Town staff this week presented five strategies or “tools” to reduce irrigation in town. They range from educating consumers on how to decrease their use, on the soft end of the spectrum, to passing an ordinance limiting lawn watering on the strict end.
Intermediate suggestions include tools to up what people pay for water in a tiered system and providing incentives like buying back turf grass.
Councilors directed staff to pursue all options to maintain reserves for emergency use, given the hotter temperatures expected with climate change and the increased demand expected as the town grows.
Those options are expected to be presented again at a future meeting before a vote.
The town’s first-ever water restrictions went into place this past summer amid drought and increased demand. Irrigation is the biggest consumer of water in Jackson. And for the most part, the short-term restrictions worked.
But facing the emergency ordinance, irrigators and conservationists asked councilors to start a bigger conversation. The goal now is to conserve water for the long term and ensure the aquifer isn’t drained to levels unhealthy for the environment.
Experts say the region has an abundance of water unique in the arid West, given an expansive aquifer and heavy snowfall that contributes to the many tributaries.
Many communities across the West have introduced water conservation initiatives and policies as their water supplies dwindle. Jackson Hole doesn’t have the same urgency given its position at the headwaters of the Snake River.
But Mayor Arne Jorgensen said during the workshop this week that Jackson is lagging.
“People aren’t [limiting use] voluntarily, otherwise we would have already done it,” he said.
At the Oct. 20 workshop, several other councilors wanted to consider limiting domestic water use, not just what’s used for lawns. That isn’t expected to happen. Jorgensen maintained that irrigation is the largest user and limiting domestic use is unnecessary, right now.
“I feel very strongly that we should be upping our game around conservation, and to me, this is not about supply,” Jorgensen said, “we can design our way around supply as we’re doing right now with adding more wells.”
Two new wells are expected to boost Jackson’s water supply next Spring, adjacent to planned homes at northern South Park. About 1,200 new homes are planned for the region in the next few decades.
