State hosts town hall on Unified Water Infrastructure Plan prioritization, timelines and funding questions

State water officials outlined a draft prioritization process for the Unified Water Infrastructure Plan and answered public questions at an Oct. town hall, saying the plan will centralize project submissions, rank projects against statutory criteria and produce recommendations to the Legislature on how much to seek for the Water Infrastructure Fund.

The town hall was led by Nathan Lundstad, director of the Division of Drinking Water and a member of the Water Development Coordinating Council (WDCC), and Eric Dixon of the Division of Water Resources, who said the state is piloting the new intake and prioritization process. “This is our guinea pig, public meeting, so if we have some hiccups and stuff here, just work with us,” Dixon said during his presentation.

The draft process combines projects submitted earlier this year into three “relevant agency” plans for drinking water, water quality and water resources, applies a provisional scoring system drawn from House Bill 280 (2024) with clarifications from House Bill 285 (2025), and proposes annual updates to agency plans and quadrennial updates to the Unified plan. The state plans to open the Utah Project Portal for applicants to confirm and update submissions by late October or early November, officials said.

Why it matters: The state’s aim is to coordinate multiple existing funding paths, reduce duplicated requests to the Legislature and create a single prioritized list used to request funding. “Part of the UIP goals is to make this a better process, create a more comprehensive, prioritized list of water projects, and centralize the application process,” Lundstad said.

Key elements of the draft prioritization

- Scope and scale: Officials said initial submissions indicate roughly $18 billion of needed water infrastructure investment over the next 20-plus years and that about $840 million of projects were listed for the first two years — roughly $420 million per year based on current submittals. The state-level portion applicants expect to request is roughly $5.8 billion, officials said. Those figures reflect the first submission round and are expected to grow.

- Scoring criteria: The provisional scoring uses six weighted criteria drawn from statute and committee input: community hardship (using local MAGI where applicable), whether the project addresses a critical public-health, safety or regulatory issue, water-efficiency benefits, design maturity, applicant-stated priority, and a rural/equity component to prevent all funding flowing to large municipalities.

- Project size and maximum grant shares: The draft recommends maximum grant shares that decline as project size increases (for example, smaller projects could receive up to 75% grant share initially, while projects at or above $10 million would be capped at about 20% grant). Officials emphasized those are draft caps for public comment and not assurances of awards.

- Distribution approach: A recommended split would reserve half of any Water Infrastructure Fund (WIF) appropriation to be divided 40% drinking water / 30% water quality / 30% water resources, with the remaining half allocated by WDCC balancing agency priority lists.

Funding and timeline questions

Officials said the WIF currently holds only a few million dollars after consolidation of an existing city water loan fund; larger funding will require legislative appropriation. “Right now, they aren't,” Shalane DeBernardi, assistant director at the Division of Water Resources, said in response to a question about immediate new funding, adding the Board of Water Resources consolidated its city water loan fund into the WIF and provided a small initial appropriation. State officials said any new WIF funding the WDCC requests would likely be available for projects in fiscal 2027, contingent on the Legislature.

Eligibility, portal and public access

Officials said the Utah Project Portal will allow each submitting entity to log in, view and update its own projects, and receive email notification tied to the submission contact. Relevant-agency plans and draft rankings are being used to prepare the UIP but are not being published until the UIP process is farther along; the UIP itself must be adopted by March 1 under statute, and the draft must be sent to the State Watersheds Council by June 15 as required in statute. The portal contact provided during the meeting was uipprojects@utah.gov.

Questions from small communities and agriculture

Multiple small or homeowner associations asked how they can confirm submissions and be considered if they lack stable staff or board continuity. Officials said once the portal is live, entities will be able to log into the account associated with their submission and update records; state staff offered to look up submissions on request.

Officials acknowledged statutory measures such as MAGI-based hardship scores do not cleanly fit irrigation districts and agricultural projects. “We are open to suggestions,” Dixon said, adding staff are exploring ways to make agricultural projects eligible through public-benefit scoring (for example, conservation or recreation benefits). For some irrigation or wholesaler entities, officials said they will consider taxing capacity or similar measures rather than MAGI.

Other program details and next steps

- Capital asset management plans: HB 285 includes a capital asset management plan requirement for applicable entities; officials said the detail of that requirement and how it applies to irrigation companies will be clarified in rule-making and technical assistance.

- Dam safety: Projects tied to dam safety upgrades are handled through an existing Division of Water Resources priority list and grant program and remain separate from this UIP priority process.

- Annual updates and ongoing submissions: The state intends the relevant-agency plans to be updated annually and the UIP to be refreshed at least every four years; the portal will accept new or revised project entries on an ongoing basis with an annual cutoff for ranking.

Public comment and rulemaking

Officials invited feedback on the draft prioritization PDF linked from the project webpage and said they will post proposed administrative rules through the Office of Administrative Rules for public comment. The public comment period tied to the town hall was scheduled to remain open through mid-November.

Community concerns raised at the meeting included reliability and public-health issues for small mountain systems with insufficient year-round supply, difficulties in board continuity and data-entry for small associations, and questions about whether residents should fund projects outside their service area. Drinking Water Division staff described their sanitary surveys and deficiency points and said they can provide technical assistance and discuss regional consolidation options for systems with persistent health or safety deficiencies.

Ending

Officials stressed the plan and the scoring are drafts and subject to change based on public comment and legislative action. They encouraged entities to submit or update projects once the Utah Project Portal opens and to use the project email for follow-up lookup requests and to receive future notices from the program.