As enthused as Christensen (the president of the project) is about Southern Shores, he said he is well aware of the optics of opening a luxury water-resort community in southwest Utah, which until recently was mired in severe drought and even now remains abnormally dry.
Christensen estimates he total amount of water that will have to be replaced each year due to evaporation at 135-acre feet. An acre-foot is nearly 326,000 gallons, which is enough water to cover an acre of land about one-foot deep.
“That’s 44 million gallons of water just to make up for the amount of water lost due to evaporation,” said Andrechak, adding it doesn’t account for the amount of water needed to fill the lakes or the water that will be used for the homes built on the site.
:elmofire:
it's about 166,520 cubic meters. which is too big for me to picture. this article is probably targeted at the agricultural community. acre-feet (or acre-inch) is typically only used in US agricultural contexts, because ag service providers and growers in the US can conceptualize an acre receiving an inch of water or otherwise consider how many days of irrigation it might provide for a field. i.e., in this case, the Surfin' USA amenity will lose this much water every year (more in hotter years).
which is the equivalent of giving a 1 acre field (0.4 hectares) a luxurious irrigation event every day for 3,240 days. of course, there are only ~158 frost free days in the warmest part of utah on average, so that would be about 20 years and 6 months worth of irrigation. assuming it never rains any frost free day during those 2 decades.