Strict regulations and a turf rebate program are helping Washington County shake off its reputation as a water waster

Saint George • Zach Renstrom was pitching water-saving ideas to a home builder in his neighborhood a few years ago, which apparently bored his wife.

“One option,” Renstrom said, “is that we just pay you to rip the grass out of your yard.”

Suddenly she wasn’t bored anymore. “His wife looked up” from the phone, Renstrom recalled, “and said, ‘I’ll be damned if you rip out my grass so another Californian can move here.’

Renstrom shares a story to show how attitudes are changing in the state’s arid southwest corner. In 2023, the area served by the Washington County Water Conservancy District, of which Renstrom is CEO, harvested 34% of the grass pulled and replaced statewide, even though it serves only 7% of Utah’s population.

Washington County has become the first region in the state to ban the use of non-functional grass, or “lazy” grass, on all new commercial, industrial and institutional developments. Today, as Renstrom proudly points out, you can even spot grass-free yards on the parade of homes.

“We have the most effective development standards in the state,” Doug Bennett, water conservation manager, said recently. “…We are setting the pace for the state of Utah.”

Here’s how Renstrom and Bennett worked with others to change minds and orders, and what happened next.

Lake Powell Pipeline Dream

When Renstrom took over as the conservation district’s general manager almost six years ago, his predecessor, Ron Thompson, assured him that the district’s water problems were almost solved. The planned 240-mile Lake Powell Pipeline will deliver more than 27 billion gallons annually to Washington County.

“All you’re going to have to do for the last 20 years of your career is just turn the pumps on and off every now and then and then turn them off…” Renstrom Thompson said. “I thought, ‘Hey, this sounds like a great gig and I don’t have to run for re-election.’”

However, severe drought and rapid growth left Renstrom in a difficult situation. Drought-ravaged Lake Powell has made the pipeline a near-future dream. Meanwhile, the Kem C. Gardner Institute projects that Washington County’s population will grow from about 200,000 today to more than 464,000 in 2060.

It doesn’t help, Renstrom said, that about 23% of the county’s housing is secondary or vacation homes, occupied by part-time workers who are not counted in the census but use 90% as much water as their full-time neighbors. Add to that the 10 million tourists who visit the county each year, county officials say, and water supply problems grow exponentially.

Some demanded a moratorium on construction to control economic growth and water use. Meanwhile, business leaders have demanded assurances that there will be enough water in the area before investments are made.

Renstrom developed an action plan: new homes had to be water-efficient. Owners of existing homes should have been encouraged to replace grass with desert landscaping. Seven cities in the county were required to adopt more stringent water conservation standards.

“Use the Hammer”

Renstrom met with the Southern Utah Home Builders Association to make the unpopular call. Members need to make major changes, he said, to ensure the county doesn’t run out of water.

“I told them I would use a hammer,” he said. “I said, ‘No way, no, I’m going to allow a house to be built in Washington County if I can’t guarantee that there will always be water in the house.’”

He then asked the builders what they thought about stricter water regulations. Their response: They hated government regulation and would fight the district. Since the hammer didn’t work, Renstrom decided to show them the carrot and ask them whether they wanted to build 1,000 homes or, with water-saving changes, 2,000 homes.

After talking to each other, the builders told Renstrom they wanted to build 5,000 homes.

To achieve this, they pledged to support the district and do everything in its power to achieve this goal, including helping convince cities in the district to adopt more stringent standards.

“It came down to water sustainability and home building opportunities,” said Troy Ence, co-owner of Ence Homes. “Because if we don’t save water, there won’t be much development in the future.”

“Get Up From Your Lazy Grass”

Next up: Lawn lovers.

In 2022, the conservation district launched a water conservation rebate program that pays a business and homeowner up to $2 per square foot to replace grass with landscaping features that use less water.

The “Get Out of Your Lazy Grass” campaign proved persuasive. Ofelia Cortez is one of many people who cashed in — a Bloomington retiree changed her grass last fall and received $5,000.

She says she likes to save money and enjoys the compliments she hears from neighbors about her new yard.

Some owners of Gardens South Condominiums in St. George was harder to convince. Aubrey Quick, treasurer of the multifamily homeowners association, said some residents objected to the association’s decision to participate in the program and replace half of the grass in common areas.

“A few people were upset because they thought if they sold their place it would lose value,” she said, “because there was no grass behind the back deck and they wouldn’t be able to have picnics or sunbathe on the grass.”

So far, the apartment complex has replaced 5,000 square feet of grass and raised $10,000, which it used to cover $17,000 paid to landscapers to install the xeriscaping.

“Since it’s been done,” Quick said, “we’ve received a lot of compliments.”

Grand Slam with cities

The program also provided another way – with supportive homebuilders – to nudge cities. The district would not pay rebates to lawn mowers living in cities that have not adopted more stringent water conservation ordinances.

Homeowners who wanted to take part were asked to replace their grass and then call their neighbors and city council members for support. In the meantime, the county held the check.

This strategy helped bring cities closer together. From the beginning of 2024, all cities in the district have signed up to new water saving standards.

By the district’s calculations, nearly 1.5 million square feet of grass – or more than 25 football fields – was replaced with water-saving landscaping, resulting in annual savings of about 65 million gallons.

“To put it into perspective, if it was a single 18-inch-wide roll of sod like you see at a nursery, it would stretch about 200 miles,” Bennett said.

The new regulations further limit the amount of grass in residential neighborhoods, require more water-saving features and impose an additional fee of $10 for every 1,000 gallons of water new homes use above 8,000 gallons in the winter, 15,000 gallons in the fall and spring, and 20,000 gallons during years.

According to the district’s calculations, per capita water use has decreased by more than 30% since 2000.

County customers (95% of the county’s population) used 39,711 acre-feet of water in 2022 compared to 37,896 acre-feet in 2018, an increase of 4.8%. However, as the county’s population increased by 21% over the same period, the per capita water use rate dropped from 177 to 153 gallons per day.

“Building a culture of saving water”

Water conservation is one of two major factors in a 20-year plan the district unveiled a year ago to secure another 47,000 acre-feet of water by 2042 to keep pace with economic growth.

The second is investing more than $1 billion to build more water reuse tanks and related infrastructure.

Edward Andrechak, president of Conserve Southwest Utah, said the group is “emboldened by the progress made over the past five years in building a water conservation culture in Southwest Utah.

With the changes so far, he said, “we have moved away from high water use through the proposed single-source solution, the Lake Powell Pipeline, to a differentiated, 20-year plan developed by the Water Conservancy District that is based on the core principles of conservation and reuse.”

Such praise, while modest, has been rare in the past. In 2021, the CBS news program “60 Minutes” highlighted the high water use in St. George. The following year, “Last Week Tonight” host John Oliver made fun of St. George and Washington counties for wasting water.

Like district officials, St. George insist that much of the bad reputation the county has had about water in the past is unfounded. Scott Taylor, director of water services at St. George, points out that St. George uses the same amount of water as it did seven years ago, even though more than 8,000 connections were added during that period.

“We’re doing a lot better now than we ever have before,” Taylor said.

Bennett agrees, but adds that there is always room for improvement. At a recent climate event at the University of Utah Tech, he noted that there are still about 200 million square feet of lawns in the county, and about 40% of that grass is non-functional or “lazy” grass that serves no purpose other than absorbing water.

Both Taylor and Renstrom are optimistic, noting that the area has had water problems since pioneers settled it in the mid-1850s, and residents and leaders have continued to find solutions.

Taylor said early settlers in the area moved their livestock from two springs for an hour a day so they could dip in the streams and quench their thirst with clean drinking water. According to Renstrom, when in the St. George in 1910 and again in the 1980s when the water almost dried up, causing a moratorium on construction.

First, settlers wielding picks and shovels dug a trench to access mountain springs near the foothills of the Pine Valley Mountains to shore up the water supply. In the second phase, the district constructed Quail Reservoir, followed in 2002 by construction of Sand Hollow Reservoir.

“The pattern of doing more with water, being better stewards… and building water infrastructure projects,” Renstrom told the audience at the recent Colorado River Collaborative meeting in Moab, “is the legacy of Washington County.”

Editor’s note • This story is available only to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers. Thank you for supporting local journalism.