Water Update from Arizona Agenda
After decades of policies encouraging growth and farming at all costs, there are signs that Arizona may finally be coming to grips with its status as a dry state.
The following article is reprinted from Arizona Agenda by Hank Stephenson, June 26.
Gov. Katie Hobbs’ recent decision to limit certain new developments that don’t have assured groundwater — while light on short-term practical effects — is one sign that the state is finally taking a serious look at its growth-first policies. Many cities are simply shifting the sources of their water by buying out farmland and the associated water rights — but even that is a net benefit, as farms consume a lot more water than people consume. And it seems like every week, we spot a new story about a city that is rethinking its water needs and voluntarily cutting back usage (as long as there’s some federal money involved).
But if Arizona is going to address our water crisis seriously, we’ll have to re-evaluate agriculture, which accounts for an astounding 74% of Arizona’s water use, and do more to ensure that what little water we do have is protected from pumping and dumping pollutants.
Farms have done a lot to increase efficiency over the years, and there’s some encouraging research and new projects that could dramatically reduce water usage on farms without sacrificing soil quality.
The University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, for example, has about $45 million in “water irrigation efficiency” grant money that it’s using to incentivize farmers to adopt drip irrigation systems, which it says can boost water efficiency by a minimum of 20%. When all that money is allocated, it expects to save around 165,000 acre-feet of water per year. That’s about the same amount of water that the City of Tucson pulls from the Central Arizona Project, former lawmaker Ethan Orr, who is leading the project for UA, told us recently.
Still, for every reason to be optimistic about Arizona’s water future, there’s an equally valid reason to be terrified.
Last month’s landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling on what qualifies as a “wetland” is a huge blow to environmentalists who have used the Clean Water Act to protect Arizona’s ephemeral rivers and thus our water supply. If applied to Arizona’s ephemeral streams, as seems likely, it will mean the end of federal authority to withhold permits for new developments alongside such streams and to regulate discharged pollutants into the streams, the Arizona Daily Star’s Tony Davis reports.
The ruling is likely a big win for a copper mine and a large housing development in southern Arizona, Davis writes. The Copper World mine project in the Santa Rita Mountains and a proposed 28,000-home development called Villages of Vigneto near the San Pedro River will be more likely to happen under the new interpretation of the law since both have been held up by the Clean Water Act.
But the long-term effects of the ruling will go far beyond those two projects, effectively leaving regulation up to the state.
“For all practical purposes, Arizona is out of the Clean Water Act,” Patrick Parenteau, a water law expert, told Davis. “Your streams are mostly ephemeral. It’s incredibly serious.”
It’s nice to see policymakers slowly, cautiously, acknowledging that Arizona is in a crisis and throwing some money at the problem. But if we’re going to navigate our way through the thirsty future, the state will have to think a lot bigger about how we protect what water we have and how we use that limited supply of water wisely.