Dusty Spurs and Polished Boots

One sentence

We already set the money aside, here is how it pays for itself, and nobody who cannot measure their water gets charged for it.

The division of labour

instrument	does	lives in
Spurs	builds the cold chain — chiller, cooler, butcher, distribution — co-operatively owned, and pays farmers to convert	73-10g amends
Dust	charges a floor on evaporative loss, metered users only	73-32 Part 4 enacts
Polished Boots	siting conditions for thermal load facilities — water priced, building conditioned	54-26 Part 10 enacts

How they interlock

Boots installs the meter. Dust reads it. Spurs spends the money. The connection between Boots and Dust is measurement; the connection between Dust and Spurs is a general appropriation, not a rebate.

⭐ That distinction is deliberate. West Lynn Creamery v. Healy (1994) struck a charge whose proceeds were returned to the class that paid it. Here the payers are metered industrial users and the recipients are unmetered farms — different groups, no rebate, no neutralisation.

Why three bills and not one

Utah Constitution Art. VI §22 — single subject. A water charge, data-centre siting conditions and an agricultural appropriation in one instrument is the shape that draws a single-subject challenge. Three separate bills is the safer architecture, and we would like that judgement checked.

The drafting posture

A Utah bill is a set of surgical edits to live code, not a freestanding document. So none of these invent a home: Spurs amends the Agricultural Water Optimization Act; Dust takes the vacant Part 4 of the Great Salt Lake chapter the Legislature built in 2023; Boots takes the vacant Part 10 of the large-load statute enacted for exactly this class of customer.

⭐ The protections are inherited rather than drafted. Section 73-3-8 already conditions the state engineer’s approval on “the proposed use will not impair existing rights.” A challenge to a new clause sitting in that list has to explain why the clause above it is not also a taking.

Utah Code touched, all three

section	status	role
73-10g-201	live · $152M unobligated	Spurs amends — the programme already exists
73-32-401 → 405	vacant	Dust enacts as Part 4
54-26-1001 → 1007	vacant (ch. runs to Part 9)	Boots enacts as Part 10
65A-16-101	live	defines “basin” — not redefined
65A-16-201	live	the fund collections go to — not recreated
54-17-601	live	defines “qualifying energy resource”
73-3-3, 73-3-8	live	savings clauses point here

What it does

The state pays the capital cost of converting an irrigated acre, lends the rest at three percent, and leases the freed water instream to the lake. It never names a crop. Tiers are defined by acre-feet of verified depletion reduction and the capital each conversion needs.

And it builds the plant that makes conversion possible — chillers, coolers, a licensed small-scale butcher, and aggregation and distribution — co-operatively owned by the farms served, one member one vote, grant to stand it up and patient money to pay it off.

⭐ It rides on money already appropriated. Utah enacted the Agricultural Water Optimization Act at 73-10g-201 and put $200 million into it; as of November 2024, $48 million was obligated and $152 million was still sitting there. This is mostly instructions for money the state has already set aside.

Known weaknesses — ours

the loan	A failed conversion is a defaulted loan plus a converted field. The tier structure grants the capital the state benefits from and lends only the business half, but the risk allocation deserves a look.
out-years	The instream lease runs annually; whether the Watershed Enhancement Program can hold multi-year lease obligations is unresolved.
co-op governance	One member one vote is stated; capture by an active minority is the standard failure and is not drafted against.
crop budgets	Enterprise budgets for onions, garlic, potatoes and cut flowers are not yet sourced and are marked as absent rather than estimated.

Open questions

1. Can a state instream lease of conserved agricultural water be held without triggering forfeiture under Utah’s beneficial-use doctrine, and does the existing water banking framework already cover it?
2. Does co-operative ownership of the processing facility create a securities question when membership shares are transferable?
3. Is the 3% loan rate a subsidy that must be scored, and by whom?

Full text and the tier arithmetic →

What it does

Three numbers, all already on file: water in, water out, and the water bill. In minus out, less what left inside a product, is evaporative loss. If the bill already covers that at the reference rate, nothing is owed. If it does not, the difference goes to the lake.

It is a floor, not a tax. Anyone already paying commercial rates for what they evaporate is compliant the day it passes.

⭐ An earlier draft charged by destination and would have died on Sporhase v. Nebraska (1982). This one never asks where anything goes — §402(3) forecloses the question in the text — and charges non-return at the point it happens, which is what a severance tax does.

⚠ It does not reach unmetered agricultural diversion, and that is deliberate and printed. A well, a ditch and no meter means no three numbers. Agriculture is addressed by Spurs, with money instead of a charge.

Known weaknesses — ours

§401(4)	“Highest volumetric rate” is set by suppliers who are not parties and could move it. No notice mechanism.
§402(2)	No collection machinery. Who bills, on what cycle, with what appeal, and what happens on non-payment.
§403	The metered/estimated line invites the obvious dodge: do not meter. Mitigated in Boots for facilities; open for everyone else.
§404(2)(d)	“Requires a person to purchase water the person is entitled to divert” — a savings clause doing heavy lifting. Is it enough?
—	No severability clause.

Open questions

1. Is this a fee, a tax, or a regulatory charge under Utah law, and does the answer change the vote required to enact it?
2. Does charging a rights holder for evaporative loss impair the right itself, notwithstanding §404(2)?
3. Is the metered/estimated distinction defensible as administrability, or does it fail rational basis as applied to two users of identical water?

Full text and the reference rate →

What it does

It is a zoning ordinance. A community stating what may be built and on what conditions — the power settled since Euclid v. Ambler (1926).

Nothing is prohibited. Reject heat to rock, bring water in from outside the basin, or recover and return your vapour, and pay nothing. Evaporate basin water and pay the commercial rate; evaporate treated drinking water and pay the residential rate. The water is priced; the building is conditioned.

§	in English
1002	cool however you like; pay for what you evaporate, more if it was drinking water
1003	bring 150% of your load in renewables and 36 hours of storage, any technology
1004	lend that capacity to the grid through the agreement this chapter already requires
1005	racks and cooling below grade; the town decides what goes on top
1006	meter it — unmeasured water is presumed wholly consumed
1007	already built? 2035 — or your own published reduction schedule, if you have one

⭐ §1006(4) is the enforcement. No fine to litigate and no inspector to argue with: a facility that will not measure is assumed to have destroyed everything it took. Metering becomes the cheapest thing it can do for itself.

Known weaknesses — ours

§1001(7)	Five megawatts sweeps too wide — catches cold storage, food distribution, some manufacturing. Hospitals and schools are exempt; the grocery warehouse is not.
§1002(4)	The offset against Dust is asserted, not engineered. Two instruments, one acre-foot — who collects first?
§1005	No duration on the easement. Perpetual or operating life are very different asks.
§1006(4)	A burden-shifting presumption with no stated standard of proof.
§1007(2)	“Published schedule” is undefined — published where, and what stops a schedule that promises nothing?
—	No federal carve-out. There is a federal data centre in this basin that a state siting statute cannot reach.

Open questions

1. Does §1005 effect a taking as applied to a parcel already zoned industrial, where the condition attaches at permit rather than purchase? Nollan and Dolan want nexus and rough proportionality — is heat-island and land-use mitigation enough of both?
2. Does §1007(2) create a uniformity problem by giving different deadlines to similarly situated facilities based on a voluntary act taken before enactment?
3. Is the potable premium defensible as conservation, or does charging more for treated than untreated water invert public-health logic in a way a court would find arbitrary?
4. The Commission is mid-rulemaking under this chapter (Docket 25-R318-01). Does a new part arriving now disrupt it, and should the effective date wait?

Full text, the rate arithmetic and the site plates →
All three bills, with current section numbers →
The one-page case, for a desk or a hearing room →

figure	source
$1,821/AF commercial summer · $2,586/AF household top tier	Salt Lake City Public Utilities FY27 schedule, effective 1 July 2026 — slc.gov/utilities/fy27rates, read 12 Aug 2026
bench and valley elevations; 1,748 ft at Farmington	USGS Elevation Point Query Service, read 13 Aug 2026
code vacancies at 73-32 Part 4 and 54-26 Part 10	le.utah.gov, probed 13 Aug 2026
$152M unobligated in the optimisation programme	state reporting, November 2024
tier arithmetic, $/AF, farm net figures	a script in the repository you can run
what a rights holder pays per acre-foot	NOT SOURCED. The spread between this and $1,821 is the load-bearing figure of Dust, and it is not printed anywhere because we have not verified it.

⚠ Water-usage-effectiveness figures used in the replacement-ratio arithmetic (1.8 L/kWh) are industry-typical rather than measured, and are stated as assumptions wherever they appear.