WILL URBAN DEVELOPMENT POLICIES ALONG THE WASATCH FRONT INFLUENCE FUTURE RESIDENTIAL WATER DEMAND IN THE GREAT SALT LAKE BASIN?

Urban residential water demand is closely correlated with urban growth but also urban developmental densities. Urban development densities along the Wasatch Front have been shown to be a function of both land use policy and transportation infrastructure development policy. Historically, transportation investments have encouraged a slow but persistent decline in urban developmental densities. These in turn have encouraged an increase in vehicular traffic and an increase in road building each disproportionate to underlying growth in people and jobs. This interaction may be described as a self-reinforcing feedback loop. It has lead to rapidly increasing rates of per capita urban land consumption as well as increasing rates of residential water use and regional water system development. This urban system feedback process has been modeled accurately for the metropolitan region along Utah's Wasatch Front over the period 1980 – 2000 with projections to 2030. The analytical methodology relies upon a system dynamics modeling software environment. This presentation seeks to use extend the use of this model to explore selected hydrological implications of alternative management policies. It outlines the implications of alternative urban development policy scenarios for future urban residential water demand and regional water development infrastructure. It compares these policies with more familiar water conservation policies such as water conservation technologies and market-based water pricing schemes. The central question to be explored is whether urban development policies might have impacts on water use rates equivalent to other more familiar forms of water conservation and whether such policies might compete with or complement more traditional water conservation measures. A secondary question has to do with the implications subsequent to policy choice for regional water development infrastructure as well as the monetary costs and hydrological systems reconfigurations these might entail.