ST. GEORGE — As one of the fastest growing cities in the nation, St. George has to face the challenges associated with a rapidly growing population base.

And in the desert, perhaps no commodity is as valuable as water.

St. George Mayor Michele Randall, during her State of the City address on Tuesday, outlined what the city is doing to ensure it can provide and conserve enough water to maintain future resilience as the population continues to increase.

It's a topic that has (deservedly) garnered a lot of attention, too.

In February, the Washington County Water Conservancy District reported that St. George remains on pace for its driest winter since city records were first recorded in 1895, while the county is on pace for its lowest water year on record.

Washington County commissioners called on residents to reduce water consumption and pray for rain last month as dry conditions continued into the new year, with the county currently sitting in an extreme drought — one level above exceptional drought — according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

But Randall on Tuesday affirmed that beyond prayers, the city has a 20-year plan in place to secure new water resources.

"Water will always be high on our list of priorities," said Bryan Dial, energy services director for the city.

In 2024, city leaders completed the second phase of the St. George Regional Water Reclamation Facility project. It first created a regional secondary water system that will help replace the use of culinary water — or drinking-quality water — for outdoor watering. For the second phase, the capacity of the treatment plant was increased from 17 million gallons per day to 25.4 million gallons per day.

While the treatment facility is owned and operated by St. George, it is considered a regional facility as wastewater is treated from not only St. George but the surrounding communities of Washington, Santa Clara and Ivins.

The water produced at the facility meets all of the requirements of Type I reuse, which is acceptable for outside irrigation and safe for human contact. The city has been using Type I reuse water at golf courses, cemeteries, schools and some residential areas since 2006.

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Other accomplishments, Dial said, include the Hidden Valley irrigation tank replacement and the construction of the Homestead well.

"The Hidden Valley project replaced an existing 130,000-gallon steel irrigation tank with a 1 million-gallon concrete tank to meet the growing needs of the community," Dial said. "The Homestead well was drilled on a city-owned parcel within the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve. It will provide redundancy to the well fields of ... groundwater wells."

Another big step is the design completion of the Graveyard Wash Reservoir project. The 2,100-acre reservoir will be used to store reuse water from the wastewater plant during winter months, and its storage will provide secondary irrigation to around 5,100 homes.

The reservoir project is currently awaiting final permitting from the Army Corps of Engineers.

"When it comes to planning for sustainable water supplies to meet the future demands of St. George, we do have a plan," Scott Taylor, the city's water services director, wrote on a post on the city's website.

Undoubtedly, the city's plans for water security and conservation come at an opportune time as it tries to balance a growing population amid increasingly dire drought conditions.

Randall's full State of the City address can be found here.

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