Great Salt Lake Water Markets

Data collection on water the potential for water markets to address Great Salt Lake water conservation needs.

To create cost estimates we build on the approach of Edwards et al (2017) to create conservation cost curves estimates for each of the Bear River, Weber River, and Jordan River watersheds. We designate potential conservation measures as occurring in the agricultural or urban sectors. Estimates come from other sources and are then applied to the case at hand. Overall we estimate the conservation potential and cost savings of 15 measures, shown in the table. While the list is not comprehensive, efforts were made to include the measures likely to be implemented.

Conservation measures by category.
Urban Residential: low-flow toilets
Residential: low-flow showers
Residential: high-efficiency clothes washers
Residential irrigation: rainwater harvesting
Residential irrigation: watering at night
Residential irrigation: scheduling
Residential irrigation: partial turf conversion
Institutional irrigation: watering at night
Institutional irrigation: scheduling
Commercial irrigation: watering at night
Commercial irrigation: scheduling
Secondary wastewater reuse
Agriculture Conversion to sprinkler irrigation
Improved irrigation efficiency
Canal piping

For each conservation we estimate the quantity of water that could be conserved as well as the cost of conserving that water. We create a low, baseline, and high estimate of costs for each measure. We also create a high, baseline, and low estimate of the amount of water made available by each measure. The low cost estimate is combined with the high water availability estimate to arrive at an upper bound of each water supply curve; similarly the high-cost and low water-availability estimates are combined to create a lower-bound.