Economic Water Demand Functions to Value Urban Water Scarcity along Utah's Wasatch Front

Representing urban water demands economically is useful to understand how anticipated changes like population growth, conservation, water development, climate change, and environmental water demands may affect water deliveries and scarcity. Utah is the second driest state in the nation, while per capita water use is near the highest in the nation, averaging 167 gallons per person per day. This implies that creative water management will be ongoing in Utah’s future. Urban economic loss functions are estimated using residential demand functions for Utah’s Wasatch Front Metropolitan Area, which includes Logan, Salt Lake City, Ogden, Layton, Provo, and Orem urban regions. Water price, volume of water applied at that price, urban population, and price elasticity data are presented. Results show seasonal residential water demand functions and seasonal urban (residential, industrial, institutional, and commercial) economic loss functions for Logan, Ogden, Salt Lake City, and Provo metropolitan areas. Limitations to this method are outlined and discussion focuses on estimating urban water demand functions and potential economic losses input into hydro-economic models and ecological-economic models to evaluate promising solutions to Utah’s persistent water problems.