Across the St. George area, lush green golf courses sprawl among red rock cliffs, cacti and yucca. This water-strapped region hosts 14 courses within a 20-mile radius.
The sport may have reached a limit in southwest Utah, though. The water district’s board passed a new policy this month that increases regulations on the top 1% of commercial, institutional and industrial water users, including water guzzling industries such as golf courses, data centers and bottling plants.
Any new project that will use nine million gallons or more of the district’s water must receive additional review and approval from a committee of mayors and managers representing the eight cities and towns the district serves, according to the district. La Verkin, Toquerville and Virgin opted to set their threshold even lower, at five million gallons per year.
“The top 1% of commercial, institutional and industrial customers that we already have in the region use almost as much water as the other 99% — that’s how much they move the needle,” said Doug Bennett, conservation manager for the Washington County Water Conservancy District.
The region doesn’t have water to spare. Washington County just experienced its second driest year on record, according to the district. The area relies solely on the Virgin River Basin for its water supply, and there are no open water rights in the county. “The basin is closed to future water right issuance,” said Karry Rathje, public affairs manager for the district. “The only way that the district, a city or a private developer could acquire existing additional water rights is to purchase those from an existing water right holder.”
In recent years, the district has passed some of the most aggressive water conservation policies in the state, including restrictions on lawns in new commercial and residential construction and incentives for residents who want to ditch their lawn for water-efficient plants. The regulation on large water users is part of the district’s long term strategy to be able to provide water even as Washington County’s population continues to boom.
“I’ve been calling this policy our firewall to protect the reliability and integrity of the water system,” Bennett said, “because one very large user could be absolutely disruptive to not only the existing water supply but to the water supply strategy.”
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Doug Bennett at the Quail Creek Diversion Dam Project in Virgin on Tuesday September 16, 2025.
Conserve Southwest Utah supports setting thresholds for top water users, said Karen Goodfellow, the organization’s water program manager. She thinks the district could have gone even further, though.
“We prefer the threshold be set lower than the 9 million gallons per day that was approved,” she said. “But we acknowledge it is another step in the right direction in protecting and preserving our precious and limited water supply.”
To get approval going forward, these thirsty projects will have to provide an important benefit to the community, be water efficient and put that water to a productive use for the economy. That could mean the end for new golf construction in areas the district serves, which includes popular golf areas like St. George, Washington City, Ivins and Hurricane.
Bennett said he couldn’t speculate on what the committee will decide if a golf course proposal comes across their table, but he also told The Tribune he doesn’t think a course would “fare well” against the criteria. “They do not produce an extraordinary amount of income relative to the extraordinary amount of water that they require,” he said.
Golf courses use hundreds of millions of gallons of water per year. According to data obtained by The Tribune in 2023, Sand Hollow Resort used over 290 million gallons of water in 2022.
While new technology has improved the industry’s water efficiency, it would be impossible for a golf course to ever use less than nine million gallons per year in Utah, said Jeff Murdock, president of the Utah Golf Course Superintendents Association and previous superintendent of SunRiver Golf Club in St. George.
Murdock said golf does bring “tremendous value to a community,” though. Washington County’s golf courses have made the region a destination for novice and professional players. Black Desert Resort has hosted the PGA Tour’s Bank of Utah Championship each of the last two years, and the industry generated over $170 million in economic impact for the area last year, according to the Greater Zion tourism office.
(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) Players walk down the 18th hole during the first round of the Black Desert Championship PGA Tour golf tournament in Ivins, Friday, Oct. 11, 2024.
“[Golf] adds value to your community in multiple avenues — land cost, tax revenue, just to have something else to do,” Murdock said.
Bennett is not sure how the advisory committee will measure the economic productivity of a project’s water use, but he said currently on average, one acre-foot of water, about 326,000 gallons, is producing roughly $250,000 worth of gross domestic product in the county. “That becomes kind of a ruler right against which you might measure other proposed uses,” he said.
The board made some industries exempt from the policy altogether, including hospitals and residential developments. Hospitals fulfill a critical public interest, Bennett said. And while a large subdivision may use over nine million gallons in total, the district has already adopted water conservation and efficiency standards that would apply to each home.
That doesn’t mean housing developments can build large water parks or golf courses. Amenities within new subdivisions would not be exempt from the policy, Bennett said.
The district can’t stop developers that have their own water rights, though, which was the case for the recently developed luxury surf community Southern Shores. Those are regulated by the state, not the district.
Overall, the district hopes the policy will assuage concerns that a large water consumer could disrupt the county’s water security,
“This policy ensures a single community cannot approve a large water user without review and consensus of the broader community,” said Zach Renstrom, the district’s manager.
