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John Fleck / Journal Staff Writer Tue, Apr 10, 2012
Demand Exceeds Supply
Kelly Redmond, a government climatologist who lives at the interface between the
water nature provides and the humans who want to use it, came up with the best
definition of drought I’ve seen: “insufficient water to meet needs.”
The word “drought” most often conjures up the natural side of the equation – the
amount of rain and snow that falls from the sky. But Redmond, of the Western
Regional Climate Center in Reno, captures a central truth about life in an arid
landscape.
Drought is not only about supply. It also is about demand.
Redmond’s words came to mind over the past week as I watched the differing reactions to the Rio Grande runoff forecast
for April.
At San Marcial, the last Rio Grande measurement point above Elephant Butte, the forecast calls for 29 percent of the
long-term average. If it holds up, it would mean 13 of the past 15 years have had below-average runoff.
Any way you look at it, that qualifies as a drought.
The result is very little river water for farmers. “We’re crushed,” said Gary Esslinger, who manages the Elephant Butte
Irrigation District, delivering what water there is to Lower Rio Grande Valley farmers.
Wet years have a way of covering up a multitude of water management sins. Drought exposes them for all to see.
Back in the 1990s, we had all the same underlying water management problems in this state, but a string of wet years
left Elephant Butte full and allowed us to ignore our problems.
A run of 13 dry years out of 15 years since then on the Lower Rio Grande has left us with insufficient water to meet the
needs of all the water users in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.
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It’s hard to keep track of who’s suing who as a result.
The New Mexico Attorney General’s Office last year sued the federal government over the way Elephant Butte’s water is
accounted for and managed, a feud that has either directly or indirectly dragged in other water users up and down the
river, from the farmers in the Albuquerque reach of the river to Las Cruces, all choosing sides.
Meanwhile, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas can’t agree on how to account for who owns how much of the pool that
sits now in Elephant Butte. At a meeting of the Rio Grande Compact Commission in Austin last month, representatives
of the three states ended up in a standoff on the question. The water accounting sheets developed by the three states
explaining their competing views of hydrologic reality run to 23 pages total.
Then in the past few weeks, the early release of water from Elepha ...
1. 10/24/13 Demand Exceeds Supply | ABQJournal Online
www.abqjournal.com/99175/upfront/demand-exceeds-
supply.html 1/3
abqjournal.com http://www.abqjournal.com /99175/upfront/dem
and-exceeds-supply.htm l
John Fleck / Journal Staff Writer Tue, Apr 10, 2012
Demand Exceeds Supply
Kelly Redmond, a government climatologist who lives at the
interface between the
water nature provides and the humans who want to use it, came
up with the best
definition of drought I’ve seen: “insufficient water to meet
needs.”
The word “drought” most often conjures up the natural side of
the equation – the
amount of rain and snow that falls from the sky. But Redmond,
of the Western
Regional Climate Center in Reno, captures a central truth about
life in an arid
landscape.
2. Drought is not only about supply. It also is about demand.
Redmond’s words came to mind over the past week as I watched
the differing reactions to the Rio Grande runoff forecast
for April.
At San Marcial, the last Rio Grande measurement point above
Elephant Butte, the forecast calls for 29 percent of the
long-term average. If it holds up, it would mean 13 of the past
15 years have had below-average runoff.
Any way you look at it, that qualifies as a drought.
The result is very little river water for farmers. “We’re
crushed,” said Gary Esslinger, who manages the Elephant Butte
Irrigation District, delivering what water there is to Lower Rio
Grande Valley farmers.
Wet years have a way of covering up a multitude of water
management sins. Drought exposes them for all to see.
Back in the 1990s, we had all the same underlying water
management problems in this state, but a string of wet years
left Elephant Butte full and allowed us to ignore our problems.
A run of 13 dry years out of 15 years since then on the Lower
Rio Grande has left us with insufficient water to meet the
needs of all the water users in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.
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It’s hard to keep track of who’s suing who as a result.
The New Mexico Attorney General’s Office last year sued the
federal government over the way Elephant Butte’s water is
accounted for and managed, a feud that has either directly or
indirectly dragged in other water users up and down the
river, from the farmers in the Albuquerque reach of the river to
Las Cruces, all choosing sides.
Meanwhile, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas can’t agree on
how to account for who owns how much of the pool that
sits now in Elephant Butte. At a meeting of the Rio Grande
Compact Commission in Austin last month, representatives
of the three states ended up in a standoff on the question. The
water accounting sheets developed by the three states
explaining their competing views of hydrologic reality run to 23
pages total.
Then in the past few weeks, the early release of water from
Elephant Butte to meet U.S. treaty obligations to deliver
water to Mexico triggered an international tiff that still hasn’t
settled. U.S. users complain that starting releases this
4. early in the year, as Mexico requested, ensures that water will
be wasted as it makes its way down to Mexico’s
diversion gates, soaking into the dry riverbed – losses that have
to be borne entirely by the U.S. farmers.
Rep. Steve Pearce, R-NM, called the problem “a huge loss for
those who so desperately depend on this water for their
jobs. Farmers in this area have already suffered the effects of
drought and do not need additional interference.”
Texas farmers, who also feared they would be hurt, juggled
their irrigation schedules. They hoped that running some of
their water down the river at the same time as Mexico’s water
would help cut the losses that otherwise would have been
inevitable as the dry riverbed soaked up the scarce supplies.
Underlying the drought-triggered fussing is a long-term court
battle, more than two decades old with no clear end in
sight, over “adjudication” of the Lower Rio Grande’s water –
the process under state law of determining who is entitled to
how much of the valley’s scarce water. One key question in that
litigation is how to account for groundwater pumped by
farmers when their river water supplies fall short.
None of this would be much of a problem but for 90,000-plus
acres of thirsty farmland in the Elephant Butte Irrigation
District. That’s the “needs” part of Redmond’s definition.
5. The current drought should not come as a surprise. The San
Marcial runoff numbers for the past 15 years bear a strong
resemblance to the drought of the 1950s – close enough in
historical memory that it’s the kind of eventuality worth
planning for.
It appears most of the Lower Rio Grande’s farmers will get by
OK again this year by pumping groundwater (again) to
make up for the river’s shortfalls. But the farmers’ problems are
a reminder that nature is providing New Mexico
insufficient water to meet our needs. We’re in drought.
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UpFront is a daily front-page opinion column. Comment
directly to John Fleck at 823-3916 or [email protected] Go
to www.abqjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the
editor.
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal
mailto:[email protected]
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6. Topic: Water Department: Feature Comments: 1
Arizona returns to the desert
The worst drought in a century could bring home the true costs
of growth
Feature story - From the March 21, 2005 issue by Matt Jenkins
The grounds of the Central Arizona Project’s headquarters, on
the northern edge of Phoenix, have the
spareness of a G eorgia O’Keeffe painting. The main building is
finished in faux adobe, and the landscaping is
very much in the Southwest-chic, heavy-on-the-cactus style.
There isn’t a patch of grass in sight.
But alongside the walkway that leads to the building’s entrance
sits what looks like a part from an oversized
jet engine: an 8-ton stainless-steel impeller that was yanked out
of one of six giant pumps on the Colorado
River and deposited as a sort of monument outside the CAP’s
front doors. I t’s the first hint of the big dam-era
braggadocio that waits inside.
On the far side of the building runs the CAP canal itself, a
powerful, shimmering symbol of the conquest of
the Colorado. The 80-foot-wide, 25-foot-deep canal carries 1.3
million gallons of river water per minute from
the Colorado River, 160 miles away, to Phoenix, and then
another 170-some-odd miles south to Tucson. I t
provides plentiful supplies to fuel the state’s chart-topping
urban growth and serve as a hedge against drought,
and it has become the weapon with which Arizona has been
waging a sort of riverine Cold War.
7. I n his lushly appointed office, the CAP’s general manager,
David S. "Sid" Wilson, reclines in a chair and takes
a swig of water from a bottle with a "Central Arizona Project"
label on it. He begins by declaiming, "I am a
beneficiary of some long-range foresight on the part of people
who were planning for the future of Arizona."
His telling of the CAP legend begins with the flinty pioneers
who first began farming the Salt River Valley in
the 19th century. Then, he moves into the story of the Salt River
Project, one of the federal Bureau of
Reclamation’s first big dam programs, which harnessed the Salt
and Verde rivers and allowed Phoenix to gain
a foothold in the desert in the early 1900s. He relates how
California preyed on Arizona’s water for nearly half
a century, and emphasizes the story’s triumphant denouement in
the 1960s, when Arizona’s political
heavyweights won congressional approval for the CAP, in one
of the last great political battles of the dam-
building era.
But there’s a side of this story that Sid Wilson tells with less
gusto. I f the CAP helped the desert bloom, the
current drought may take the bloom off the rose. The water
levels in Lake Mead and Lake Powell — the
Colorado River’s drought-protection savings accounts — have
been dropping since 1999. This winter’s storms
have given some hope that the drought may be turning around;
snowpack in the Colorado Basin is 111
percent of average for this time of year. But even if the drought
is easing, recovery is still a long way off: The
Bureau of Reclamation has said that it could take decades of
average precipitation to refill Lake Powell.
Federal officials have indicated that, if reservoir levels continue
to drop, U.S. Secretary of the I nterior G ale
8. Norton could declare a formal shortage on the river as early as
2007, in order to ensure that states with
higher-priority rights continue to receive water. Representatives
of the seven Colorado River Basin states —
Arizona, California, Nevada, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and
New Mexico — have been meeting to come up
with a plan by April to reduce water use and stave off a formal
shortage declaration. The stakes are
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particularly high for Arizona: The CAP, which has the worst
water rights on the river, would be the first to see
its spigot turned off (HCN, 1/24/05: A crisis brews on the
Colorado).
I n the world outside Wilson’s office, the Arizona development
boom continues. Crews in stucco-spattered
work trucks finish off legions of new homes in the desert, and
bulldozers clear the way for tens of thousands
more.
But behind the scenes at the CAP and Arizona’s other water
outfits, the true dimensions of the water shortage
are beginning to come into focus. The drought could overwhelm
the state’s fitful efforts to achieve
sustainability, and water managers are grappling with the
growing realization that, despite a century’s worth
of efforts to engineer water shortages out of existence, nature
still bats last.
9. River brinksmansh ip
I f there was a Moses moment on the Colorado River, it was in
1922, when the seven basin states parted its
waters among themselves with the Colorado River Compact.
Arizona, Sid Wilson says, wound up an
underdog.
"California had the biggest population and the most political
power, and they got the biggest allocation" — 4.4
million acre-feet each year. "And then you had Arizona, with
2.8 (million acre-feet)," says Wilson. (An acre-
foot is approximately enough water for a family of four for one
year.)
The compact cleared the way for the Bureau of Reclamation to
begin building Hoover Dam and creating Lake
Mead, which stored water that, at the time, was most needed in
California. But Arizona refused to ratify the
compact, and in 1931, the state sued California, claiming that,
in effect, it was monopolizing the river’s water.
The U.S. Supreme Court threw out the suit, but Arizona kept up
the fight: I n 1933, Arizona G ov. Benjamin
Moeur even called out the state’s National G uard in an attempt
to stop the construction of Parker Dam,
where Los Angeles diverts water from the river.
Although Arizona’s fightin’ approach didn’t work, the next
decade brought a growing realization in the state
that it needed more water from the river. I n 1944, Arizona
finally signed the Colorado River Compact as a
prelude to asking Congress for federal funding to build the
CAP, which would deliver roughly half of Arizona’s
share of the river to farms and cities in the central part of the
state.
10. But even with the compact signed, it took more than two
decades of politicking and legal fights to convince
Congress to approve the Central Arizona Project. The project,
finally started in 1973, would eventually require
two more decades and $4 billion to build.
The CAP signaled Arizona’s coming-of-age on the river, but it
came with a catch: I n the hierarchy of rights to
the river’s water, the project sits at the very bottom. (The
state’s other 1.3 million acre-feet of Colorado River
water, which is primarily used for agriculture along the river
itself, has a somewhat higher priority.) "I n times
of shortage," says Wilson, "Arizona could lose every drop of the
1.5 million acre-feet of CAP water before
California lost the first bucket out of its 4.4 million acre-feet."
To guard against that possibility, Arizona has salted away its
unused supply of Colorado River water in
underground "water banks." Aquifer recharge projects take
water out of the CAP canal and spread it into
man-made basins carved out of the desert. From there, the water
percolates into the aquifers below. Since
1989, the state has deposited about 4 million acre-feet of water
underground.
That has turned the CAP into something of a weapon in
Arizona’s long-running fight with California. The
water banks have kept Arizona’s entitlement out of the hands of
its neighbor across the river, which, from
1953 until 2002, had been siphoning off excess water that the
other states didn’t use. The banks have also
helped Arizona forge a political alliance with Nevada, by
providing Nevada with a place to stash some of its
11. own water. (Although Nevada would be cut off after Arizona in
a shortage, it has only a 300,000 acre-foot
annual allocation of the river, all of which goes to Las Vegas.)
But the water-banking tactic hasn’t won Arizona many friends
among the other five Colorado River Basin
states. They question why, six years into the most severe
drought in memory, Arizona is still taking water that
it doesn’t immediately need out of the Colorado River system —
essentially transferring water into its own
drought savings account while drawing down the reservoirs that
serve as the collective account for all the
Basin states.
And the banking program hasn’t proven to have the legs that
Arizona had hoped. "The problem is, we had a
plan and we put together a 30-year program to recharge
(ground)water," says the Mississippi-born Wilson,
who habitually says "drouth" instead of "drought." "Well, the
drouth came along after about 10 years."
Growing on credit
G rady G ammage Jr. is a prominent Phoenix attorney who left
the Central Arizona Project’s board of directors
in January after a 12-year stint. His law firm occupies the 18th
floor of downtown Phoenix’s One Renaissance
Square, and as an attorney whose clients include some of the
city’s large developers, he gives a lot of thought
to growth and water. G ammage is a longtime believer in the
CAP, but he has recently concluded that the
project has given his state a false sense of security.
Before the construction of the CAP, Phoenix and its sister to the
south, Tucson, relied mainly on groundwater.
12. I n the post-World War I I growth boom, the two cities started
pumping water from the ground far faster than
the state’s meager rain and snowmelt could replace it. By the
1970s, Arizona was overdrafting its aquifers by
about 2.2 million acre-feet a year, and some areas saw
groundwater levels drop hundreds of feet below the
surface. The state was mining the water out from under itself,
and in some places on the west side of Phoenix,
the earth slumped three feet.
There are many different versions of what happened next; the
simplest is that Cecil Andrus, President Carter’s
secretary of the I nterior, refused to ask Congress to fund the
CAP unless Arizona promised to wean itself from
mined, largely nonrenewable groundwater. Andrus didn’t want
to feed the state’s addiction; instead, he
wanted to help it find a more sustainable diet of surface water.
By providing an alternative, renewable water
supply, the CAP could help stanch the run on the aquifers.
So in 1980, the state Legislature passed the Arizona G
roundwater Management Act, arguably the most
progressive groundwater-management policy in the country. The
act required developers to prove they had a
100-year "assured supply" of renewable surface water before
they could begin building. Phoenix, Tucson and
Prescott were designated as "Active Management Areas" and
given a goal of "safe yield" by 2025 — when the
amount of water pumped out of the cities’ aquifers is supposed
to be no more than is balanced through rain or
artificial recharge. The safe-yield goal was a basic tenet of
water sustainability, a sort of hydrologic
equilibrium that balanced use with replenishment and helped
preserve the groundwater for the future.
"The notion of the act was that you shouldn’t continue to grow
13. just based on groundwater — but it wasn’t
that you should never use groundwater," says G ammage. "I
think the concept all along was that
groundwater was an insurance policy; it should only be used in
times of need."
But that concept has largely been lost, he says. Thanks to what
amounts to a loophole in the law, more and
more new development is being built atop groundwater.
To accommodate new housing developments in areas where it
wasn’t practical to pipe CAP water, the state
Legislature in 1993 created the Central Arizona G roundwater
Replenishment District. Developers could build
subdivisions that could only be served by groundwater, but the
homeowners would have to pay the
groundwater replenishment district to find surface water and
pump it back into the aquifers elsewhere.
When the Legislature created the groundwater replenishment
district, says Cliff Neal, the district’s manager,
"The amount of excess CAP water was far in excess of
anybody’s imagination as to what the groundwater
replenishment district would need. (People thought the district)
could just go out and pick up whatever’s on
the market at the time."
However, as Arizona’s population shot skyward, he says, "That
theory kind of went out the window."
The district now has obligations to find substitute water for
125,000 houses, primarily in the Phoenix area.
That’s roughly three times as much as originally projected, and
over the next 10 years, the district itself
14. anticipates that its obligations could grow to 342,000 new
houses.
"I t’s staggering," says G ammage. "I t’s grown all out of
everybody’s expectations."
Because the district has no authority to deny service to new
developments, some observers predict that
enrollment could actually climb to more than 500,000 houses in
the next decade. And the replenishment
district is further overextended because even cities that do have
access to river water have signed up with the
groundwater district as well.
"Rather than build systems to take direct delivery of CAP water
and treat it, a lot of cities on the West Side
(where growth is happening fastest) decided they’d just join the
groundwater replenishment district," says
G ammage. "The result of that is that a lot of the future growth
of Phoenix is going to be using mined
groundwater. That’s got everybody thinking, ‘Well, wait a
minute: We had this goal of safe yield, and we’ve
sort of gutted it by enacting the district.’ "
As a result of the groundwater replenishment loophole,
combined with some continued groundwater use by
farms and a drought on the Salt and Verde rivers that started in
1996, groundwater levels in the Active
Management Areas are still going down, despite the massive
infusion of CAP water. I n 2002, the most recent
year for which data are available, the Phoenix Active
Management Area used approximately 200,000 more
acre-feet of groundwater than it recharged, and the Department
of Water Resources has stated that, even
though the rate of the water-level’s decline will decrease, "all
credible projections for the year 2025 indicate
15. that we will still be in an overdraft situation."
Until last year, the district planned to meet its replenishment
obligations entirely with excess CAP water.
However, the district’s new 10-year plan, completed last
November, acknowledges that the rules of the game
have changed: "I t is clear that (the groundwater replenishment
district) and other excess CAP water customer
needs far outstrip the estimated excess CAP water supply."
That was without even considering how the drought — or global
warming — might reduce the amount of
water available through the CAP.
Ch anging realities
The legions of new, tile-roofed homes filling Phoenix and the
surrounding Salt River Valley are signs of the
record-breaking growth in the area. Massive expanses of desert
are being bladed for new developments that
contain thousands of homes.
The city of Phoenix itself has about 1.4 million people. The
entire Phoenix metropolitan area — which includes
large suburbs like Tempe, Mesa and Scottsdale — has more than
doubled in population since 1980, and is now
home to about 3.5 million people. Until recently, newcomers
were drawn by the area’s lower-than-average
housing prices compared with other cities in the West. Now,
rapidly increasing home values have driven
another spate of home buying: As stock market returns have lost
their luster, an increasing number of
speculators have begun investing in Phoenix’s white-hot real
estate market.
16. The growth is showing no signs of slowing down. I n 2003, the
Phoenix metropolitan area issued around
48,000 permits for new homes, a record that most observers
thought couldn’t be beat. Then, in 2004,
Phoenix promptly topped it with more than 60,000 new-home
permits. Middle-of-the-road projections show
the metropolitan population reaching 9 million by 2030.
Such matters are of more than passing interest to Tom
Buschatzke, the city’s water adviser, who occupies a
workaday office in City Hall. A 1930s-era hand-colored map of
the valley and its irrigation districts leans
against the wall behind his desk.
The Phoenix metropolitan area relies on a mix of water supplies
— primarily from the Central Arizona
Project, the Salt River Project, and groundwater. That,
theoretically, gives the area greater flexibility to protect
itself against drought.
"I n the short term, we’re probably in very good shape," says
Buschatzke. One particularly hopeful sign is the
fact that this winter’s rains have put a lot more water in the Salt
River Project system.
But the long-term outlook may not be so good. Recent studies,
including one from the University of Arizona,
indicate that droughts could be more frequent, more prolonged,
more severe, and far more widespread than
was believed even recently (HCN, 1/24/05: Written in the
Rings).
I n the University of Arizona study, says Buschatzke, "One of
the big things we tried to find out was the
probability of simultaneous drought on the Salt and Verde rivers
17. and the Colorado River. And the preliminary
results are showing that the probability is greater than we
originally thought." Buschatzke adds that Phoenix
has traditionally planned for seven- or eight-year droughts, the
longest that have occurred on the Salt River
Project system in the past century. The University of Arizona
study, he says, "is showing us that 20- to 30-
year droughts can happen."
I f the drought becomes deep enough for the I nterior
Department to declare a shortage on the Colorado River,
"excess" CAP water uses — whatever is being banked, or
bought by the groundwater replenishment district —
would be cut first. The next big cut would hit the irrigation
districts that deliver water to more than 700 farms
from Phoenix to Tucson.
Once CAP was forced to reduce its deliveries by about 500,000
acre-feet — a third of the project’s total
capacity — shortages would begin to cut into cities such as
Phoenix. Even then, cities could potentially lease
around 275,000 acre-feet of CAP water that I ndian tribes
received in a massive settlement with the federal
government last year but are not yet using (HCN, 3/15/04: The
New Water Czars). But as the tribes develop,
they’ll have less water available to lease. And in a shortage,
their share would be reduced along with the cities’,
so it would be a little like looking to a leaking lifeboat for
salvation.
Cities could also begin drawing on water banked underground:
The City of Phoenix has over 2 million acre-
feet of recharged water that it can pump, enough for about six
years’ worth of demand in the city.
I n a worst-case scenario, Arizona’s carefully guarded aquifers
18. would prove their worth as Phoenix tapped into
"native" groundwater. The trouble is that Phoenix would be just
one of many users in a stampede on the
state’s aquifers.
For decades, the operative theory behind water management in
Arizona was that the demand for water
would remain relatively stable. Urban growth, the theory went,
would literally take the place of farms by
developing on top of former farmland. I nitially, farmers would
convert from groundwater to CAP water,
thereby preserving — or at least taking the pressure off —
groundwater supplies. Then, as the farms turned
into houses, those houses would continue using CAP water.
I n reality, however, much of the new development has taken
place on raw desert rather than former
farmland.
"We used to go from desert to farmland to houses," says G
ammage. "Now, we go straight from desert to
houses."
Though the number of farms has declined somewhat, in 2002 —
the most recent year for which data are
available — agriculture was still responsible for more than 40
percent of the total water use in the Phoenix
area.
Sinking money into th e well
The earliest year that I nterior Secretary Norton might be forced
to declare a shortage is a matter of some
19. debate. Arizona’s water agencies have said 2010 or 2011, but
the Department of I nterior has hinted that it
could come as early as 2007.
State and city water managers maintain that, if a shortage is
declared, it could be 20 years before it affects
cities. Nonetheless, many officials are preparing for the worst.
Farmers would face cuts as soon as a shortage is declared, and
they are already being forced to contemplate a
wholesale return to groundwater. Farmers’ water rights are
"grandfathered" in at levels based on their
maximum water use from 1975-79, a time of historically high
farm production in the state. And, thanks to
years in which they pumped less groundwater than their
grandfathered levels, farmers have accumulated a
massive number of so-called "flex credits" — somewhere in the
neighborhood of 10 million acre-feet — that
they could use anytime they want.
I t is already clear, however, that returning to groundwater will
be tremendously expensive. G rant Ward is the
general manager of the Santa Cruz Water and Power Districts
Association. The association represents two of
the largest CAP irrigation districts, covering some 174,000
acres south of Phoenix, which primarily grow
cotton and feed for nearby dairies. Ward says that each of the
districts currently has about a quarter of the
well capacity it would need to fully replace CAP water in a
shortage. Moving closer to 100 percent would
require getting as many as 300 older wells in each district back
in working order.
"These wells have been sitting here (unused) for years," he says.
"Some will take a lot (of work)."
20. The district would also need to drill new wells, which could
cost $200,000 to $300,000 each. Running the
pumps will be expensive, too, and it will get even more so in a
drought, says Jim Holway, who recently left his
assistant director’s position at the Arizona Department of Water
Resources for a job at Arizona State
University’s I nternational I nstitute for Sustainability.
"One of the reasons that agriculture can afford to pump
groundwater very economically is because they have
low-cost power," says Holway. "But a lot of that is hydropower.
There’s a double whammy: The water they’ve
been using, they don’t have, and the cheap energy to get the
alternative source isn’t there either, because
there’s no water to run through the dam."
Farmers in the area have already seen their electricity prices go
up by 10 percent per year over the past three
years: Decreased power production from G len Canyon and
Hoover dams is forcing them to buy more power
produced by natural gas-fired power plants, even as natural gas
prices rise.
Urban residents, too, could see massive rate hikes, as water
departments are forced to drill more wells to make
up for the lost water from the Colorado and other rivers.
Says Holway: "Some of the cities are frantically" — he pauses,
and then chooses a different word — "they’re
actively doing studies to figure out how they get the right
infrastructure in place to serve 100 percent
groundwater."
21. The good news is that there is apparently no shortage of
groundwater available to tap: The Department of
Water Resources estimates that there is at least 68.3 million
acre-feet of water under the Phoenix area. The
bad news is that getting to that water will be neither easy nor
cheap.
"Honestly, I ’ll tell you this," says Tom Buschatzke: "We do not
have the well capacity to meet (the city’s entire
yearly demand)." The city, whose 29 operating wells currently
give it only 15 percent of the well capacity it
would need, is assessing what it will take to meet full demand.
That could mean drilling as many as 190 new
wells, just for the city of Phoenix itself — to say nothing of the
surrounding metropolitan area. And,
Buschatzke says, "the costs (of actually pumping it) would be
astronomical."
Like farmers, cities would face high power costs for pumping.
The farther down groundwater is drawn, the
more energy it takes to pump it, and the stampede will only
make that worse. But that would be just part of
the picture. Much of the state’s groundwater has been
contaminated by chemicals such as fertilizers from
overlying farmland, and treating it to drinking-water standards
would be expensive as well. The city of
Phoenix doesn’t have formal estimates for potential
groundwater treatment costs, but it could be much more
than the $500 per acre-foot it currently costs to treat CAP
water. All of that cost would come straight back to
water customers.
For members of the groundwater replenishment district, who are
currently drawing on groundwater but have
committed to paying for replacement water, the cost is also
going to get more expensive as supplies get
22. tighter. Homeowners will probably pay $231 per acre-foot this
year, but they won’t know how much they
actually owe for replenishment water until the district sends
them a bill for whatever water it was able to buy.
"That’s a problem," says Cliff Neal. "We’re trying (to make
sure) that when a homeowner moves into a
(groundwater replenishment district) plan, they understand their
costs for replenishment could be pretty high
in the future. The developer has to declare that they are
members of the district, (but) you’ve got a ton of
papers to sign as a new home buyer, and you don’t read
everything that’s in front of you."
Neal says the district estimates that the average cost of
replenishment water will be around $500 per acre-
foot in 2025, but drought and increasing competition for water
could send that cost even higher. Added
together, the price of drought could be staggering in a state that
is already $1.65 billion in debt for the CAP
over the next 40 years.
Ash es to ash es?
This winter’s storms may postpone the possibility of shortage
for one more year, but an accurate outlook
won’t be available until April. And even though this drought
will eventually end, another one will never be far
off. No matter how good the weather, Arizona will always be
the first state on the river to lose its water.
All this has left the CAP’s Sid Wilson thinking wistfully of a
grandiose piece of the Central Arizona Project deal
that never came to be. "(Arizona’s low priority) was a political
deal. That was the price of getting CAP," he
says. "But at the time we got it, there was also a federal promise
23. to augment the flows of the river by 2.5
million acre-feet."
"Augmenting" is shorthand for what likely would have been the
biggest water-development project the U.S.
had ever seen: I t would have taken water from the Columbia
River in the Pacific Northwest and pumped it
halfway across the West to add to the Colorado River. I t was,
quite literally, a pipe dream, yet it hasn’t been
forgotten in the offices of the Central Arizona Project. Wilson
holds onto it like a wild card, hoping that it will
at least give his state a better position at the bargaining table as
the Colorado River Basin states scramble for a
collective solution: "What we’re saying is, ‘We had to accept a
junior priority, but we also had a promise of
augmentation, and that never happened.’ "
Talks between representatives of the seven states continue in an
effort to come up with a shortage-sharing
plan to deliver to the secretary of the I nterior by April. Now, to
keep the CAP domino-effect from reaching the
cities, Arizona may seek a kind of post-Cold War détente and
ask the other states to help share the pain.
"I n terms of planning shortages," says Wilson, Arizona could
propose that some of its farmers take less water
as a way to keep more water in Lakes Mead and Powell and
delay triggering an official shortage. "But in
return, (we’d like to figure) out a way to proportionalize the cut
when the shortages get deep and go into our
(urban) uses. We’d like to see some sharing of impacts with
California and Nevada."
The drought has done more than anything else to make water
24. managers realize that it’s impossible to ever
engineer an escape from the hydrologic cycle. Every new house
is an added liability in the next drought, and
Arizona’s phenomenal growth raises the stakes with each
passing year.
Sitting at a polished conference-room table in his office high
above downtown, G rady G ammage, the
attorney, has begun to see the limits: "Arizona has always felt
insecure about its image as a place that was so
dry, people couldn’t live here." I n response, he says, water
managers have made heroic efforts to ensure that
there was always enough water for the boom to continue.
G ammage took on the topic of growth and drought in a 1999
book called Phoenix in Perspective: Reflections
on Developing the Desert. "The standard equation people do on
Phoenix says that we have enough water
supply for 10 to 15 million people here," he says. "I said, ‘I
think that’s a bad idea. I think we should try to use
whatever management tools we have to flatten the horizon of a
place like Phoenix at something like 5 to 7
million.’
"I was resoundingly hooted down as a nut. But 7 million people
is twice what we have now, and at least then
we wouldn’t be living totally on the ragged edge of what we can
sustain here."
G ammage pauses.
"Phoenix is a place, like much of the West, that has been built
on population growth as the goal. All of our tax
structures, all of our infrastructure, everything … our identity is
wrapped up in being first, second or third," he
says. "I f Atlanta" — the top new-home market in the nation —
25. "is ahead of us, we’re pissed off. I f Las Vegas
beats us in something, we’re worried.
"And I think it’s time we got over that."
Matt Jenkins is HCN associate editor.
CONTACT:
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (Lower Colorado Region) 702-293-
8000, www.usbr.gov/lc/region/
Arizona Department of Water Resources 602-417-2400,
www.water.az.gov
Central Arizona Project 623-869-2333, www.cap-az.com
Central Arizona Groundwater Replenishment District 623-869-
2380, www.cagrd.com
I t seems to me the western states, like others, have to face the
facts, use less water, more solar to augment
dam power, and raise water and electrical use taxes a lot to
force conservation. Take a page from the native
I ndians, they only took what was needed. I don't think we have
defined our needs, we are excessive at
everything we do as Americans and not very good stewards of
our environment!
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Wh y does th is box keep poppin g u p?