# Does South Jordan have secondary water? > Part of the city has it and part does not, so it is an address question rather than a city one. How to check before you offer, and what you take on. - Author: Kelsey Earl, Realtor, Keller Williams South Valley - Location: South Jordan, Utah - Section: The Herriman Insider - Published: 2026-11-04 - Canonical: https://homesbykelseyut.com/blog/does-south-jordan-have-secondary-water - Contact: 801-419-8917 ยท Kelsey.earl@kw.com --- **Quick answer:** Part of the city has it, not all of it. South Jordan delivers secondary water to a portion of its homes from four canals drawing on Utah Lake, and the city has said a citywide system is not currently economical. So it is an address question, not a city question, and the city's secondary water map is where you answer it. --- South Jordan has secondary water in part of the city and not in the rest. Whether a particular house has it is a question about that address, not about the city. That distinction is the whole point of this post, because buyers routinely assume a city either has secondary water or does not, and South Jordan is a clear case of neither. Source: City of South Jordan Secondary Water page, read November 2026. Canal start dates below are the city's published 2026 dates. ## What secondary water actually is Untreated irrigation water, delivered through its own pipe, used for landscaping rather than for drinking. It is not filtered at the canal and it is not for people or pets to drink. The point of it is cost. Watering a lawn with treated culinary water is expensive, and in a dry state it is also wasteful. A separate irrigation supply is how a lot of Utah cities handle that, and [Herriman runs the same model](/blog/do-herriman-homes-have-secondary-water) a few miles west. [Riverton does too](/blog/does-riverton-have-secondary-water). ## Where South Jordan's comes from Four main canals, drawing from Utah Lake. The city also owns the Beckstead Canal, which irrigates Mulligans. The canal companies move the water and maintain the canals; the city handles delivery from the canal to your connection. That split matters more than it sounds. When something goes wrong, the answer to "who fixes this" depends on which side of the connection the problem is on, and the homeowner owns more of it than most buyers expect. ## The season Roughly May 1 to October 15, with the actual dates set by each canal company rather than by the city. For 2026 the city published these start-ups: | Canal | 2026 start | |---|---| | Welby Jacob | April 27 | | South Jordan Canal | April 30 | | Utah and Salt Lake Canal Company | May 5 | | Utah Lake Distributing Canal | May 5 | Tentative shutdown was October 15. Two practical consequences. The first is that your landscaping has to survive on culinary water at either end of the season, which is the part people forget when they plant in April. The second is that you are billed year round even though the water runs for about five months. ## The part that costs people money **You maintain the system from the stop and waste valve onward.** Everything on your side of that valve is yours, including bringing it into compliance with backflow regulations. On an older property that can mean real work. **The water is not filtered at the canal.** You screen or filter it at your delivery point. If you do not, the debris ends up in your sprinkler heads, and a drip system without a filter is a system that clogs. **You will probably want a pump.** Pressure varies, and the city recommends a pump with an automatic shut off so it does not run dry when flow drops. **Nothing goes on the easement.** The city has to be able to reach its infrastructure, and a shed or a slab built over an easement is a problem that surfaces at the worst possible time. That is South Jordan City Municipal Code 16.04.210. **New connections are their own process**, under Municipal Code 13.08.100, and shares are leased annually with applications taken January through March. ## What to actually do before you make an offer I am Kelsey Earl, a Realtor with Keller Williams South Valley, and this is the part I want buyers to do while they still have leverage rather than after closing. **Check the city's secondary water map for the specific address.** Not the street, the address. This is the single step that answers the question, and it takes a few minutes. **If the house has it, find the stop and waste valve and look at the condition of what is downstream.** Ask when the backflow assembly was last tested. Ask whether there is a pump, how old it is, and whether it has an automatic shut off. **If the house does not have it, price the culinary water instead.** A yard watered entirely on treated water costs more to run, and that is a permanent operating cost rather than a one time repair. [What it costs to water a yard](/blog/how-much-does-it-cost-to-water-a-yard-in-herriman) is the same arithmetic one city over. **Ask what happens in April and October.** New landscaping installed in spring often needs water before the canal turns on. **Check the easements on the plat.** [A plat map shows them](/blog/what-is-a-plat-map-in-utah-real-estate) and it is worth reading before you plan a shed, a pool or an extension. ## Why part of the city has it and part does not Worth understanding, because it explains why the answer is so uneven street to street. Secondary water follows the canals, and the canals follow the farming that was here before the subdivisions. Where a neighborhood was built on ground that already had irrigation running to it, connecting houses to that supply was straightforward. Where it was not, running a second pipe network to every lot is a large capital project for a benefit that only shows up on summer water bills. The city has said plainly that a citywide pressurized secondary system is not currently economical. That is a budget statement rather than a promise about the future, but it does mean a buyer should not assume coverage is coming to an address that does not have it. The practical read: older ground near the historic canal alignments is more likely to have it, and newer infill away from them is less likely. That is a tendency rather than a rule, which is exactly why the map matters more than the generalization. ## What it does and does not tell you about the house It is easy to over-read this. Secondary water is a cost item and a maintenance item. It is not a proxy for the quality of the neighborhood, the age of the house or anything else. What it does tell you is how a yard will be watered and what you will pay to do it. A large lot with secondary water and a working pump is cheaper to run than the same lot without. A large lot without it is not a bad buy; it is a buy with a higher summer operating cost, which belongs in your arithmetic rather than in the surprise column. What it does not tell you is whether the system works. A connection on a map is not a functioning sprinkler system, and the gap between those two is where the money goes. ## Secondary water is not the same as a water share These get confused constantly and they are different things. Secondary water here is a city delivered service. [A water share is stock in a canal or irrigation company](/blog/how-do-water-shares-work-in-utah), which is personal property that may or may not transfer with the land. If a listing mentions shares, that is a separate question with its own paperwork, and the answer is not "the city handles it." ## Who this matters most to Anyone buying a house with a real yard, because the running cost difference over a decade is not trivial. Anyone buying an older property, because the homeowner side of the system has had longer to deteriorate. And anyone planning to build or landscape, because the easement and connection rules shape what you can put where. It matters least if you are buying something low maintenance with a small footprint, which describes a reasonable share of what [Daybreak](/blog/what-does-the-daybreak-hoa-cover) and the newer parts of the city offer. ## What to do next Look up the address on the city's secondary water map before you write an offer, and put the pump, the backflow test and the filter on your inspection list if it has a system. [What South Jordan is like to live in](/blog/what-is-it-like-living-in-south-jordan-utah) covers the wider picture, and [the best neighborhoods there](/blog/best-neighborhoods-in-south-jordan-utah) vary more on this than buyers expect, because the city grew in stages and the irrigation infrastructure grew with it. [Send me the address you are considering](/contact) and I will check the map with you and tell you what to put in the inspection. --- Source: https://homesbykelseyut.com/blog/does-south-jordan-have-secondary-water Any market figure in this post is accurate only where a date and source are stated alongside it.