(gentle music) - [Announcer] Funding for The Hinckley Report is made possible in part by The Cleone Peterson Eccles Endowment Fund.

(upbeat string music) - Tonight on The Hinckley Report, Utah faces another year of historic drought, and the stakes are high as water becomes increasingly scarce.

Lawmakers rush to shore up resources and debate how to save our state's lakes while making room for growth.

Join us as we dive in with expert policy makers for this special episode of The Hinckley Report on water in the West.

(upbeat string music continues) Good evening, and welcome to The Hinckley Report.

I'm Jason Perry, Director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics.

Covering the week, we have Representative Tim Hawkes, Republican member of The Utah House of Representatives; Natalie Gochnour, Director of the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah; and Brian Steed, Executive Director of the Utah Department of Natural Resources.

So glad to have you all in the program this evening.

I have to say, I'm not sure there could be a more important conversation for us to have than to talk about water.

We've talked about it during the legislative session, we've talked about it over the past year.

It is such an important issue for the state of Utah, and you all have such important positions in the state dealing with the policy governing water.

So I wanna get to first, to this drought.

Representative, will start with you.

It's been said, we're in a mega drought here in the Western part of the United States.

We certainly see it in the state of Utah.

Give us some context what that means.

- Well, water is the lifeblood of the West, right?

It's the most important resource that we have.

We wouldn't be here without it.

And this year throws that into really stark contrast.

We had one of the driest years we've ever seen before, and then really terrible snowpack, the runoff last year in some cases was six or 7% of average.

And then we've had an another dry year on top of it, snowpack still below average this year.

And so as we look forward, that really makes a lot of us concerned.

What does that mean for our state and its future, and what does it mean for the environment?

- Brian, you oversee a lot of the experts that are monitoring this.

Put this in context for us what they're seeing and how this is coming to you for some of the policy that we need to address.

- Well, we're seeing historical conditions, right?

We've never seen anything like this before.

And so we're setting real precedent now on how we respond to it.

But in terms of what the experts are saying, we have had dry year followed by a wetter year but still drier than average.

And looking at those two combinations, we're really concerned about the level of water we have in our reservoirs, as well as how that water can be used throughout the state this upcoming year.

- Natalie, I'm so curious, you you've advised governors for, well as long as I've known you, and they follow you.

We've talked about water for some time, but it seems like this is something that is hitting both sides of the aisle, it's something top of mind.

Maybe talk about the evolution of that a bit.

- Well I mean, I think it was the year of water in the legislative session.

If you think about it, water's been doing this while growth has been doing this.

So those are... You can't do that for too long.

And so, you know, I think it's always been a top-of-mind issue.

Water's incredibly important to our state.

But the combination of the mega drought, population growth, the conditions we see at our reservoirs, and what we see at Lake Powell, what we see at Utah Lake, Great Salt Lake, it's really created the right dynamics to make some really innovative policy changes and some investments.

And I really applaud our state leaders for what they're doing.

- I wanna talk about some of those for a second.

As I've talked with you in the past, some have sort of argued that water could be the limiting factor for growth for the state of Utah.

- Do you know, I mean, I guess taken to an extreme, it could be.

But I wonder if the other guests agree to this, but we have a lot of water in this state, we just need to use it better.

We need to use it more wisely, we need to get it to where it's needed.

And so it's more of a, can we afford to get the water where it needs to be and can we change our behavior so that we can create essentially more water for consumption?

I don't know if Representative, if that makes sense to you?

- No, I think it does make sense.

And it's really a question of how we grow and how we use water.

That's what it comes down to.

It's not really that we... You could grow almost in an unlimited way if you didn't have lawns, and yards, and if you didn't have farms.

But, how to strike that balance is the million dollar question.

- Good, Brian.

- And I would absolutely agree that the use of water is potentially the limiting factor.

And it's really interesting because as you look at the history of our state, we have grown in a environment where we really haven't had huge limitations on the amount of water that we have available.

But as Natalie was pointing out, when we have populations that's expected to grow pretty substantially over upcoming years, and when you have conditions at least over the last 20 years where we've had drier than normal conditions, and that's predicted coming forward, that puts us in real perspective on how we need to approach the use of water.

And so if we have more stringent policies on how we use that water, and maybe even more just wise policies on how we use it, I think that the state is in a better position.

- Jason, I'll just add though, that the reason it hasn't been a limiting factor is because we've made decisions- - Absolutely.

- To develop it and to have it where it's needed from the very early days of irrigation of the LDS pioneers, but then you go all the way to The Central Utah Project.

And so every generation has their obligation, their responsibility to invest in the future of Utah, and it's time to do that again.

- I wanna talk about some of those investments, because Representative, this is what we talked about a lot during this legislative session, it was about the use, it was about how we managed the water.

And one of the big topics was the Great Salt Lake.

I wanna talk about that for just a moment because we have to talk about our lakes because it's not just about the water, it's about the environment that is associated with the Great Salt Lake.

Talk about why Great Salt Lake is on the radar for so many people in the legislature this year.

- Well, if there was a silver lining in this mega drought, it's that it really made people sit up and take notice of these critical needs in the state.

And that created a real spirit of unanimity with people coming together.

It was a Republicans, and Democrats, and it was the governor, and it was the legislature, all working together.

And one of the things that they recognized was Great Salt Lake, and that's something that's been out of sight, out of mind for people for so many years.

It's just kind of an oddity that's out there.

But as the lake starts to go down and to hit these critical levels, then it starts to raise the prospect that all of the things that the lake does that we take for granted won't be there.

And that's air quality impacts.

So if we lose the lake, it could significantly degrade the quality of our air.

That's impacts to our snowpack.

Just with we have what's called lake effect snow, sort of the water recycles.

There's also a dust on snow effect.

So, as the lake goes down and more dust comes off the lake, it lands on the snowpack, it heats up, and melts the snowpack faster.

Then there's just economic activity.

It's about 1,000,000,005 worth of economic activity, 7,000, almost 8,000 jobs spread over five counties, all of which are at risk if the lake continues to decline, and that's not even getting to the incredible environmental benefits associated with that lake.

Globally significant flyway, birds flying from Siberia through Great Salt Lake down to South and Central America.

It's really a remarkable resource.

- There are a couple key parts I wanna get to there, but maybe before I go there, Brian, particularly given your seat in state government, why is the Great Salt Lake at risk?

- I think that we've had, as was mentioned before, a number of years of declining precipitation.

And that declining precipitation combined with average use, and sometimes even growing use, has led us to a point where really we're seeing less water flowing into that lake.

Both those factors combined, I think have led to really a challenge because as Representative Hawkes was mentioning, the lake is so important to the state in so many ways, both economically and environmentally.

And to see those potential losses if we allow this to go very much further, it's very concerning for the state.

- Representative, we have examples around the world of terminal lakes that have dried up, what's happened?

- Well, and that's the thing, the effects have been catastrophic.

So if you look at the Aral Sea, which was a very large lake in Central Asia, when that was lost, it just devastated the local economy.

You had some of the highest rates of respiratory illness and death in the world.

That's been repeated in Lake Urmia in Iran.

And then much closer to home, just a much smaller terminal lake, Owens Lake in California became the largest source of dust pollution in North America.

And that's a lake that's maybe 1/17 the size of Great Salt Lake.

So all of that says it's not just fearmongering, these are real impacts that we could see if that lake continues to decline, and hits these record lows, and continues to go in that direction.

- Interesting.

We've had a couple comments, Natalie.

There is a lot of economic development, a lot of benefit to the lake too.

Talk about that for just a minute 'cause there's things that people might not realize.

- Well, I think the Representative covered it quite well.

What like to add is that the drought cumulates over time, so it gets worse.

And then when it comes to economics, human health, and ecological health, I find when issues touch on all three of those, that's when we really need to pay attention.

Like we have things that hurt our economy, but when it hurts your economy, when it hurts human health, and when it's hurting the environment, boy you better have all hands on deck.

So, in the lake we have Lakeside Industries, we have the brine shrimp industry.

The Representative mentioned how many direct employees are employed as part of the lake, so that's a big deal.

And then you have the human health aspect of what it will do to air quality when these metals and the lakebed is blown into the air.

So I don't like to think of that for my children and grandchildren.

And then yeah, the birds.

And we should just take a pause at... How many is it, is it 350 species, am I even close?

- I think that's right.

And I think that if you look at the numbers of those birds that go through, it's really mind-boggling.

- [Jason] Tens of millions.

- One of the most life-changing experiences I've had in my job is an opportunity to fly over the west portion of the lake during migrating season.

And it was mind-boggling how many birds are coming through there, and people just have no idea.

- So we think in public policy, about the impacts to our community, to our state, to our region, to the country.

But it's very rare in public policy where you're thinking about a hemispheric issue, which this is.

So I think for all those reasons, it's just absolutely right that our state make this a very top-of-mind, priority issue.

- Talk for a minute, Representative, about what you all did in terms of funding and priority for the Great Salt Lake this year.

- I was talking about this to a group yesterday and it honestly felt like about a decade's worth of public policy in one year.

Brian was an important part of that, and so many people came together to do that.

Probably the biggest single thing we did for Great Salt Lake was to create a trust fund.

And this was a bill that Speaker Brad Wilson ran that took $40,000,000 and put it into a trust to help protect that resource, and particularly focusing on its water supply.

And that was a huge step forward and really important.

And there were a lot of other pieces of legislation that kind of flowed in the wake of that.

Just in terms of the amounts of dollars invested, a lot of states got these federal ARPA dollars.

Utah took its ARPA dollars and decided to invest almost half a billion dollars, $450,000,000, into water, and mostly into water conservation in one form or another.

So, some really important policy moves on the one hand and some really important investments on the other.

These were generational moves and generational investments.

- And Jason, can I make the point, I think it's just spot-on public policy.

We know that this ARPA money is essentially borrowed money (Natalie laughing gently) for our country.

So when you're spending borrowed money, make sure it benefits people that come after you 'cause they're gonna be paying it back.

And that's one of the things I love, one of the policy ramifications I love about what the legislature did, is they took this money and they're investing in our future that benefits our children and grandchildren.

- And making real generational investments in ways that we really haven't seen in the state before.

One of the things that, as Representative Hawkes was mentioning, was just the conservation amount that was just dollars put it into things that we haven't seen before.

Things like secondary meters, things like just acquiring more water for the lake potentially, or at least understanding how the lake best operates.

And in trying to figure those things out, these are generational improvements, they're generational investments, and we're gonna have to really use those over the next few years, quickly, to make sure that we get it right.

- Jason, if I could give an illustration on the secondary metering front, and that's simply measuring how much people use.

But to give people an idea of the order of magnitude of that benefit, when that's fully implemented, the estimates is about 80,000 acre feet of water a year.

That's the entire volume of Echo Reservoir.

It's like building another reservoir simply by providing people with information on the in terms of how much water they're using.

- Maybe explain what that means, 'cause this is a piece of legislation that was passed on this secondary water metering.

Talk about what that means.

Because there are implications for us, and there's economic implications too, but maybe explain that a little bit as well.

- Sure.

And for some people, this doesn't make any sense 'cause they only get one water bill.

That's a lot of people, particularly here in the Salt Lake Valley.

But for those of us that live outside of Salt Lake City, we have two sets of pipes that come into our houses.

We have the treated drinking water, and then we have the untreated secondary.

It's the old irrigation shares that were converted over and it's too expensive to treat it, so you just pipe it.

And so a lot of us grew up knowing you're not supposed to drink out of the sprinkler because that's just river water.

And that's what secondary is.

But the weird thing is, if we're all on a secondary system, we all pay the same flat fee a year.

We pay for our irrigation share.

But we don't know how much we're using.

You might use, just in rough numbers, you use 10, I use two, five, and three, and we all pay that same flat fee.

So secondary metering, it's expensive.

You have to come back in retrofit these systems and put a meter in, and then provide the consumer with the information in terms of how much they're using relative to what they used last year and how much they're using relative to their neighbors.

And it turns out that this becomes this very powerful bit of information.

And when you empower people in that way, they tend to make wise decisions, and we see their use decline by 20 to 40%.

And that stays over time, they continue to use less over time.

- Now we have the economist hat.

- I'm wigglin' in my seat.

Well, because it's such an important investment our state's making.

And so, I think the thing to think about is that water is something we do together, right?

We build dams together, we build pipelines, canals, together.

It's not like this private thing that you go get.

So the issue is how do you pay for things we do together?

Well, the interesting thing is if water's metered, you can pay by use, but if water's not metered, then you just kind of equalize it among people.

And so in the case of, let's say Davis and Weber County, where there's so much secondary water, water that is not metered, and it's being used for lawns...

Which is, is it about 60% of our water use is outdoor watering?

So we have about 60% of our water in this state that's not paid for by use.

So that's an incredible area for us to go make progress.

And unfortunately, it's incredibly expensive, and the legislature appropriated $200,000,000?

- 250- - 250 for secondary?

- Yeah.

So that's really expensive, but it will benefit our children and grandchildren because over time we'll be able to price water correctly.

And the one of the most important lines in economics is, "All of economics can be reduced to four words: People respond to incentives.

The rest is color commentary."

So if we can get the incentives in the right place, then we can help solve this water challenge.

- And I would argue one of the beautiful things about secondary meters is that it allows for more information.

That one of the things that people operate in on these secondary systems is an information deficit.

They don't really know how much water they're using.

And that lack of information doesn't provide the incentives that we would commonly like to see in an economic system.

And so, to provide that additional information, people then are able to make those wise choices.

- Well, and I think we should just be honest that Utahns over time should be prepared to pay more for water.

It is a commodity that we need to price correctly, and even outside of the secondary watering environment.

I live in Murray.

When people excessively water, I'm actually helping to pay for their excessive watering.

When they fill up their swimming pool, I'm helping to pay for it.

And so if we price things correctly, people will make choices based on what they value the most, and it'll be a more efficient and more fair system.

- To show you just an extreme example...

Most people do the right thing.

But when Weber Basin metered everybody, just to test and didn't change their pricing at all, there were some people putting 350 inches of water on their lawn, on their yards, a year.

That's enough to grow rice.

That's like the deepest, darkest Amazon.

So, in a desert environment, that has real costs for other users, real costs for the environment.

But until we measure it, we can't manage it.

- [Jason] Yeah, Brian.

- Can I just say that, we as Utahns pride ourselves on being wise stewards.

This is one instance where we can actually improve our stewardship, and we can improve our stewardship by having additional information.

- Well, and this is why the narrative that water's our greatest constraint to growth, it's so much more complicated.

Because if we use water wisely, we have a lot of growth that can still come to this state.

But we've got to look at water as a valuable resource that's worthy of investment and proper pricing.

- When you talk about the kind of the conservation and the use of it, Representative, there's this old kind of pioneer era phrase, this "use it or lose it" idea with water, which you are addressing.

I saw this session.

Maybe explain what that idea is as it pertains to people's water rights, for example, and what this concept means for policy for you this year and maybe going forward.

- Sure.

Water law in the West developed a system, what they call prior appropriation, a little bit of a geeky term.

But basically, they had to figure out who had the right to use water relative to other people.

And it grew up in a time when there was relatively a lot of water and few people, and you had to decide who was priority, who had the... And so, these ideas came up like "first-in-time, first-in-right."

The first person to divert the water had the right.

The second principle was this idea that water is so important in a desert that you have to use it or it's a public resource, it's gotta go back to the rest of the public.

Now that has real serious implications for the environment because what does that Great Salt Lake look like in the eyes of the law?

It's all wasted water.

A dry riverbed or a dry lakebed is a perfectly efficient system.

And so all of the stuff that we historically viewed as wasted, it turns out it has enormous value.

And so one of the real challenges and struggles that we have, and this is the bill that Representative Ferry ran this year, and it's a grown-up version of a bill I started pushing way back in 2004.

But it's recognizing that those environmental uses of water have significant value, economic value, value to our quality of life, and how do we recognize those values and allow them to play within this system of prior appropriation.

The system works, but they have to have a seat at the table, they have to be able to acquire...

If it's gonna be a game of cards, they have to be able to acquire cards, if that makes sense.

- [Jason] It does.

Go, Brian.

- And I would say that our prior appropriation system, it provides some certainty for water users.

It's a property right, essentially, that has allowed for people to know exactly how much water there is and how much water they can anticipate, and that's been beneficial.

But as the Representative was mentioning, we haven't really considered all of the other impacts that might have.

And this instream flow bill that's been mentioned really provides an opportunity to then allow water to go to places where there is huge environmental benefits, and using the system that we currently have in place.

- And so if you think about...

I wanna make sure I understand this right.

But, a farmer has water thinks, "I have to use it or I'll lose it."

But under this legislation, they can contract it for someone else and keep the right.

- Correct.

Or a farmer may be able to change how they're using that water, improving their efficiency on how they use their water, and take the savings, and then allow that to stay in the stream rather than diverting it.

- It goes back to my point about incentives.

- [Jason] It does, it does.

- If we place incentives correctly, we can get a lot of better policy.

- Now Brian, just quickly, 'cause I want our viewers to understand this.

There are people, and they're in your shop, that are responsible for monitoring and enforcing these water rights.

- Correct, there's a full division known as the Division of Water Rights and that's what they do 24/7.

It's complicated because ultimately, it's a resource that moves, and so it's harder to identify how you quantify how much is being used where.

But that's what they dedicate their full-time careers to, and they do a pretty good job.

This provides one more tool for water users to then be able to put water in different uses.

- One of the bills I was really grateful to run this year that flew below the radar screen was to provide three additional engineers to our state engineer.

Because as those systems get more complicated to manage, we have to have the resources to manage them fairly, to empower these kind of solutions that you were talking about, Natalie.

- Well, and it's a complicated enough situation to do this correctly, that you've gotta invest in the state employees that can help us solve these problems, have the right data, have the right models.

All of those things can really help us get to a better place.

- And you can imagine how emotional this is.

We're dealing with the lifeblood of the West.

And if you're a farmer, you don't grow crops unless you have water.

And so trying to figure out a way that's fair, and a way that then also allows them to be incentivized to do better on water use, it's gonna require all of our hands on deck.

- If we can talk about one more lake for a moment, Representative, there's a lot of discussion this session about Utah Lake.

- [Tim] Yes.

- Talk about that for just a minute, what you see happening there because it's everything from the fish that are in there to potential development.

- You know, it's really interesting, if there's unanimity sort of, or everybody pulling together, on Great Salt Lake, there's quite a bit of division really on Utah Lake.

Where it's not division is there's a recognition that here's something that really could be kind of the crown jewel of the state of Utah.

And the problem there is a little bit different, it's not a water quality problem.

It's not like Great Salt Lake where it needs more water.

It's that it's a water quality problem.

There's too much nutrients in that system.

And so there's various proposals kicking around, and one of the ones that's kicking up a lot of dust is a proposal to sort of build islands in the lake.

They call it the islands proposal.

And that could potentially transfer public lands to private hands as a way to fund that kind of work.

But again, the one thing that's true... And there were two bills that moved through the session this year that were important on Utah Lake.

But the shared goal in all of those projects is to try to improve water quality and improve ultimately the way that system functions and works.

- Go Brian, 'cause you've been involved in that directly from your shop.

- And it is an impaired body of water, I mean humans have changed the dynamics on that lake.

One of the things we've done over time is put a bunch of invasive species there.

Those invasive species have had negative interactions oftentimes with the lake.

Carp for instance, have eaten much of the undergrowth or those aquatic vegetation that other species rely on.

And because of that, it's different, that water's different.

The other thing we've done is put a lot of phosphorus into that lake, and that nutrient loading has then created kind of a different set of factors on how healthy the lake is.

So without question, we're all interested in finding a way to improve the water quality in the lake.

And I would say that there's also a quantity issue.

Ultimately, that is one of our important sources of storage water, and storage water that impacts not only the area around Utah County, but also into the Salt Lake Valley.

So, we're trying to get it right.

- If we can spend our last two minutes on this, I think you've all put a pretty good picture together for us about what's happening.

I know people are wondering, "What should we do?"

Maybe just take a second, give us, give our viewers, give all of us a chance to hear from you, people who have very important positions in this state, what should we do to help with the water situation?

Representative, we'll start with you.

What can we do at home?

- The biggest single thing you can do is use less water outside on your lawns and gardens, particularly lawns.

So if you can reduce the amount of turf that's in your yard, if you can water that turf a lot less, be okay with it turning brown in August like it does in the rest of the world.

It doesn't have to stay green all year.

That's the single biggest thing.

It dwarfs anything you can do inside your house.

And that doesn't mean we shouldn't conserve water in that space as well, but that is the single most important thing that people do.

Smaller yards, less turf.

- [Jason] Natalie?

- Jason, I'm gonna go with pricing water correctly.

Not a surprise, but we have a situation where you can use the market to help you.

And it's not just secondary water, but it's also just the water we use municipally that's not tiered correctly.

And so I think if we price water correctly, people will use it more wisely.

- [Tim] That's perfect.

- Last 30 seconds, Brian.

- I'd say people need to be more mindful.

This is an extraordinarily important resource, and it's an important resource for which there's scarcity in.

And as we become a larger state in population, we're not gonna get more water.

And so being mindful of how you use the water you have, whether that's delaying when you start watering this year because we're gonna have a dry summer, delaying that water, that has huge benefits.

And ultimately, I'm pretty optimistic.

People can do hard things, I think that we can do this.

But people have to be more mindful in order to make it right.

- Here are some great comments.

We certainly saw it from the both sides of the aisle, our legislative leaders certainly taking some action here quickly, and we'll all do our part is the hope.

Thank you so much for the conversation this evening.

Such a critical conversation, thank you.

- Thanks Jason.

- And thank you for watching The Hinckley Report.

This show is also available as a podcast on pbsutah.org/hinckleyreport, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thank you for being with us.

We'll see you next week.

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