Southern Shores, a private, luxury community in Hurricane Valley, Utah, is billing itself as “Southern Utah’s First Water Sports Community.” The development, which broke ground in March of 2022, will feature three artificial lakes, one of which will have a standing wave pool. However, some have raised concerns about its water usage in a region recently plagued by drought.
As the Salt Lake Tribune reports, the project is being undertaken by Jason Christensen, Brittany Christensen and Cody Larkin of the company Immaculate Homes. Southern Shores is comprised of 56 lots, ranging from .53 to .81 acres. Thirty-four of them are lakeside lots with private boathouses. Prices for the lakeside lots are as high as $2.5 million, while the others range from $622,000 to $1.1 million.
The development promises to have three lakes. The largest is a 500 by 2,400-foot boat lake intended for water skiing, wakeboarding and wake skiing. The two smaller lakes both measure 100 by 700 feet. One of them is intended for surfing, paddleboarding and swimming, and the other is a cable lake with obstacles and ramps for wakeboarders. Each lake will be stocked with largemouth bass, perch and other quarry for fishermen.
However, the banner attraction is the surf lake’s floating UNIT Surf Pool. “This will be the first surf community in Utah,” Christensen told the Salt Lake Tribune. “It will have the second-largest standing surf wave in the United States. And the new technology that goes into that probably makes us unique in the world right now.” The 52-foot wide pool was manufactured in Germany and cost more than $1.5 million.
Artists rendering Southern Shores, featuring its wave pool. Source: Sentinel Creative//YouTube
However, southwest Utah has been experiencing severe drought. “When I start looking out a decade, I’m very nervous,” Washington County Water Conservancy manager Zachary Renstrom told ABC News in April. “Right now at the water district, we have an active plan to provide water for new construction for eight years. But after eight years, there starts to become a lot of question marks.”
Unsurprisingly, building a watersports-themed luxury community has raised eyebrows. However, Christensen claims that water conservation has been a factor in its development, saying, “We are trying to do everything we can to keep our water use down to a minimum and to ensure we are not wasting any in the ground.”
To that end, Christensen told the Tribune that the water rights were secured from private sources, and that the only water coming from the Washington County Water Conservancy District will be for the custom homes on the resort. The lake beds use materials intended to prevent water loss due to leakage or percolation, and the shoreline is covered with a cultured sandstone-like material to prevent water erosion. Finally, the main lake has a narrow island covered with foliage to act as a windbreak and reduce the amount of water lost to evaporation.
Christensen also noted that the wave pool itself recirculates water to improve efficiency, and the hourly cost to run it is “cheaper than running a boat for an hour, and we can cycle 20 people through the surf pool in that amount of time.”
With all that, Christensen estimates the total amount of water loss to evaporation will be 135-acre feet.
Edward Andrechak, water program manager for Conserve Southwest Utah, told the Salt Lake Tribune that this number is still a major concern. Though he credited the development’s efforts at conservation, Andrechak said, “That’s 44 million gallons of water just to make up for the amount of water lost due to evaporation,” and added that it doesn’t account for the water needed to fill the lakes or the water that will be used for the homes built on the site.
Despite that, all but one of the lakefront lots have already been sold, mostly to buyers from northern Utah. Christensen and his family will be among the homeowners.
