U.S. Water News Online
PHOENIX -- If Arizona doesn't manage its water better, some of the state's shiny new cities could dry up like the deserts they sprang from.
Growth is pushing communities ever closer to water crises:
''We've been very careful about getting water, hoarding water, protecting water, and fighting with other people about water. But now, we have to face up to the reality that we're not going to get any more,'' said Phoenix attorney Grady Gammage, a member of the CAP governing board.
''We have a lot, but it's finite. And now, we have to think about how we're going to use it in the future.''
Toward that end, Gov. Jane Hull last week created a 20-member water commission and charged it with studying Arizona's water supplies, uses, and what policy changes to recommend to the Legislature by 2002.
Commission members will find plenty to talk about:
Frank Welsh, a Phoenix activist and author of How To Create a Water Crisis, said the commission should not only consider water supply, but water quality.
''It's an issue that's more sophisticated than Arizona's ever been,'' Welsh said. ''We don't worry about getting the best drinking water for us.''
Conservation and better management of agricultural use, he said, could improve the quality and safety of drinking water.
On paper, Arizona shouldn't have a water problem. The state gets enough water from the Colorado River alone to serve nearly three times the state's current 5 million population.
But moving water from the Colorado to every corner of the state is expensive and impractical, which is why so many Arizonans get their water from groundwater or from local rivers and streams, especially in rural areas. Groundwater has always been the cheapest and most readily available source; but now, it's the most threatened.
''With the population we have now, we are more than capable of pumping out the supply faster than it can be recharged,'' said Rita Pearson, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources.
Overpumping not only depletes a natural resource that will be needed by future generations, it leaves current users without a backup during drought, and it can lead to land subsidence and poor water quality.
Under the 1980 Groundwater Management Act, the state closely regulates groundwater in five mostly urban areas: Phoenix, Tucson, Prescott, and parts of Pinal and Santa Cruz counties.
Each area has its own conservation goals and restrictions. In Phoenix, developers must prove they have an assured water supply for 100 years before they can build homes and businesses. By 2025, Phoenix users should be recharging back into the ground as much water as they take out.
A system of canals, pipelines, reservoirs, and underground storage basins could allow the Valley to support twice its current 3 million population.
Agriculture still uses 53 percent of the Valley's water, and industry takes an additional 7 percent.
The Valley's biggest cities rely mostly on the CAP and the Salt River Project (SRP), which manages water from the Salt and Verde rivers. But many smaller communities still use mostly groundwater because it's what they can afford. Citizens Utilities will spend more than $6 million just to bring a small amount of CAP water to the Sun Cities. Peoria is spending $36 million to treat SRP and CAP water.
The CAP is the state's last and most expensive water frontier. The $4.7 billion system, which carries 1.5 million acre-feet a year from the Colorado River, was built to give Phoenix and Tucson a reliable supply for the future.
CAP officials say the water should be fully developed by 2035, though that depends in part on how several Indian tribes manage the nearly 600,000 acre-feet they will control through a series of federal agreements. The tribes are expected to lease back as much as one-third of the water to cities, expanding the available supply, but again, at a higher price.
An even bigger unknown is what will happen the next time drought hits the Southwest. If the Colorado runs low, Arizona's CAP rights fall behind California and Nevada.
The SRP is already looking at two dry years and will supplement its regular supply this year with excess CAP water. Salt River officials also are watching Prescott, where growth is tugging at the regional watershed.
''Prescott is affecting our watershed on the Verde River. And if we lose that, we would have to use more groundwater,'' said John Sullivan, the SRP's associate general manager for water.
Most water officials agree the big decisions should be made soon, before the remaining water supplies are committed. Gammage believes water is the ideal tool to help create a long-term growth blueprint, one that envisions how Phoenix will look when it matures.
''We made the decisions about growth and then sent our emissaries out on a jihad to get water,'' Gammage said. ''We should say we have limits, and then use them.''
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