Utah Division of Water Resources creates Utah’s Open Water Data portal
By Marcie Larson
The Utah Division of Water Resources announced June 12 that Utahns can now easily access water use data through a new interactive data portal. Utah’s Open Water Data portal allows Utahns to zoom and click an area of interest on an interactive map, resulting in a pop up that shows the water use in that area. Citizens can also download the underlying data. The tool improves water data accessibility and transparency. It can be accessed at water.utah.gov/opendata.html.
“We wanted to present the water-use data in a way that is accessible and understandable,” said Aaron Austin, denior GIS analyst for the Utah Division of Water Resources. “This tool allows anyone to easily find, explore, and download this important information.”
The portal was released in conjunction with a report that contains an analysis of residential, institutional, commercial, and industrial water use data gathered by the Utah Division of Water Rights for the 2015 water year. The analysis reflects updated and improved methodology based on recommendations from a 2015 legislative audit, a 2017 legislative follow-up audit and a 2018 third-party analysis of the processes used by the Utah Division of Water Resources.
“We are excited about the methodology accuracy and other improvements this data release represents,” said Rachel Shilton, River Basin planning section manager for the Utah Division of Water Resources. “A lot of people worked very hard on this.”
While the improvements are encouraging, these changes make comparing the 2015 numbers to past water-use data problematic due to the significant methodology differences. Changes in recommended secondary water-use estimate inputs as well as the transfer of second homes from the commercial category to the residential category are examples of updates that impact categorical or total use estimates. As a result, the Utah Division of Water Resources will use the 2015 data as the new baseline for comparison and planning moving forward.
Likewise, comparisons from region to region within Utah are problematic due to differences in climate, the number of vacation homes, and other factors. Comparisons between Utah’s water use numbers and data from other states have little value given that there is no nationally consistent methodology standard for analyzing and reporting water use numbers.
Administrative processes were changed in 2016 to ensure community water system data corrections are updated in the Utah Division of Water Rights’s database and website; however, these updated processes did not occur for the 2015 data. As a result, the quality-checked data released June 12 will often differ from what is reflected on the Utah Division of Water Rights website. That said, the data released June 12 underwent both legislative audit and third-party review, and the Utah Division of Water Resources is confident that it is both reflective of regional water use and useful for planning purposes.
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