Impact on Scarce Water Resources
Scarce Water Resources & Chemical Contamination
One of the basic civic compacts of Tribal, federal, state, and local government in the United States is the protection and stewardship of the quantity and quality of a community’s water supply. In the arid southwest, as temperatures rise and the demand for water increases, available water resources have become increasingly scarce. Native communities, including the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah's Shivwits Band, have always been stalwart stewards of water and land use, ensuring a safe and sustainable environment for current and future tribal generations.
65 Billion Gallons of Water for Golf Courses the Shivwits Don’t Want
Reef is now claiming that its end run on state and county water conservation policies is insignificant because it will only use 2,000 acre-feet per year of water for its golf courses. Even assuming that Reef’s low estimate proves accurate, it is certainly not insignificant. 2,000 acre-feet is 651,702,000 gallons of water each year. Over 99 years, that is more than 65 billion gallons of water, enough to fill 98,000 Olympic swimming pools.
Washington County Golf Courses already consume 38 percent of the total secondary water use in the Washington county. Utah golf courses water use (in acre-feet) - Google Sheets That’s more water than local residential usage and far greater than state, regional, and national averages. And it doesn't include the four additional courses Reef/Black Desert plans for the Shivwits Reservation. Over half of St George area residents’ average of 300 gallons of water per person per day (Utah DNR, 2024), is allocated to golf courses, ornamental grass, and lawns.
The disproportionality large volume of water used by golf courses in St George exacerbates “resource strain on both residents and downstream Lake Mead” according to a 2026 study published in the Sage Journal.
Golf courses in Washington County use more water than agriculture according to data in the Sage Journal article. Golf courses: A political ecology analysis of water usage in an arid area - Nora Lucas, Mehrnaz Haghdadi, 2026. "The Utah Golf Association (UGA) argues that golf courses use less than 1 percent of total diverted water, pointing instead to agriculture as the primary consumer (UGA, 2020). However, this framing obscures local impact. While agriculture remains dominant statewide, St George has more land dedicated to golf courses than irrigated farmland.” Even back in 2017, “the county’s 13 golf courses occupied 13,196 acres, surpassing the 12,984 acres then used for agriculture (U.S. Census of Agriculture, 2017." Further, “while agriculture was also shown to be a major water consumer, it serves essential food production needs, whereas golf tourism primarily benefits an elite subset of society.”
Many Utahans are concerned about potential negative impacts of large volume water use by data centers in the arid Southwest, especially during a drought. According to 2026 articles in the Wall Street Journal, on MSN, and even in Golf Superintendent Magazine: Golf courses in the US use about 30 times more water than data centers.
The proposed Reef Capital Partners/Black Desert four golf course development, resort, and airport on our reservation imperils scarce water resources, introduces chemical environmental hazards, and risks groundwater and well-water contamination.
Water Scarcity: As Southwest water supplies decrease, demand for existing water increases, especially for developers who want to use dwindling water resources to build ever larger and more luxurious resorts. In 2025, Governor Cox of Utah declared Washington County to be in a drought-related State of Emergency. He said that “water conservation is critical for Utah’s future” and urged all Utahans “to be extremely mindful of their water use and find every possible way to conserve.” Washington County, Utah, has implemented water conservation policies, including restricting the development of new golf courses.
The Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah's Shivwits Band holds a perpetual right to 4,000 acre-feet of water per year, nearly all of which Reef plans to take and use to irrigate its four Mojave Desert-located golf courses for the next century. In drought-stricken southwest Utah, these are among the most valuable water rights in the region, rights that the Shivwits Band Members would receive ever-increasing renumeration for over time, were it not for Reef's 'deal of a century.' Reef's plan to build on tribal land using tribal water rights appears to be an end-run around the water conservation efforts of the state and county governments and the expressed will of the Shivwits people.
Water Contamination: The impact of using the large volume of chemically contaminated wastewater to irrigate four golf courses in the Mojave Desert for nearly a century is of grave concern. Golf course “irrigation water” is not potable, clean, or drinking level treated water, but is instead toxin-containing, partially processed wastewater combined with river water or Gunlock reservoir water. The large volume of wastewater irrigation used by Reef Capital's four golf courses will introduce dangerous Forever Chemicals (PFAS) and other Chemicals of Emerging Concern (CEC), including pesticides, pharmaceuticals, microplastics, and nanoparticles onto Shivwits tribal lands and into downhill waterways such as the Santa Clara River, and nearby wells used by the Shivwits people and their Utah neighbors.
The documented environmental consequences of well-encroachment, groundwater contamination, and fish and wildlife destruction from toxin-containing irrigation water are a critical concern. EPA, United States Geological Society, and National Institute of Health research proves groundwater and well-water contamination from toxin-containing irrigation leaches emerging contaminants into shallow aquifers, creating severe risks of groundwater pollution and the contamination of private drinking wells located downgradient. Chemically contaminated, toxic golf course irrigation wastewater from Reef's planned development will adversely impact the local water supply, ecosystem, and virgin landscape and bioaccumulate up the food chain to people, plants, animals, and fish.
The Reef/Black Desert planned airport, too, will contaminate local groundwater and leach contaminants from lead and other hazardous chemicals from planes, including lead from Avgas. Moreover, the airport itself is planned to be built over the top of an old Apex mine/plant which is a former hazardous material dump site sanctioned by the EPA in 2001 for improper storage and disposal of hazardous wastes. Apex dumped dangerous chemical wastes into the plant’s retention and wastewater ponds for 4 years, which the EPA said posed a "moderate risk of exposure to humans and wildlife.” Though Apex purportedly cleaned up the site, it's highly likely hazardous chemical remainders continue to be present in the soil and will be disturbed by airport construction and distributed via air, soil, and water.
See Conservation groups oppose the Shivwits Jurisdictional Clarity Act.
For information and documentation on the hazards of chemically contaminated secondary wastewater irrigation, see The Health and Environmental Hazards of the Proposed Reef Capital/Black Desert Plan to Build Golf Courses on Shivwits Band of Paiutes Land.
