Among the recent ideas for saving the Great Salt Lake is the installation of meters on all irrigation water use. This can be an important method but it should be understood that installation of meters themselves will not save a gallon of water.
What is required is to attach the new meter to a price schedule which increases per gallon as volume of water used increases. To make this work, a water company must employ a meter reader who is able to also convert a series of meter readings into a monthly bill, and a person who will send the bill to each customer.
Also the meter reader will have to get access to the back corner of each customer’s lot because that is normally where main lines are; not just drive up the road and digitally collect the meter reading as most cities now do because the treated water is connected to a pipe in the road.
This may be easy for the large irrigation companies but it is a heavy lift for the hundreds of small neighborhood companies that have employees who work basically on a volunteer basis.
To make the change even more difficult, the company president is quite often the person who irrigates the largest area, and it will be very painful for him or her to increase the cost of their own water. My point is that an attempt to meter all irrigation water may succeed for the larger companies, but is probably doomed to failure for the small neighborhood companies.