2030, with up to 15,888 acre-feet annually produced, with the completion of major transmission infrastructure and an advanced water treatment plant.
The reuse system and the Lake Powell Pipeline
With the regional water reuse system estimated to cost up to $1 billion, some may question why the Water District didn’t consider this option rather than holding onto the Lake Powell Pipeline, which has been projected to be $2 billion or even double that, according to project opponents. General discussions of the pipeline project have largely dropped in favor of the reuse water project. There are reasons for that, Renstrom said, also noting the Lake Powell connection is not dead, just on hold.
“The Lake Power Pipeline is still a project for the state of Utah,” Renstrom said. “It's something they are still looking into that would deliver a lot more water than this regional reuse purification system that we’re looking at would provide.”
If built, the pipeline – which would potentially stretch 140 miles from Lake Powell to Sand Hollow Reservoir – is estimated to supply the area with over 80,000 acre-feet of water annually. The regional water reuse system only provides a quarter of that at full build-out.
“There are a lot of advantages to the Lake Powell Pipeline,” Renstrom said. “But with the current political environment and negotiations that are going on the Colorado River, we’ve had to shift to a different plan till we could work out those issues.”
The Lake Powell Pipeline has been on the state’s list of major water projects for over 20 years and has drawn support and opposition since its inception. Supporters say it will give southwest Utah a much-needed secondary source of water that the state has the right to access. Opponents argue the Colorado River is over-allocated – that there is no water left to take – and that decreased flows on the river caused by the continuing megadrought and climate change aren’t being considered.
For now, the states that make up the Colorado River Compact continue to engage in negotiations on how to best use the Colorado River in the face of a dwindling water supply. Thus far, they have yet to reach a consensus.
‘We will always ask people to conserve water’
“We’re always asking people to use their water wisely and to be good stewards of their water,” Renstrom said. “Because even if it's a wet period of time, we can store that water. I think a perfect example of that is what’s going on right now.”
Thanks to a couple of wet winters and county residents practicing water conservation during those periods, the Water District’s reservoirs are in a good position to carry the county through the summer.
“We’re still hopeful some storms will kick in, but it’s looking really bad,” Renstrom said. “Fortunately, our reservoir levels are at a really healthy level. … We know that we will have drinking water because of those reservoirs. So we will always ask people to conserve water.”
