Utah, the second driest state in the country, doesn’t contribute much water to the Colorado River. It’s in the center of the river basin, but it doesn’t have the clout of more populous and water-thirsty neighboring states like Colorado, California, and Arizona.
Its urban centers along the Wasatch Mountain Range, where 80% of the state’s population lives, are far from the Colorado Basin and are not as dependent on its waters as Phoenix or Las Vegas. Only 27% of the water used by Utah comes from the Colorado. Most of it is supplied by other rivers that feed the Great Salt Lake.
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EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is part of a series on the 100th anniversary of the historic “Colorado Compact,” a 1922 agreement that regulates the use of Colorado River waters. The series is a collaboration between the Associated Press, The Colorado Sun, The Albuquerque Journal, The Salt Lake Tribune, The Arizona Daily Star and The Nevada Independent, exploring the pressures on the river in 2022.
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Under a 1948 agreement, Utah is entitled to 23% of the water consumed by the four Upper Colorado Basin states. It receives less water than Colorado, but more than Wyoming or New Mexico.
For decades, Utah has tried to exploit diversions from the river to launch projects like a controversial aqueduct to Lake Powell. The state’s water consumption, however, has remained relatively stable since 1994 despite population growth.
Twenty-two years of drought in the region prompted the Bureau of Reclamation to put more pressure on Utah and the six other states the river crosses to reduce their water use and shelve certain development projects. States are now preparing to renegotiate rules on water use, which expire in 2026.
Utah’s representative in the negotiations, Gene Shawcroft, the state’s river water manager, says “it’s hard to plan four or five years from now when you don’t know what’s going to happen next spring.”
Utah is also participating in negotiations over the Bureau of Water Management’s request that Colorado Basin states reduce their water use by 30% next year to stabilize the waters in Powell Mead Reservoirs, which are very low.
The state, meanwhile, has adopted a series of measures to conserve water, including a law that allows farmers to suspend irrigation of their fields without losing their water rights. But Shawcroft says that balancing the system will require states that consume the most downstream water to sharply reduce their water use.
Agriculture uses 70% of the Colorado water that Utah uses and it will be the sector that will have to reduce its consumption the most.
