Here’s an article by Wayne Pennington that I think you’ll appreciate. He’s running for City Council, and one of the many things I value about him is that he doesn’t just skim the surface, he does the homework. When the Washington County Water Conservancy District (WCWCD) released its draft drought plan, officially called the Water Shortage Contingency Plan (download), Wayne took the time to meet with them, study the details, and clarify what it all means for Ivins. His thoughtful approach reflects the kind of fairness and fact-based decision-making our city needs. That’s just one of many reasons why I’m voting for Wayne.
“The most important part of WCWCDs plan is the most confusing, and this article is intended to help Ivins residents understand it conceptually. If a water shortage is declared, it is assigned a “Stage” number, and overall District-wide water reductions are advised for each stage: 10% for stage 1; 20% for stage 2; 40% for stage 3; and 60% for stage 4.
In an earlier draft of this plan, those reductions were assigned to each municipality equally. This met with considerable opposition. Think of treating Ivins, the conservation gem of the state, the same as the home of Jellystone waterpark! “Not fair!” we cry, and rightly so.
This new draft version takes this into account, and Ivins would have to shoulder much less of the cutback than the heavier-usage municipalities. Thank goodness (actually, thank our civic leaders and city staff).
So, what does this mean for Ivins? There is a strange equation presented in Chapter 6, followed by a set of definitions, that is the basis for cutbacks. In order to make this easy to understand, I will ignore the actual equation here and simply explain what it means.
The WCWCD will compute a factor to use as a goal for overall water use, based on a model that is not described. Let’s assume, for simplicity in this discussion, that this factor is the same as the goal, that is, at Stage 2 (20% reduction), the factor would be 80%.
The WCWCD applies this factor to the total annual usage that each city would use if it used water at the District-wide average level per household, and sets a new limit for each city. Because Ivins uses water at a rate much less than the other cities, our allocation would exceed our actual usage, so perhaps only a tiny reduction would be needed for Stage 2; it is likely to require Stage 3 before Ivins water is substantively affected by this plan. Cities that use water at a higher rate than average will have to reduce water consumption by a lot more than Ivins at each stage.
Seems fair to me.
The rest of the draft plan is important for all its details, but the main point of interest for Ivins residents is that the conservation efforts we have taken are not going to be ignored when a District-wide shortage comes about.
By the way, I suggested a method for a shortage plan that would compute rates of reduction for each city using a similar philosophical approach, but a much simpler calculation. Alas, it was submitted too late to be considered for this draft. The devil is in the details, and this plan is probably just as good as my proposal. I support it.”