News Article

Courtney Flint, iUTAH team leader, and a professor of sociology at Utah State University, recently published an op-ed piece in The Salt Lake Tribune. In it, she discusses iUTAH’s collaborations with state agencies, Weber Basin Water Conservancy District, and municipalities from Salt Lake, Cache, and Heber Valleys. She starts the piece by pointing out “A recent article and an editorial in The Salt Lake Tribune have cast doubt on the ability of Utah state agencies to accurately measure water use.

Our interactions with state agency staff suggest that they are interested in improving the availability of water use data, but have been limited mostly by state legislative funding allocations and restrictions on their authority to require submission of timely and accurate data. 

As water resource researchers with iUTAH, a federally funded water project led by Utah State University researchers in collaboration with partners around the state, we would be the first to join others in saying that the better we know  how water is distributed and used, the better we can help our state manage its water resources and achieve future water sustainability. Yet it is often municipalities, water districts and irrigation companies that actually make many of the critical water infrastructure development and distribution decisions.”

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Courtney Flint is an iUTAH team leader, and a professor of sociology at Utah State University Credit: Utah State University