Cedar Fort planners set conservative water-right minimum, schedule public hearing on ordinance

Cedar Fort — Town planning officials agreed on Tuesday to present a draft ordinance at a Feb. 10 public hearing that would set a conservative minimum amount of water rights for new residential connections, aiming to balance development with limited local water supplies.

Consultant Logan Riley, who sent a memo to the commission, summarized the town's water inventory and usage history and offered a range of technical recommendations. "If you guys want to be conservative and say, look, we're going to say an acre-foot for now just to make sure we're not, like, way under, then I think that's fine," Riley said during the remote presentation. Commissioners debated that approach but many indicated support for a lower baseline that still preserves system capacity.

The commission wrestled with competing values: several members urged a 1.0-acre-foot minimum to "bank" water shares and protect infrastructure, while others favored 0.75 acre-foot per residential connection as a defensible, conservative number based on recent consumption averages and to avoid overburdening new homeowners. "I'm a 100% with 0.75," one commissioner said, arguing it reflects recent average usage while leaving flexibility for larger-lot or high-use sites.

The ordinance framework the commission agreed to advance would also: - Distinguish residential connections (covered by the minimum) from commercial or institutional users, which would be evaluated separately. - Allow additional water-rights requirements via site-plan review or development agreements for larger irrigated areas or agricultural/livestock uses (for example, commissioners discussed the state-equivalent figure of 0.028 acre-foot per head of livestock as an additive calculation). - Use meter-based billing, impact fees tied to meter size, and development-agreement protections (mylar notes) to manage and recoup costs from overuse.

Riley told commissioners the town's documented water assets include roughly 200–212 acre-feet in its wells and spring sources, while some accounting differences remain between the town and the irrigation company that supplies water rights. "We need to get that resolved," a commissioner said, noting the discrepancy must be clarified before the ordinance is finalized.

Officials converted familiar measures to household-scale terms during the discussion: 1 acre-foot is about 325,000 gallons (roughly 902 gallons per day if averaged across a month), so a 0.75-acre-foot baseline would average about 677 gallons per day per connection. Commissioners said the practical implications — how much irrigable lawn, whether livestock are permitted, and how the town enforces overuse — must be specified in the ordinance language and related development standards.

The commission set a public hearing for its regular meeting on Feb. 10 at 7 p.m. to gather public comment on the water-rights minimum and other proposed code edits. The hearing package will include the consultant's memo and draft ordinance language clarifying how additional water needs will be handled through site-plan approval or recorded development agreements.

The planning commission's action is procedural: no final ordinance was adopted at Tuesday's meeting. The hearing will be the next opportunity for the public and irrigators to weigh in before the commission considers formal adoption.