March 12, 2025, 3:20pm MDT
Latter-day Saints’ Church of Jesus Christ works to complete the Water Conservation Project in 2025.
The project involves installing smart irrigation controllers in over 3,000 conference houses in six states in the western United States – is one of several projects that the Church is embarking on to save water on property around the world, in order to care for God’s children and wisely manage the creation of God’s God.
Bishop Gerald Casse said in a recent church newsroom report: “As members of the Church, we are disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, living the gospel, and part of the gospel is to care for the community we live in.”
Read the following to learn how we are accelerating water conservation efforts in the western United States, including Temple Square in Salt Lake City.
Save water in the West of the US
As part of its environmental management efforts in the West of the United States, the church plans to install nearly 1,800 smart irrigation controllers in 2025 at meeting houses in Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming and parts of Montana.
“Smart controllers can be adjusted to suit the weather, which means saving a large amount of water that is not saved when you’re manually adjusting with the controller,” said Andrew String Fellow, Intermountain Facilities Services Landscape Manager.
The church reported that unlike traditional landscape controllers, the smart controllers used cellular connections to monitor weather conditions and optimized and optimized irrigation timing based on existing and predicted weather conditions. This optimization allows the church to water plants and the grounds more sustainably.
“When properly maintained and tuned, it’s very easy to get a (smart controller) at 20% consumption chunks than traditional controllers use.”
According to the report, the smart controller can also allow water managers to remotely coordinate their irrigation systems, increasing the convenience and efficiency of the system.
At Temple Square in Salt Lake City, ground crews are using smart controllers in conjunction with water landscaping as part of the ongoing renovation of the ground.
Certain settings on the smart controller can be used for grass, flowers and trees, according to Scott Karpowitz, irrigation supervisor at the headquarters facility. “Everything has its own settings and unique parameters, giving those plants the water they need.
Church water landscaping efforts at Temple Square include planting 30% of the trees, removing 35% of the grass in the landscape, adding water-efficient plants to flower beds, and reducing the annual number of flowers and plants used in landscaping by 30%.
In a recent interview with Church News, Jenica Sedgwick is the sustainability manager for the church, operating under the direction of the bishop’s Speaker, providing insight into the church’s focus on conserving Temple Square and the waters of the West of the United States.
She said that because the church’s water conservation efforts are based on local ecological needs and resources, the church will focus its efforts in arid areas in the western United States and other drought-prone regions in Latin America, the Pacific and South Africa.
“It’s not just about conserving water for conservation,” she said. “This is about recognizing our environment, recognizing our water availability and adjusting what we (the church) do to fit that ecological context.”
According to Sedgwick, the Church’s water conservation efforts form one of several priorities the Church adopted under the approval of the first presidency to integrate environmental management principles into a wide range of operations. Learn what the Church does to respect the sacred responsibility of cherishing the planet in this episode of the Church News Podcast.
