St. George, Utah, America’s fastest growing metro, fears water will run out
A century after her grandfather arrived to eke a living out of the hot, red dirt here, Susan Savage still structures her life around the groundwater. Twice daily, she checks the well her family’s pasturelands, orchards and animals depend on, watching its level drop in recent years amid punishing drought. These days, she and some others in this rural town of fewer than 1,000 people are casting a wary eye 15 miles south, where St. George, the nation’s fastest-growing metropolitan area, is churning out houses — and scrambling to find new water sources … The county’s population of about 180,000 is expected to more than double by 2050 — even though its single water source, the Virgin River basin, is dwindling as the West remains locked in the worst drought in 1,200 years.