Stephanie Duer, Salt Lake City’s water guru, sums up the state’s water challenges this way: “If there was a single solution, we all would be doing it now and this problem would be solved.”
So water professionals get together each year to swap ideas and tools. At this year’s Utah Water Conservation Forum, they talked about smart conservation and management strategies.
Duer says a big danger is not recognizing the multifaceted nature of the problem, thinking that there’s one answer.
“Pointing to just lawn, just planning, just any one thing is shortsighted because it stops us from looking at other potential solutions also,” she says.
Dozens of managers and planners gathered at the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District’s demonstration garden. They heard about effective ways to connect with water users, set rates to promote conservation and use technology to find leaks.
Alan Matheson, director of Utah’s Department of Environmental Quality and a keynote speaker, says solutions require collaboration, and they’re a work in progress.
“We’re very much involved in developing this 50-year state water strategy and have a state water strategy advisory team that’s meeting to debate the issues, to bring in better data and to provide some direction to our policymakers at the state level.”
Matheson says he hopes they’ll be able to share their plan publicly by the end of the year.
And, meanwhile, Utahns are rising to the challenge by conserving at home.
