Tony Davis' recent story in the Arizona Daily Star really struck a chord with me. Not only do I enjoy his work, but the article is about about the first place I lived after leaving the East in 1970 and where I attended graduate school: Tucson, AZ, aka 'The Old Pueblo.'
I enjoyed it for almost six years, and still love to visit the area I left in 1976. Of course, the metropolitan area is about three times the size as when I arrived: now a million, give or take a few.
The reason I'm posting about Davis' story is that it illustrates much that is wrong with Western water policy: how about doing a better job connecting land-use planning and water availability? And since I began teaching my graduate course on Water Resources Management in the US yesterday, Davis' article is even more apropos, since one of the things I said in class is that we really don't do a good job managing water in the USA. Surprise, right?
The article deals with the plight of tens of thousands of families living in subdivisions whose water supply may be in jeopardy. The map, from the article, shows the affected areas in red, located in Pima and southern Pinal counties. Seems that the utilities serving the areas are using 'borrowed' water, and payback time is coming.
Davis writes:
The Arizona Legislature is considering a bill that would authorize a little-known agency to sell up to $500 million worth of bonds to buy new water supplies to serve these suburban residents.
The bonds, ultimately, would have to be repaid by residents.
In Pima and southern Pinal counties, they live in suburban areas that include parts of or all of Oro Valley, Green Valley, Sahuarita, SaddleBrooke, SaddleBrooke Ranch, Red Rock and Tucson's southeast side.
One reason the bill is being seriously considered is that most of these homes have no assured, long-term water supply.
They are being served by a short-term supply that could disappear in a few years to a decade from now because legally, it belongs to somebody else.
The last two paragraphs really tell the tale - most of the homes have no long-term water supply.
You're probably saying, 'Caveat emptor!' or perhaps 'Mala suerte!' - 'Let the buyer beware' or 'Tough luck.' If we were dealing with individual domestic wells on lots, then I would be more inclined to agree with you. In such cases, due diligence on the part of the prospective house buyer is mandatory. But when you buy a house in a subdivision where the the water supplied by a utility, it may be a little more difficult to practice 'due diligence.'
So the people in these southern Arizona subdivisions face an uncertain, but likely expensive, future.
Davis continues:
The debate on the bill has unearthed some long-simmering issues swirling around the three-county Central Arizona Groundwater Replenishment District.
The district has signed up more current and future housing developments in Pima, Pinal and Maricopa counties than it has long-term water supplies for.
By 2025, it will be legally bound to provide more renewable water supplies to its customers than the city of Tucson would be serving.
The legislation has stirred fears that customers in the district will ultimately be subject to "rate shock" once the water supplies are on line and the bills come due.
Today, no one knows for sure when the district would acquire water, where it would come from, what it would cost or what the repayment terms would be.
Among possible sources are farmers along the Colorado River, treated sewage effluent, desalination of seawater or salty, brackish groundwater, or rural areas that have groundwater supplies.
The only thing that's clear is that the cost would be higher than the district's current water supplies from the Central Arizona Project, which uses Colorado River water brought by canal.
Davis continues:
The need for more water springs from a long-standing problem in enforcing a key measure of the state's pioneering 1980 Groundwater Management Act.
As a way to keep development from sucking away the state's dwindling groundwater reserves, the law required that new growth within state water management areas in Tucson, Phoenix and Pinal County, among other places, prove an assured 100-year water supply. At the time the law passed, it was hailed as the toughest of its kind in the country.
But on closer examination, the assured supply law didn't have that many teeth. It allowed new growth if a developer could show that the 100-year supply didn't cause the water table to drop more than 1,000 feet [emboldening mine]. Since subsidence - sinking of the ground that can lead to cracks and fissures - can occur before that point, critics immediately took aim at the rules. The Arizona Department of Water Resources announced in the late 1980s that it would toughen them by requiring that new developments provide a renewable supply, such as CAP water.
But developers fought back, [emboldening mine] arguing that the new rules would shut down growth in the very places where the market was pushing it. Those are suburban areas located too far from the CAP canal to make it economical to tap into it.
Looks like the developers are still calling the shots ("The more things change, the more they remain the same"). So what did they do? Davis tells us:
In 1993, developers helped push through legislation creating the Central Arizona Groundwater Replenishment District. That law said a new development could meet the assured-water-supply rules by pumping groundwater, if it joined the district and the district bought and recharged renewable supplies. That was OK even if the recharge - putting water on the ground to seep into the aquifer - occurred miles from where the groundwater was pumped for the houses.
Without the district, "The rules would have stopped virtually all development outside of the boundaries of designated water providers" such as Tucson Water, says Mike Pierce, a water lawyer who has represented developers, cities and private water companies.
"I don't think there was the political will to do that in the state," [emboldening mine] Pierce recalls, adding, "The rules are good and what they are trying to accomplish is the highest standard in the United States. It is a lofty goal, but it takes effort and money to achieve."
No political will. That's good. A Federal employee colleague of mine once privately railed against Southwestern politicians who would go to DC wringing their hands over the drought, asking for money, then return home to espouse the go-go growth mantra.
One last paragraph from the article:
More than 260,000 homes, the vast majority still unbuilt, lie within the district's boundaries. The district expects to have as many as 340,000 homes by the 2030s.
340,000 homes?
So growth rules the roost, just like it did when I lived in Tucson in the first half of the 1970s. Despite the fact that the Southwest is one of the driest regions in the USA, growth apparently continues unabated and poorly-planned via-a-vis water supply, despite the warning signs now on the horizon. Granted, in the 1980s and 1990s, global warming and its effect on water resources were not well-known. And the Colorado Basin was not in the throes of a drought. But take a look at today's quote at the bottom of this post - that fact was known long before the 1980s and 1990s.
Sure, people want to live in Tucson. Heck, I did. But shouldn't local and state governments and political leaders exhibit a little more fortitude and wisdom when it comes to growth?
Read the article, and the comments that have been posted.
"It's a desert, stupid." -- unofficial motto of the City of Albuquerque's water conservation program, c. 1992 (thanks to Jean Witherspoon)
This illustrates more than just what's wrong with Western water policy. It's a classic demonstration of what's wrong with American political and economic systems. Economics creates irresistable incentives to build these developments, in part because the true costs are not borne by either the developers or the homebuyers; politics assures that neither of those groups will have to bear those costs. The same story is played out all over the West, but also in the East (cf. Atlanta). And it's not just about water; the same forces created the energy crisis, air pollution, and the degradation and depletion of every resource I can think of.
Our economy and our national culture (to the extent that we have such a thing) are predicated on the idea of continuous growth. Anybody who thinks that all the way through realizes there will come a reckoning; our entire society has been built on the premise that it will come to some later generation. It's like my plan to live forever: So far, so good!
Posted by: Tim | Thursday, 01 April 2010 at 09:01 AM