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.
The proposed Reef Capital Partners/Black Desert golf course development and resort 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.
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.
