LOGAN — Earlier this month, Utah Governor Spencer Cox and Cache County Executive David Zook both mentioned that the state and the county are looking at potential new sites for three small reservoirs in Northern Utah as part of 400 possible reservoir sites throughout the state.

On KVNU’s For the People program last week, Dr. Jon Meyer of the Utah Climate Center at Utah State University said it’s quite complex to figure out how to continue to grow water resources, but this gives him hope.

“I really have to applaud Governor Cox and his team and everybody involved with seeing the risk that drought brings to the health and well-being of our state and acting to start the conversation, at least, about increasing our ability to mitigate drought.

“Hearing them speak about potentially increasing reservoir capacity about the state, I think out of everything from this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad drought we are currently in, that’s potentially one of the best silver linings I’ve heard,” according to Meyer.

He said it’s a challenge as population growth continues in the state.

“Both from internal growth and external growth as everybody’s moving to our wonderful state, and so we’ve got increasing demand,” Dr. Meyer added. “Based on observations over the last few decades combined with projections looking forward, the water supply is predicted to go down.

“We’ve seen it going down in the last few decades and our predictions going forward continue on with that trend.”

Dr. Meyer said both those things together mean that we’re going to have to be more water smart in just about every facet across the state from agriculture to industrial and residential urban use.

Anyone interested in learning more about their research into this is invited to visit the Climate Center at climate.usu.edu.