New West Unfiltered

The Proposed Lake Powell to St. George Pipeline: Mulholland’s Dream Rekindled in Utah’s Dixie

By Christopher Peterson, Unfiltered 4-28-06

In the same tradition as LA’s planned sprawl into the San Fernando Valley, developers and Utah politicians have introduced the blueprints for a metropolitan desert oasis of 600,000 people just northeast of Las Vegas. Washington County’s explosive population growth has triggered long-term development planning for Utah’s Dixie, which includes a proposed taxpayer subsidized super-pipeline from Lake Powell. While the region is consistently recognized for being one of the most wasteful of water in the nation, the prospect of more water and more wealth flowing into the desert has lured investors, landowners, and politicians together to design what many are calling, “The last great water grab of the Reclamation Era.”

The Reclamation Era.
When John Wesley Powell reported back to Congress after his famous 1869 expedition, he recommended an approach to settlement of the West designed around watersheds and their adjacent potential farmlands. He believed that square edged state boundaries were arbitrary and should be redrawn. Powell was ignored and the West was drawn on a grid and settled within decades, due largely to the federally subsidized water projects of the Great Reclamation Era of the 20th Century.
The Colorado River Compact of 1922 officially apportioned annual flow of 17 Million Acre-feet (MAF) between the seven states and Mexico. Rampant dam building and development occurred during the following decades around the same time water managers began to realize the average flow of the Colorado River is much lower then originally calculated. Despite this potentially-fatal design flaw, development has continued, with the Lower Basin hitting its demand ceiling a decade ago. Each Upper Basin state is currently racing to develop as much of its “legal water rights” before a basin-wide moratorium on Colorado River water development is enacted. While the details of these Western water rights are contentious and complex, Utah basically claims rights to 1.3 MAF of Upper Colorado River Basin water with only about 1 MAF currently in use--therefore giving the state the legal right to continue development.
However, the ongoing drought in the Southwest has called into serious question the relevance of the antiquated Compact as we enter an era of frequent water shortages. The Compact currently is enabling St. George to design and fund a bigger straw into an already overallocated Colorado River. The debate over the intensly-litigated river has been exacerbated by the steady flow of climate data that conservatively predicts steadily decreasing snowpack yields leading to a third less water in the Colorado River reservoirs by 2050. Amidst this mounting tension, a handful of shrewd Southern Utah landowners and bold developers have orchestrated a complex development plan to buy, subdivide, and sell arid desert land with rights to ‘imaginary water’ for spectacular profits.

The Greater Saint George Metropolitan Area.
County planners have recently passed legislation in Utah’s Capitol that allows taxpayers to start contributing sales tax into a fund that will help pay for the pipeline--25 years in advance of its expected completion. Nearly unanimous support for the bill has been given by state legislators and reported by local media sources. Despite the project having not yet received public approval, progress on getting necessary funding for this project is continuing through the Utah Legislature.
Also recently, Sen. Bill Bennett (UT-R), introduced the Washington County Growth and Conservation Act of 2006, which has been promoted as a cooperative wilderness bill with some minor provisions to limit growth. Buried within the bill is a provision for public land to be given to developers for the pipeline “transmission facility infrastructure”. It also sells off 40 square miles of public land to developers who will use soon-to-be-developed water piped in from Lake Powell. And to sweeten the deal for the locals a bit more, 8% of revenues from this public land sale will go to WCWCD, which can be used for pipeline construction.
Congressman Bennett’s bill in the US Congress is expected to pass easily, with local officials calling the project “good for everyone”, and “necessary for Dixie’s future”. However, in this dawning era of normalized water shortages and over-allocation in the Southwest, growing taxpayer suspicion, the realities of global warming, continuing Upper Basin development, and the combined political power of the other six thirsty Colorado Basin states cast a growing shadow of doubt on whether or not the proposed $500 Million pipeline will ever deliver a gallon of Lake Powell water.

Booming Dixie.
In 1971, St. George had a population of 14,000 people; today it has grown to more than 100,000. Assuming the proposed pipeline will be built and begin sucking Colorado River by 2030, Washington County planners intend to watch the county population grow to 600,000 by 2038. While touting the 5th fastest growth rate in the nation, the local government is struggling to solve serious growth-induced problems beyond traffic congestion and infrastructure, such as the rising “workforce housing crisis”, and the resulting widespread education failures in the region that accompany its teacher shortage.
Prosperity and maximizing economic growth are all used to justify the proposed120-mile pipeline and the private wealth building it enables. It is also justified with the outdated prior appropriation argument that Utah owns the “rights” to develop the water. According to Fred Finlinson of the Utah Water Coalition, “If Utah’s allocation of the Colorado River water isn’t used, it will go elsewhere, such as to meet U.S. treaty obligations with Mexico or for what he termed California’s “overuse” of water”.
Grumblings among the public and the powerful six other basin states are on the rise about a near future with highly-imminent water shortages, with developers seeking for taxpayer funding to begin paying for the $500 Million project. Those who have voiced concern say that bringing in more water only fuels the problem. Many are calling for water conservation as the most obvious and cheapest method for responsible smart growth in Utah’s Dixie. The Washington County Water Conservation District has, for the most part, given only lip service to real water conservation initiatives when talking about the great future of Utah’s Dixie. As a solution to the demand side of the growth imperative, impressive conservation policies are now being perfected in St. George’s big sister city, Las Vegas, which in the last two years has reduced consumption by 52,000 acre-feet while adding 150,000 people to its population.

Rampant real estate speculation and development have fueled Washington County’s boom and made millions of dollars for many. The Washington County Water Conservation District warns that “water could be a constraint by 2020 if we don’t get the Lake Powell Pipeline”. When all is said and done, water pumped through the pipeline from the controversial reservoir will cost a whopping $3,400 per acre-foot, to be paid for mostly by taxpayers… if everything proceeds as expected.

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