I am here today as a scientist, an environmentalist if you prefer, but I assure you that I speak from a position of logic, not hysterical emotionalism. My subject is water and ourselves as living beings who need it.
I wish to thank my husband Mikki for all his help making graphs, gathering information and hauling in these informative materials so graciously donated to us by Tucson Water. Cheers to Tucson Water, the Arizona Department of Water Resources, the Bureau of Reclamation and the Central Arizona Project for their quality information on our water supply. The Arizona Department of Water Resources is now creating a water atlas of Arizona, which will allow for an assessment of our water supplies and deliveries statewide.
I have been interested in water issues since the mesquites out by San Xavier dried up in the 60s due to excessive groundwater pumping. While living in Lake Havasu City, I attended town halls that dealt with the problem of water supplies and our purchase of land with a well in Tucson has made the subject even more enticing.
Old timers told me it used to be more verde than it is now so what happened? The good times and money and building and new people all the time is what happened. Tucson made a spectacular frontier boomtown during the twentieth century and Lord, did we have fun! Resources were plentiful and land was cheap and Arizona was the Promised Land producing a population increase from 7,500 in 1900 to almost 6 million today.
Things do not look so green now and the Santa Cruz is a dry wash and soft sand in Rillito Creek blows where water once flowed and the cottonwood leaves like silver dollars in the sun have mostly vanished. Concrete and asphalt and LA landscaping wilting under the merciless sun and groundwater pumping drying out the precious aquifer beneath Tucson. Tucson Water’s daily pumping capacity was almost reached in June 2005, yet new subdivisions are online and the city and county may someday declare a water emergency in Tucson.
We have had a beautiful rainy summer but states to the north of us did not share in God’s largesse and the Colorado River watershed did not recharge the big red river. We pray for rain to fill the reservoirs that help bring water to our communities. While researching this project, I had to refresh my memory about the term ‘acre feet’ when discussing water resources. An acre foot is water one foot deep covering an area of about one football field, or about 326,000 gallons. That’s a large quantity of water if you are delivering it on a burro like they did in the good old days when every drop was still important. So 12” of rain is an acre foot of water all over everything. The average rainfall in Tucson is about 12 inches, an unusual event for the past decade.
If a drought is declared on the Colorado River, the CAP water delivery will be cut. The Central Arizona Project brings in 60,000 acre feet a year from the Colorado River directed towards recharge of the aquifer but even this water does not halt the fall of the water table as the population grows and more demands are made on the water supply. As it is now, demand is outstripping supply like a fool who spends beyond his means and then wonders why he has nothing. Foolish proposals like the Superstition development up north tout the potential 1,000,000 population who would ‘only’ use 100 gallons per day per person. This is extracting 100,000,000 gallons more water every day from an overextended system and disrupting an important watershed as well. I believe that prospective subdivisions statewide should be reviewed with water resources in mind. Remember that the purpose of government is not to increase the size of the community in order to collect more taxes. The purpose of the government is to provide essential services for the people. The CAP is a long range service project, not a convenience for developers.
Depending too much on the CAP is bad news for long-term sustainability of water resources, given that the river flow is proven unpredictable. Sustainability means you do not use more than can be returned for use again. Sustainability is a cycle and our water resources are not sustainable at the present level of use plus the projected population growth. Maybe this projection is in error. We can hope that resource constraints do not become so apparent that we end up standing in line for a water allotment. In the meantime, our community can fund an immediate expansion of the CAP recharge facility and so utilize our entire allotment of CAP water, which will double capacity. Expanded recharge is the opportunity to obtain more CAP water that may be lost if a drought is declared and since these cutbacks are based on actual use; it makes sense to increase Tucson’s CAP facility.
If more CAP water is obtained through public investment, this water should be earmarked for aquifer recharge, not for extending water service. I believe the real estate term for this situation is ‘build out’. We have reached build out in our water resources. A new infusion of CAP water will remediate but will not be enough resource to continue expansion, no matter what the immediate economic consequences. Does the community of Tucson have a 100-year supply of water? It may, but not at our accustomed comfortable level. Since water supply is a public resource, the use of high water rates to force conservation may be called into legal question. It is possible that limits on consumption may be decided on a per capita basis. According to surveys, we are now using at least 170 gallons per person per day. About 38% of our water is from the CAP. Are you prepared to find water savings of 38% around your home?
Of course all drought management plans emphasize conservation by the domestic consumer, but possibly other measures could be taken. Cessation of more water hookups comes to mind as a procedure to limit the drain on actual resources. Perhaps a few speculators will lose money, but such a dire possibility should not limit city and county action to limit water hookups. I do think that domestic users will expect conservation and cooperation from business and government on this crucial issue. People are not fools and water restrictions should apply to all, including well connected developers.
The sustainability issue must be addressed in terms of water resources, population growth and expected levels of water consumption. If the year 2006 water production of 170,000 acre feet is to be continued, then steps must be taken to halt the drop of the water table below us lest we pump it dry or cause subsidence. 54% of our water resource is groundwater, which has been declared a “non-renewable water source” with “legal availability diminishing over time”. It is actually not legal to drain groundwater supplies.
Ground subsidence due to excess groundwater pumping is cited as an actual and potential problem in the metropolitan Tucson area, including the Rio Nuevo projects downtown, Tanque Verde, the railroad, the gas pipeline, Avra Valley and Green Valley, and most of Tucson bounded by Rillito Creek and I 10. Continued groundwater deficits could cause subsidence by 2025. Any building permits issued should take this into account.
Recently in our town there has been a controversy surrounding golf courses and the necessity to water them so they will produce a facsimile of old England out here in the Sonoran Desert. Fortunately Mr. Huckleberry has spoken out against more golf courses like the Diamond Ventures development near Saguaro National Park East, and the Santa Rita Ranch in Corona de Tucson. The Quail Creek people in Sahuarita actually want to build a second golf course. There are 47 golf courses in the Tucson area and they consume 11,400 acre feet of drinking water a year, plus they use 8,800 acre feet of effluent. The golf courses also use 4% of our CAP delivery. Sahuarita’s Town Lake Park ‘substantially’ exceeded its maximum annual water allotment and now will be using effluent for the lake You can decide for yourself if this is an appropriate use of water supplies. I heard via the grapevine that the Tucson Country Club wants cheap effluent to water a golf course or they will drill their own wells and pump groundwater. They will need a deep drill to find water up there now, so what next?
Drought is pervasive and this has been the second hottest overall summer in the United States, even though we in Tucson were blessed with a wet summer, we are still behind 15” in actual rainfall replentishment since 1995.
I suggest honoring current water hookup contracts with landowners but placing a moratorium on any more until the water sustainability problem is resolved. Review past City Council actions like Resolution 14610, an emergency resolution pushed through by former Mayor Volgy enabling water for a far northwest development that just slurps up that water. Perhaps city policy to award water commitments should be restricted to the current landowners, rather than becoming saleable attachments to dry land. Somebody made a pile of money on the Dove Mountain deal brokering our water supplies.
As the Tucson Water Plan 2000-2050 states “There may be a theoretical limit on the number of people who can sustainably reside in the Tucson area.” I say an overall water deficit indicates that this limit has been reached. The pumping capacity of Tucson Water was almost reached during the hot June of 2005.
The mayor and Council may choose to initiate study to develop city water policy on sustainability issues. Perhaps the current Mayor and Council will update the water policy to reflect changing conditions and resource limitations. If Lake Mead were declared in drought conditions, Tucson could lose enough to cause a significant increase of groundwater overdraft unless the CAP water has recharged enough to allow further pumping. This is yet another reason to increase our recharge capability now.
Lake Mead now stands at 1126 elevation as of September 18, 2006, down from 1135 elevation on May 5, 2006. Drought conditions will be declared if Lake Mead drops to 1075 feet, so we have a little leeway while we sit here hoping for rain on the Colorado Watershed. Tree ring studies show eight droughts over the past 8000 years, the most recent centered around 1299 A.D. The depopulation of the American southwest around 1275 was attributed to the last long-term drought. This was seven centuries ago and perhaps another big one is on the way. A review of climactic studies published in Science News in November 2005 predicts a drying trend in the Southwestern United States. The Mojave Desert is on the march in all directions.
Actual rainfall data for Tucson from 1949 through 2005 does indicate a drying trend, with a temporary respite during our summer of 2006. If statistics are correct, we cannot expect another summer like this one for years. In the past 56 years, 38% of those years had less than 10 inches of rain but during the past ten years, 60% of the years had less than 10 inches of rain. The lowest recorded rainfall during that time occurred in 1953, but was an isolated instance. Year 2006 is off to a lusty start and we hope for more rain this winter.
Predicting the future is problematical. Are we in the beginning of a decades long drought or just a short-term fluctuation? Oldtimers who could remember 1920 told me that the hills of Bisbee ran with springs back in the good old days when chulas tracked in moist sand and Wilcox Dry Lake always had water. I’ve seen the live oaks lose their leaves and burgeon the next year but it’s been years since plenty winter rain on the Colorado but only the desert seems to know about it.
Keep in mind that the projected available groundwater credits available to Tucson water in 2025 must be dependent on runoff that may not happen. As a community, an investment in the recharge program using CAP water is an investment in water supplies for all. Our city leaders have a responsibility to provide continuing services to the people who live here, but sheer numbers of people and gallons of water limit this capacity.
Recent developments along the Colorado River include at least two instances where water brokers in Nevada are attempting to import water from Arizona in order to enable the construction of houses and shopping malls in Nevada. Evidently, this broker Wind River Resources sold water to the Virgin River Water Company in Nevada and is mixed up in an Arizona water import entitlement scheme forwarded by an outfit called Scenic Enterprises. A complete report on this boondoggle is found at the Arizona Department of Water Resources home page. Somehow, Vista Verde Domestic Water Improvement District in Mojave County has something to do with this unfortunate water export scheme that Arizona cannot afford. It would be interesting to know if Jim Petersen is involved in what I will call a water theft from the people of Arizona.
A friend in Mojave County said that he was surprised at the lack of opposition from Tucson concerning the brouhaha about Las Vegas dumping sewage into the Colorado River. I’d like to know who dealt with this significant problem on our behalf. I don’t think I want Sin City’s sewage coming out of my faucet.
Friday’s Arizona Daily Star had an article on the Citizens Task Force Proposed Water Conservation Plan, which held several expensive ideas for subsidizing the purchase and installation of low water use equipment. These subsidies equal $75 of the cost for retrofitting home toilets, rebates of $250 per unit to apartment owners for water saving changes, $200 rebate each for installing commercial waterless urinals and mandatory retrofits of all buildings when sold. This represents a $3,500,000 investment by the city and even more by the citizens. If this idea goes through, I guess we should head for the local plumbers and hardware stores to spend our money on saving water. Or we could save around our homes without spending any money. Whatever we do, I hope that our water savings would be recharged and the cycle of water sustainability begun.
Our political candidates had interesting quotes concerning our water resources.
Bill Montgomery for Attorney General wrote: “It will not mean much for Arizona’s future if I reduce our worst in the nation crime rate and fail to safeguard our Colorado River water rights and enforce water quality where called for. Consequently, I pledge to protect our future resource needs while fighting for our current quality of life.”
David Jorgenson wrote: “Water issues are everyone’s problem and do not respect political, geographical or ideological concerns.”
And Jan Brewer, our Republican Secretary of State wrote: “Protecting Arizona’s Colorado River supply is of critical importance to the entire state. In the end, I believe we can have wise and efficient policies for use and conservation of water that can be balanced so as not to unfairly burden any one sector of our economy.”
Thank You
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