Utah State Code 73-10-52: Water Conservation Plan requires that water providers with more than 5,000 connections submit water conservation plans to the Utah Division of Water Resources every five years. The link to the State code is https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title73/Chapter10/73-10-S32.html

Even without a state requirement, making and implementing a plan to reduce water use, increase water use efficiency, and eliminate water waste makes sense. 

Planning allows Salt Lake City Department of Public Utilities (SLCDPU) to budget and innovate to help meet goals to benefit the water consumers.

Planning helps to ensure that conservation programing occurs throughout the service area, across all water connections, and for as many of our customers as possible.

Conservation planning helps in assessing water supply and demand, and to establish goals so that we know we are achieving and sustaining the necessary levels of water use reduction.

Conservation planning helps to ensure that water use reduction occurs in a manner that minimizes negative impacts to the community, our economy, or the environment.

Water rates will not increase as a result of this water conservation plan. However, Salt Lake City is planning incremental water rate increases over the next several years as part of a financial strategy to replace and rehabilitate aging water infrastructure, including water treatment plants, pipelines, and groundwater wells. The financial strategy includes a mixture of water use rates, revenue bonds, federal loans, grants, and impact fees.

Conservation saves Salt Lake City Department of Public Utilities (and therefore customers) money over time by reducing the cost to develop, supply, store, and convey water to consumers.

These savings result in substantial reductions in your monthly water bill. For a typical residential household in 2025, conservation has resulted in an average monthly bill that is approximately $34/month less than it would have been without conservation.

Yes, Salt Lake City Department of Public Utilities has completed plans every five years since 1999 on behalf of the City. Previous plans can be viewed at https://www.slc.gov/utilities/water-conservation-plan-2025/

Due to improvements in data collection, record keeping, and analytics, this plan provides greater detail in historical water use (Chapter 2) and goal setting (Chapter 3). These details include more in-depth analysis of water use by customer classification, and, as a result, allow for improved estimates for goals by customer classification. Conservation goals in this plan are based on analysis of future water supply and demand and exceed the most recent updated goals from the State of Utah.

The goals in the 2025 water conservation plan are to:

• Keep the Salt Lake City Department of Public Utilities on track to meet its long-term water supply needs.
• Facilitate efforts to increase resource and system resilience in the face of identified risks, including climate change.
• Encourage the continued wise use of an important limited resource; and
• Be consistent with conservation goals established by the State, Alliance for Water Efficiency, US-Environmental Protection Agency, and this plan.

There was a partial rebound in per capita water use in 2024, and 2025 appears to be on a similar trajectory. Even with the excellent results achieved to date, this emphasizes the need for continued and increased efforts in the promotion of long-term conservation, including enhanced education and outreach efforts.

Chapter 3 Conservation Goals:

	Current	2030	2040	Long Term
Gallons Per Capita (gdp)	179	174	164	146
% Reduction		2.9%	8.4%	18.7%

Overall Targets

Residential Indoor Use – 49 GPD/person

Outdoor Use – 22.8” average irrigation

The goals expressed in Chapter 3 represent estimates of potential conservation based on current data. As more data is available, particularly through new metering technologies and improved Commercial/Industrial/Institutional analysis, these goals may be modified. We may also need to modify the goals should our water supply estimates change more than anticipated due to growth and/or climate change.

By adopting this plan and achieving the outlined conservation goals through the implementation of the conservation program practices, it is hoped that we can avoid drastic measures. For example, our partnership with Utah State University (USU) has helped to identify a variety of lawn grasses (SLC TurfTrade) that use less water and require less mowing and fertilizer. The Water Check program (another partnership with USU) helps homeowners and other property owners to optimize the efficiency of sprinklers to reduce water use on lawns. Installation of weather stations provides enhanced data publicly available to optimize efficiency in outdoor watering practices.

The conservation goals in this plan are based on extensive research and analysis of our water supply and demand. Additionally, these goals exceed those required by the recently published State Regional Conservation Goals. Lastly, these goals are not fixed and may be amended to reflect changes in future water supply or demand. And lastly, not all states calculate gallons per capita in the same way.

These goals are simply that: goals to help us stay within our projected water supply. During times of water shortage or drought, there may be mandated temporary water use reductions, but mandated long-term reductions are not a part of the conservation plan. Developing a water conservation ethic in our everyday lives will help us to protect and sustain our current and future water supply, which has many benefits for our community and the environment. Conservation makes sense, even when not mandated.

Salt Lake City Department of Public Utilities classifies water use by the following categories:

• Residential (single residence, duplex, triplex, fourplex)
• Commercial (business, hospital, hotel/motel, restaurant, apartment, miscellaneous)
• Institutional (school, church, parks, government)
• Industrial (industrial customers of all types)

The two largest groups of water users in Salt Lake City Department of Public Utilities service area are the residential and commercial customer categories.

For purposes of planning, the commercial classification has been broken down into further sub-categories. See Page 2-5 in the 2025 Water Conservation Plan for details.  

Salt Lake City Department of Public Utilities is looking to the public and key stakeholders to provide input on water conservation goals and programs

Input can be provided by taking a 2025 Community Survey (coming soon) or by attending a public meeting. Informational open houses are scheduled for:

August 27, 2025

11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

This meeting will feature an overview presentation of the draft Water Conservation Plan.

Register at: https://jubengineers.zoom.us/meeting/register/CqxE7cG-T_GEovBa6BTaUg

September 10, 2025

5:00 – 7:00 p.m. Come at any time. 

Millcreek City Hall, 1330 E Chambers Ave, Millcreek, UT 84106

September 17, 2025

5:00 – 7:00 p.m. Come at any time. 

Sorensen Unity Center, 1383 South 900 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84102

Salt Lake City Department of Public Utilities is committed to doing what it can to support and restore Great Salt Lake. As part of that effort, additional conservation scenarios are being evaluated that might achieve goals beyond those stated in Chapter 3 of the plan. Part of this evaluation is the role of depletion in achieving additional water savings for Great Salt Lake. This task has been added to ongoing research relating to refining projected demand reductions.

Significant progress has been made in improved efficiencies and conservation over the last two decades. Our community has done an excellent job in saving water both indoors and outdoors and throughout recent years.

Salt Lake City Department of Public Utilities will continue to manage and implement education and outreach campaigns, to provide actionable, proven techniques and methods for reducing water use. These campaigns include “Never Waste,” “Rain On/Sprinklers Off,” and “7 Gallon Challenge,” to name a few.

 Salt Lake City Department of Public Utilities also provides support in the following ways:

• The Water Check program provides site-specific guidance to assist property managers or homeowners in improving irrigation efficiency. This program is funded by the Metropolitan Water District of Salt Lake & Sandy.  
• WaterMAPS™ delivers relatable and actionable information to property owners to enhance understanding of the relationship between landscape characteristics and water need.
• Residential leak detection programs inform homeowners of indoor water loss, while delivering messages of the importance of managing all water use and waste.
• Learning labs offer education, advice, and guidance in improving landscape practices, leak detection and repair, and other areas of conservation.