As St. George grows, where will its water come from? The greater Washington County population is poised to more than double by 2050.

• Author: Alsever, Jennifer

STUNNING RED ROCK TERRAIN, warm weather, and low housing prices are drawing thousands of remote workers and retirees to St. George, making the southwest Utah city among the fastest-growing metro areas in the nation. The greater Washington County population of 180,000 is now poised to more than double by 2050.

St. George is also thirsty. It has 11 golf courses within its 78 square mile borders, and its residents use twice the amount of water per person per day than the national average. Only recently did the county begin implementing more aggressive water conservation efforts and rules banning grass in new retail and commercial developments.

Local officials now say the area will run out of water within a decade. In response, they have taken drastic--and controversial--steps to ensure future hydration: a $1.3 billion to $2 billion, 140-mile pipeline to retrieve 27 billion gallons of water out of the Colorado River that feeds into Lake Powell. The pipeline has been in the works for 16 years, but Utah is pushing forward on a supplemental draft environmental impact statement with the Bureau of Reclamation for the project. The statement claims that the state has not been taking its full "share" of allocated water under River Law between seven Western states.

"Everybody talks about water here," says Zach Renstrom, general manager of the Washington County Water Conservancy District, which supplies water to St. George and most of the rest of the county. "There's a lot of energy and anxiety and stress about how we're going to move forward."

The big problem with the proposed Lake Powell Pipeline is that the 100-year-old water law governing the Colorado River didn't anticipate a megadrought--the worst in 1200 years--nor did it anticipate climate change. Now, there is simply not enough water for St. George to take from Lake Powell and the river. Add to that the six Western states are lawyering up to fight the pipeline to preserve their fair share of the water.

The pipeline adds tension to an already heated water crisis. Seven states, 40 million people, two nations and three tribes, 4.5 million acres of irrigated agriculture, and every major city in the Southwest are dependent on the Colorado River. Yet river flows are down 20 percent since 2000, says Brad Udall, a Colorado State University climate and water scientist. He and numerous scientists concluded that half of the water loss is due to higher temperatures from human-caused climate change, while the other half is due to lower precipitation. As temperatures heat up, scientists expect to see an additional 10-20 percent loss in flow by 2050.

The Colorado River feeds huge reservoirs, including Lake Mead and Lake Powell, which are also hitting record water level lows. Lake Powell is down 70 percent since 2000. Back then, it was 95 percent full; today, it's just 25 percent full, Udall says.

This summer, the US Department of the Interior demanded that Western states reduce their water consumption by 2...