With drought exacerbating Cedar Valley's water troubles, Cedar City officials are encouraging residents to conserve.
Jonathan Stathis, a city project engineer, presented the Cedar City 2024 Water Reportto the Cedar City Council last Wednesday. He noted that water use per person has increased slightly to 200 gallons per day. This is up from 181 in 2023 and 184 in 2022.
"Which is still very good in terms of, you know, looking over the past 20 years or so, we're still on a good trend, I think — heading downward," he said, adding that this could be due to how little rain the city received last year, as people tend to water their lawns more to compensate.
"I'm hoping we're going to get the monsoons this year," he said. "We're still waiting."
Cedar City's water usage was at its highest July 8 — the city's peak day for water usage last year — at about 16.5 gallons. According to the report, 2023's peak day was July 5, when the city used over 15.7 million gallons of water. The average usage over the last 10 years was approximately 14.8 million gallons per day.
Stathis told Cedar City News that "unusually dry weather and the minimal amount of moisture we received" also played a key role in the peak usage increase.
"The monsoon season last year was very light and so we didn’t receive the moisture that Cedar City normally gets during mid-July to September," he wrote in an email. "During years when there is an active monsoon season with a good amount of rainfall, water usage tends to decrease because residents don’t need to run their sprinkler systems as much. However, last year, it appears that residents ran their sprinklers more to compensate for the lack of rainfall."
Stathis said the reason the peak usage number is important is that the city must design its water system to meet that usage, including infrastructure like water tanks and pipelines.
Cedar City's average daily water use was approximately 7.3 million gallons per day last year. It was about 6.6 million gallons per day in 2023. Comparatively, the average over the past 10 years was 6.7 million gallons per day, Stathis said.
The aquifer west of Quichapa Lake has seen a water level decrease from 48 feet below the surface in 1994 to 124 feet last year — an average decline of about 2.5 feet per year. The aquifer saw a recharge of approximately 2,800 acre-feet last year.
According to the report, the Enoch aquifer has dropped from nearly 69 feet in 2015 to almost 87 feet in 2024, an approximate decline of 2 feet per year.
Stathis said recharge is often dependent on snowpack and weather, and drought has led to a reduced rate.
"One issue we're seeing is the recharge is happening, of course, around the airport, where the pits are, and it just doesn't seem to be making it all the way out to Quichapa," he said, adding that the level rises in wet years. "We're hoping, if we can, you know, diversify city sources, that we can rest some of the wells in the Enoch and Quichapa areas, that these trends will start to come back up."
To diversify its water sources, the city has purchased water rights and is working to bring new wells online, among other efforts.
