Report: Legislature leaves rivers dry
Shaun McKinnon
The Arizona Republic
May. 16, 2007 12:00 AM
Arizona's rivers will win no new protections at the Legislature this year, despite continued threats from drought, climate change and laws that promise water for growth without safeguards for natural resources.
One bill heralded this year as relief for the ailing San Pedro River didn't mention the waterway and advanced because the bill would protect an Army base in Sierra Vista. Lawmakers rebuffed pleas by river advocates to include riparian health in other bills.
The result, a Tucson-based conservation group says, are policies tilted toward using up water instead of managing it in a sustainable way. The group, the Sonoran Institute, says the state needs to rewrite some of its basic water laws to include every water user, from people to wildlife to the rivers themselves.
"This is an issue whose time has come, when considering the needs of the environment has to be a part of the equation," said Andy Laurenzi, director of the institute's land and water policy program. "There is an urgency to this. Believe it can be solved in the Legislature, but there are people thinking about whether this needs to go to the voters. You can't wait much longer. These rivers are near irreparable harm."
In a new report, the institute examines three of Arizona's rivers: the San Pedro, the Santa Cruz and the Verde. Each faces serious local threats, but the common enemy, the institute concluded, is unchecked groundwater pumping that robs rivers of water.
Years of overpumping have emptied the Santa Cruz along its final stretches through Pima and Pinal counties. The San Pedro, the state's last free-flowing river, sputters to dust along an increasing number of miles because of growth in Cochise County. The Verde faces threats from thousands of unregulated wells and one big one planned to export water to Prescott and Prescott Valley.
State laws all but ignore the link between groundwater and rivers, allowing the owners of small wells to pump water even if that water would otherwise flow into a nearby stream or river. Although the link wasn't always known, scientists agree now that wells drilled too closely to a river can divert groundwater that would have flowed into the river and, over time, the pumping can begin to tug at water in the river.
Arizona law treats the two sources of water as though they're independent. River users hold rights to specific amounts of water based on when the rights were awarded. Well owners can pump whatever water they can use beneficially, within limits set by a well permit. There are almost no provisions to determine whether a well would draw water that would otherwise flow into a stream or river.
"The fact that we have separate legal systems for groundwater and surface water is the root of the problem," said Kathy Jacobs, a former state regulator who reviewed the Sonoran Institute's work. "If we were able to manage both water rights conjunctively, that would help."
Attempts to change the law almost always run into property rights advocates, who say managing wells like rivers could deprive landowners of a resource and reduce property values. Jacobs, now the executive director of the Arizona Water Institute, said that view shorts the value of the rivers.
"Leaders need to understand the value of a public good," she said. "It's not a lot of water in comparison to the total we're using, and the impacts of saving it are dramatic. We do not have the tools in place to save these rivers, and we don't have a lot of time."
Lawmakers considered several water management bills during this session, based in part on recommendations from a state advisory group.
One proposal attempted to link growth and water in rural Arizona, giving local governments authority to reject development if a builder couldn't provide adequate water. A second measure would create a funding mechanism for new water infrastructure in smaller communities. A third would establish a water management district near the San Pedro River, primarily to protect water sources for new growth.
None of the bills addressed rivers or the potential effect of water pumping on riparian resources, said Sandy Bahr, a lobbyist for the Sierra Club's Grand Canyon Chapter.
"The bill that was supposed to protect the San Pedro didn't mention the river," she said. "There seems to be an irrational aversion to any kind of mention of 'riparian' or 'streamflow,' especially in the context of a bill dealing with groundwater pumping or water supplies. If you're going to use state money to fund infrastructure, it ought to say you can't kill a river in the process."
Sen. Jake Flake, Republican chairman of the Senate Natural Resources Committee, said he prefers a local solution instead of one established by the state. In a hearing on the San Pedro bill, he pointed to Payson, which has enacted some of the toughest water conservation laws in the state.
"Payson has never asked the state for any help," Flake said. "They have done it themselves. Had the state taken over the problem, they'd still be using 200 gallons a day (instead of 86) and the state would have spent hundreds of millions of dollars."
Some lawmakers also resist proposals to set aside water for the environment in the middle of a drought, one now in its 12th year in Arizona. But there may be no better time to resolve the issue, said Jim Holway, associate director of Arizona State University's Global Institute for Sustainability.
"I don't think anyone questions that we have long-term droughts," he said. "We're prone to 20- and 30-year drought cycles. Right now, we can absorb it. The storage of water for the future of agriculture takes the hit, but 30 years from now, it'll be houses that we don't have water for. Maybe we should hit the reset button and revisit our expectations."
If drought forces water users to change the way they manage the resource, to reallocate a shrinking supply, then it's the perfect time to add rivers and riparian values to the discussion, said Holway, a former state water regulator.
