SOURCE WATER PROTECTION IN A RURAL AREA OF SOUTHERN UTAH

Drinking water source protection planning began in Utah in 1995. While many of the larger communities in the State had the resources needed to prepare their source protection plans, most of the small public water systems, defined as those serving less than 3300 persons, did not.

The State therefore authorized the use of federal grant monies to assist small public water systems in source protection planning. Bulloch Brothers Engineering, Inc., was selected to prepare Drinking Water Source Protection Plans for public water systems in Iron County, a predominantly rural county in southwestern Utah.

Only two communities in the County, Cedar City and Enoch City, have a population over 3300. The other 35 public water systems in the County are classified as small systems, and combined they serve nearly 1/3 of the County’s residents. Cedar City, Enoch City, and 15 of the 35 small systems are in Cedar Valley, the most populous and rapidly growing part of the County.

Cities and counties have the authority to pass and enforce zoning ordinances to control potential contamination within their source protection zones. Both Cedar City and Enoch City have established such ordinances. But the small systems lack the authority to establish enforceable protection ordinances and therefore must rely on county-wide protection ordinances. Of the 29 counties in Utah, only 4 have established source protection ordinances which limit or prohibit potential contamination sources within designated protection zones.

Using an existing ordinance from another county as a template to create an ordinance for Iron County would protect designated zones. However, within Cedar Valley, this would not go far enough to protect the ground-water supply.

The unconsolidated and semi-consolidated Quaternary and Tertiary basin-fill deposits, which act as a single complex aquifer, provide most of the drinking water to the valley, and most of the development in the valley is taking place on top of the basin fill.

An existing grass-roots organization of small public water systems may be the best group to advocate to the County the development of a basin-wide ground-water management plan to address the issues of protecting the aquifer and the unconfined primary recharge areas on the valley’s margins.