in Environment
Cline Dahle… Where does the water come from ?
Summit County seems hell bent on putting 600 or more units of affordable housing between Jeremy Ranch Elementary School and the Burt Brothers complex (The Cline Dale parcel). They are contemplating taking a piece of land that would have had 1 home and are now putting 600-plus homes on it.
During this week’s Summit County Council meeting, representatives from the University of Utah presented a study they performed on the parcel and concluded that hundreds of units could be built on the parcel and it wouldn’t impact traffic. However we have another question… what about water?
For those people in Jeremy Ranch and select other areas of the Basin, they’ve been on water restrictions. Summit Water has limited the number of days that grass can be watered (two days a week). This indicates that there is not enough water, which is troubling since this year we had one of the best snow packs in a decade.
We visited with one resident who was fixing sprinklers on a Sunday morning and was “written up” by the Summit Water patrol. He said the person took down his address and told him that he better look at getting rid of his grass because next year Summit Water was going to cut back another 25%.
What? That doesn’t bode well.
It appears there is not enough water in the Basin. Yet, the County buys a piece of land for a transit oriented development and plans to put 600 to 1200 units on it (currently it is farm land). Averages show an apartment uses 150 gallons of water per day. At 600 apartments, that is an additional 35 millions of gallons of water used per year, if the Summit County Council goes forward.
If we are in a water shortage, where does that water come from? If Wasatch County growth also continues (that also eats into our available water) where does that water come from?
We understand the desire for the county to buy land for affordable housing. However, we are not sure that populace would trade their own water for adding additional affordable housing.
Regardless of personal feelings, it currently doesn’t even seem to be part of the discussions. Currently, it seems the only discussion is economic development and traffic related. There seems to be no discussion of water at all.
We’d encourage the county to look at whether there is enough water available to add another 3,000 people at Cline Dahle. If they discover water is not a problem, they should work to get the regional water companies under control. If they discover that water is an issue, there are many other alternatives that both require less water and would make their constituents happy.
Parkrag
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6 Comments
Easy peasy. Bill by the gallon. No more “water shares” for Jeremy Ranch – you water, you pay.
Boom! Problem solved.
For reference, here’s what Summit Water says about your water share:
“For most residential shareholders the increment of water allocated to you is .76 acre feet. This is equivalent to 247,630 gallons during each water year which begins September 8th and ends the following year on September 8th.
The typical household can easily stay within the water share by using 350 gallons or less per day in the winter when not irrigating outdoors and 1,200 gallons per day in the summer when you are irrigating outdoors.”
So hey, if you can *somehow* manage to use only 3-10 times as much as that apartment, you’re good! 1200 gallons a FREAKING DAY for grass? When the hillsides all around are covered with sage?
The idiocy of Jeremy Ranch never ceases to amaze me.
Good luck with getting rid of those water shares.You might as well tell people you are taking part of their yard and are going to use it for affordable housing. 🙂
I really don’t know many people that use more than 30%-50% of their water share in Jeremy Ranch. That said, I remember sitting in a county Council meeting a couple of years ago and they were talking about how water had been way oversubscribed in the Wasatch Back (i.e. while you may have a .76 acre feet designation… that doesn’t mean a lot if they’ve sold more than there is).
So, I don’t know that it’s so much the idiocy of Jeremy Ranch as there’s been a lack of accounting for water needs vs availability here for a long time. That’s probably true of the entire West, though.
My concern is that adding 600-1000 units continues that pattern.
And how does the county plan to pay for this? Do we get a vote?
Well, technically, they already spent $3+ million of your money on this property and your vote was when you (or other residents) elected the county council. It’s like taking a rubber duck and floating it down the river. You hope it generally travels the path you would choose.
I think a lot of people won’t be happy when they realize what this development means.
I haven’t seen when the next council meeting is. How do the tax payers get involved to let the county know this move is NOT acceptable???
Shelia
Thanks for reaching out to share your opinion with the County Council. You can reach them through their mailing list at .
Conversely, this page lists each individual member and has their email addresses:
http://www.co.summit.ut.us/314/Meet-the-Council
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