Washington County is one of the hottest and driest regions in Utah, and one of the fastest growing. Because nearly all of our drinking water comes from the Virgin River basin, we are vulnerable to drought, climate change, and interruptions caused by infrastructure failures, earthquakes, or system repairs.
To prepare for these challenges, the Washington County Water Conservancy District (WCWCD), along with all partner cities, including Ivins, finally adopted a new Water Shortage Contingency Plan, or drought plan at its Board of Trustees meeting last week. (Download the Plan)
WCWCD began working with cities to create a regional drought plan in late 2021. A draft released in early 2023 proposed uniform, mandatory conservation measures for all cities, regardless of their baseline water use.
That framework did not reflect the meaningful differences among municipalities and, as a result, implementation stalled. Nearly four years later, WCWCD and its partner cities have now adopted a more balanced and adaptable plan that can finally be put into practice.
The purpose of this plan is to provide a coordinated, county-wide process for evaluating water-supply conditions, declaring drought stages, and instituting a response that protects drinking water while also minimizing economic disruption.
But to make this plan more than words on paper, we need real-time visibility into how we’re doing. A roadmap is valuable, but only if we can see where we are on it.
Need to Switch Topics For a Moment
While adoption of the shortage plan was important, I’m excited about another policy adopted by the WCWCD Board of Trustees at the same meeting. It is a new “top users” policy that requires any proposed commercial, industrial or institutional development that will use more than 9 million gallons per year to be reviewed and approved by a super-majority of WCWCDs Administrative Advisory Committee (AAC). This is an excellent firewall to ensure water-intensive projects are vetted and found to be in the broad community interest before being connected to our system.
The policy allows the AAC to approve the connection based upon positive findings in three criteria: 1) the project serves a critical public interest (such as providing a necessary or beneficial service to the region’s citizens); 2) the applicant will utilize aggressive water efficiency measures, and 3) the project will increase the economic productivity of water use in the region. Approval requires a two-thirds majority of the committee.
Back to the Plan: How It Works
The plan defines five shortage stages, from Stage 0 (Normal) to Stage 4 (Extreme Shortage). Each stage has a target water-use reduction, or “response target” in the table below, and more serious restrictions are triggered as conditions worsen. Only the WCWCD Board of Trustees can formally declare or end a shortage stage, although technical specialists and city leadership help make recommendations.
Water Budgets for Each City
During a declared shortage, each municipality receives a water-use budget. The allocation is based on the number of Equivalent Residential Connections (ERCs) in the city and average water use from recent non-shortage years. (1 ERC = 1 single-family home)
Each city is then responsible for implementing actions of their choice, such as education, rates, irrigation controls, or other measures, to stay within its allocation.
Exceeding the budget does not mean your tap gets turned off; instead, WCWCD applies dramatically higher wholesale water rates to that city (up to 300%–500% of standard cost), creating a strong incentive for compliance. Importantly, these budgets are not transferable between cities.
But here’s the critical takeaway:
Penalties can’t create water that isn’t there. Money doesn’t fill reservoirs. Dollars don’t turn on taps. We must use less water, or there simply won’t be enough.
That is why actual reductions, not just billing consequences, are essential.
A Win for Ivins: Conservation Finally Counts
One of the most encouraging pieces of this drought plan is how water budgets are calculated. Budgets are based on the regional average use per ERC and then reduced by a percentage during declared shortages.
That means cities that already use less water per household are not punished by being forced to cut from an already efficient baseline. Instead, they are asked to maintain their already-low usage levels, while less-efficient cities must do more to catch up.
This is a big deal for Ivins. Because Ivins residents have embraced conservation, consistently using far less water per capita than surrounding communities, our required reductions in early drought stages will be proportionally smaller. In other words, for once, we’re rewarded for being responsible water users. We’ve been living within our means for years and finally, the rules recognize that.
Why This Plan Matters
Our region’s water supply is 100% dependent on the Virgin River watershed, which is predicted to decline. The Bureau of Reclamation projects that Virgin River May–July streamflow may fall by 20%, exactly when demand is highest.
At the same time, our population is growing quickly, and the region’s reliable supply is nearly fully allocated. Climate variability, rising temperatures, and earlier snow runoff all increase the risk of water shortages.
Thanks to conservation, per-capita water use has already fallen significantly since 2000, but further progress is essential.
In drought, nature, not policy, sets the limits. The plan won’t negotiate with the climate; it only helps us respond intelligently.
How Shortage Stages Will Affect Residents and Businesses
The plan emphasizes that the first priority is to protect drinking water and public health, while reducing discretionary or consumptive uses, especially irrigation, which makes up the majority of our regional water demand.
As drought stages increase, restrictions will tighten. Early actions focus on education, irrigation management, and rate signals. Later stages involve direct limits on landscaping, pools, water recreation, and new water-intensive facilities.
Some changes residents may see as shortage stages progress include: Reduced outdoor watering and stronger rate incentives, prohibition on watering ornamental lawns (non-recreational grass), deferral of new lawn installations, limits on new private pools and water-intensive commercial facilities, golf course water budgets, etc.
In very serious conditions (Stage 3–4), additional measures may include: Prohibiting most spray irrigation; allowing only drip/hand-hose watering, suspending new development that is not critical to community needs, and potentially halting new construction that would add significant water demand, except for critical-need facilities such as health care or public safety infrastructure
The plan allows for construction projects already well underway to continue. However, in more extreme stages, cities may suspend or deny permits for new, non-essential buildings or high-water-use facilities.
Think of it this way: in a serious shortage, new construction may be allowed only if it needs very little water or helps save lives.
Monitoring & Transparency
One of the most important aspects of this plan is the need for transparent, real-time information about drought conditions and community performance. WCWCD already gathers extensive data on streamflows, reservoir capacity, temperature, demand, and population. Some of that is continually updated in the “Water Section” of their website.
However, this information is not presented in a way that helps residents understand the bigger picture: What drought stage are we in? Are we hitting the reduction target, or falling behind?
Financial penalties might get a city’s attention, but only real reductions protect our water supply. We can’t bill our way out of a drought.
To help the public track both supply and our collective response, WCWCD should maintain a public dashboard on their website showing real-time drought-stage related data for the District overall and for each city. That should include information about how well each city is doing in meeting their reduction targets. This is not to shame cities. It’s simply to improve public understanding and help residents be part of the solution.
Seeing this information for the District and each city is essential. Financial penalties are a deterrent, but if the county does not meet its reduction target, we risk falling into more severe shortage stages where restrictions become much more painful. Tracking this publicly would reinforce the collective responsibility of meeting reduction targets so the region avoids crisis. Let’s face it, either we conserve on our terms or the drought will force deeper cuts on its terms.
Current Conditions
To help illustrate how vulnerable we are to changing water conditions, here are two graphs that show reservoir level and streamflow trends. These charts use publicly available USGS data that I collect each month. It would be far more efficient (and… yes… much better for me) if WCWCD published this information themselves as part of a real-time public dashboard.
Tracking these metrics graphically gives us an immediate sense of: How much water is coming into the system, how much is stored for dry periods, and how this year compares to past years. This information makes drought stages feel less like bureaucracy and more like the reality they reflect, the actual amount of water available to serve our communities.
Final Thoughts
Water security requires partnership across our entire region. WCWCD’s new plan provides a clear, transparent framework for identifying shortage, declaring stages, assigning water budgets, and taking action to protect our communities.
It prioritizes drinking water, public health, and responsible economic activity, while asking each municipality, and each resident, to do their part when supplies tighten.
But success depends on transparency. Financial penalties help motivate compliance, but ultimately, we must hit the reduction targets to avoid entering more serious stages where real hardships, construction pauses, recreational shutdowns, and sweeping irrigation prohibitions, could become necessary.
Money can’t make it rain. Fines can’t fill a reservoir. Conservation is the only lever we control.
This plan gives us a roadmap. Whether we succeed will depend on how well we follow it – together.
Previous Drought Plan Articles
- Parched Today, Prepared Tomorrow: The Need for Drought Planning (February 1, 2025)
- Closer to a Drought Plan? (April 23, 2025)
- Shocked and Dismayed: Still No Drought Plan (September 8, 2025)
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