Tucson/Pima County Water Study update

Phase II of the study, designed to map out a path to a more sustainable water future for the region is just about wrapped up (I say region even though the study only incorporated the city and county governments - not any of the other local jurisdictions - because it is hoped that the policy recommendations from this study can be applied across the region as a blueprint for water sustainability). City and county staff have just issued the draft of their Phase II report on the study website. On Monday, Nov. 9, from 6 to 9 PM they will be hosting an open house to present their report to the public and take questions.

The committee (including yours truly) meanwhile continues to pound away at a separate report that is intended to provide the community perspective on what water sustainability should mean around here. Obviously there will be considerable agreement with what the staff came up with in their report - after all, they were the ones primarily responsible for educating the committee on these issues. But there are some issues the committee would like to stress more strongly than we feel the staff report does and vice versa. The challenge though is coming up with consensus on the committee. There are divergent and strongly held opinions on some issues, but I think sufficient commonality exists for us to come together and produce a strong report. The committee meets next on Thursday, Nov. 12, in the City IT building, next to the Manning House, to continue the process of drafting our report in addition to discussing the staff report (agenda should be posted soon on the study website if it isn't already). Let's hope for harmonious policy and strong coffee that evening.

What could additional budget cuts do to Arizona Dept. of Water Resources (ADWR)?

Responding to reports that state tax receipts have been running $0.5 billion below projections and the ongoing fact that our state government is unwilling and/or incapable of putting together a complete state budget for the current fiscal year, our governor has asked all state agencies to present plans detailing how they might cut an additional 15% from their budgets for the remainder of this fiscal year (until the end of June 2010). The agency that manages our water supplies has submitted their plan, which they posted on their website here (pdf document).

I am not personally aligned with any political party and am perfectly willing to criticize any politician, from any party, who advocates bad policy, resorts to fear-mongering, and otherwise panders to various vested interests, be they democrat, republican, or Bull Moose. But Arizona is currently controlled by republicans and we can only wish these were the republicans of Barry Goldwater's day. These are the kind of republicans who resolutely place ideology over common sense no matter how stubborn and stupid it makes them look (ok, there are a few moderates still in there, but they're pretty marginalized most of the time). My point is, these are the kind of people who believe the state government shouldn't be wasting tax dollars collecting basic hydrologic information. Number one - decent, god-fearing Arizona landowners don't need the government telling them how to use and manage their water. Number two - if data is so vital, there should be private sector entities that can step up and pay for it's collection. And finally - let the federal government pay to collect the data if it's really that important, just don't use that data to tell the state how to manage our water.

So what will we have to do? The report spells it out in pretty stark terms. Admittedly, the document produced by ADWR is intended to strike fear in the hearts of those who control the purse strings but with the cuts they have already endured, another 15% will absolutely cripple the ability of that agency to adequately provide management of our increasingly strained water supplies.

The plan includes eliminating the Statewide Planning Division, and reducing the Hydrology, Surface Water, and Water Management Divisions. Follow the links if you want to learn more about what those parts of ADWR do, but just as a starter those are basically all the main functions of the Department.

The Statewide Planning Division (SPD), in particular will be a huge loss. There is precious little data about water supplies and water uses in areas of the state outside of the Active Management Areas (AMA) - the rural parts of the state. The primary entity for collecting this data and helping those areas - where constraints on water supplies are often very significant because they don't have access to Colorado River water from the CAP canal - is SPD. Without them the task of developing management strategies for water supplies in those areas will fall on local entities, which have very few resources for those tasks as well as some vested interests that would prefer not to have the bad news that data might bring.

The other Divisions, which aren't being eliminated but are being cut to levels where their effectiveness will be greatly reduced, are responsible for administering surface water rights in the state, developing management plans for the AMAs, and collecting basic data to support all the other programs ADWR handles. I don't want to contend that these functions are more important than education and services for poor people (also being hammered by the current budget situation), but as someone who relies on the data and programs of ADWR for much of what I do this is grim news indeed.

High Country News article on the problem of exempt wells

This is from the most recent issue of High Country News, describing the pretty much West-wide problem of exempt, or unregulated, wells - typically household wells used for domestic, livestock, and limited irrigation uses.

It's an issue that has started to come to greater prominence in a few areas (in states that recognize the connection between surface and groundwater and regulate both under the prior appropriation doctrine - sadly not the case here in Arizona).

That aside, it's a nice piece, giving a good overview of the problem and how one state - Washington - is attempting to deal with it.

Water Conservation in New Property Development

There was a recent article in the Wall Street Journal about the efforts of property developers along the Colorado Front Range to reduce the water impact of those properties.

I think it's fantastic that developers are embracing water conservation in a significant way, even if you consider that they really have no choice in many cases. For some areas it has become a matter of build smart or don't build at all. Or at least be happy with building something that will make a much smaller profit. But something that tends to get lost in the self-congratulatory language of these developers is that maybe the choice shouldn't be between a high-water-use development and a low-water-use development but between any development and no development.

If you're talking about a new development on untouched land I would much rather see it remain open space than see the most environmentally-conscious, low-water-use development in the world be built there. However, if you're talking about converting an existing use - farming or low-intensity development - to a new higher-intensity use, then by all means they should make every effort to limit the impact on local water supplies.

I realize it's not always so easy. When land is privately owned there are certain rights to develop land that can't just be taken away from the owner without just compensation. And often a larger-scale development offers greater opportunity to exact concessions from the developer, forcing a more limited impact on the environment than is the case when the land is divided into 36 acre ranchettes. But just because the developer is installing rainwater and gray water reuse features, and water conserving appliances doesn't make it something to be praised. After all the developer will most likely have no role in the development once built. The buyers might use just as much water as the development up the road. But for now the developer gets to be the good guy and in addition probably gets to charge a premium for homes in the development because of it's "green" features.

This stuff always warrants a closer look.

h/t to John Fleck for pointing me to the WSJ piece.

Into the Home Stretch on City/County Water Study

Thursday night, 9/17, is the final meeting for the "new information" part of Phase II of the City of Tucson/Pima County Water and Wastewater Study Oversight Committee scope of work. There are three new white papers posted on the study website - here. I think this meeting will easily go the full 4 hours. Because in addition to the new material there will be discussion of the planning for the Phase II report writing.

The new papers are focused on 1) potential new water supplies for the region, 2) availability of water for the environment, and 3) water quality issues associated (primarily) with emerging contaminants. I've been able to read the new water supplies paper - it's only about 30 pages. The other two are 40 and 50 pages. As I have been discovering since being ensconced on the committee*, the papers - while exhibiting a great deal of diligence on the part of city and county staff, under short timelines, and tight budgets - really don't break any new ground. This study should be about breaking with convention and finding new, creative solutions to our water problems. But it just seems to be about educating people about how complex water policy is and how difficult that makes it to implement real solutions to these problems.

Uh oh. I think I may have just given myself a new job. Better get busy on those last 2 papers.

* I was reading the papers before being appointed but not as critically as I have since then. In Phase I, I pretty much waited for the draft report to be submitted before sharpening my pencil and dissecting the findings. This time it's much more critical because we will be making policy recommendations to local leaders and setting the tone for future phases of the study (planned as a truly regional dialogue on these issues). Plus the report writing is going to occur pretty quickly and the committee will have more input on the writing process than I believe they did in Phase I.

Arizona's new Blue Ribbon Panel on Water Sustainability

We already have an effort underway to locate and secure additional water supplies for the Central Arizona Project service area (where the vast majority of Arizona's population resides) - called the ADD Water process. Now the state is jumping into the water sustainability discussion with a splashy (clever, eh?) announcement [pdf; press release from the Arizona Department of Water Resources website (ADWR)] regarding a special "blue ribbon panel on water sustainability" that was announced just over a week ago.

I first heard about it at a water planning conference put on by the Arizona Investment Council the end of August, where all three of the blue-ribbon-bearers were speakers. The Arizona Investment Council was a new organization to me. They are a think-tankish, policy outfit that probably does a bit of lobbying as well, with a focus on utility regulation and infrastructure investment. If you have a lot of free time on your hands and are really interested in infrastructure they have a report on their website called "Infrastructure Needs and Funding Alternatives for Arizona: 2008-2032" (it can be found by clicking on a link on the left side of their homepage), that goes into, at times, mind-numbing detail on how much we need to invest in our water, wastewater, energy, and transportation infrastructure in this state over the next 20-odd years. Trust me, it's a very large number, and probably fairly accurate but reflects a mindset that we must have bullet-proof, gold-plated infrastructure to compete for jobs and outside investment in the future.

Much of the conference was directed by what's in this report and there were some interesting talks, but nothing real earth-shaking.

Back to the water sustainability panel - hard to predict what will come out of this but based on the press-release it appears to be focused on water recycling, which probably means they will explore legislative and regulatory changes that need to be made to expand uses of reclaimed water and ways to convince people that reclaim is a safe, viable option for augmenting potable water supplies. The make-up of the panel indicates a desire to leverage areas of expertise and authority over the companies, municipalities and districts that manage water, wastewater, and probably other utilities as well - considering the whole energy-water nexus that's all in vogue these days.

Can't wait to see how the panel gets fleshed-out and provided with further direction - oh ... and will the legislature fund the activities of the panel next year? ADWR, ADEQ, and most other state agencies have had their budgets slashed in the past year to deal with rapidly declining state tax revenues - to the point where some people are saying it could take years for ADWR to recover to the level of competency it was at just a few years ago. I guess that will be the real determinant of whether this panel will produce anything worthwhile.

What's up with the City/County Water Study Committee?

The last meeting (Aug. 20) had some pretty interesting discussion occurring because of a late addition to the agenda. A local outfit called the Tucson Regional Water Coalition (TRWC) sent the committee a report titled "Water as an Economic Resource" (pdf document). Sounds pretty innocuous, right? And for the most part it was. But I should start by explaining what the Tucson Regional Water Coalition is. It was created last year by the Southern Arizona Leadership Council (SALC), a local organization of business and development heavy-hitters. This fact obviously did not sit well with some of the committee members who will never trust anything coming from those quarters.

But, despite it's detractors, the paper did elicit some good discussion of the merits of, and justification for, regarding water as an economic good in some aspects of water policy. What I thought was particularly good was the discussion by a panel of "experts" brought in by the creators of the paper to discuss it's merits. By and large they were not too impressed with it, although at least one of them did review it and make suggestions to a draft version of it. While they generally agreed with the overall tone of the paper, I thought they felt some of the assertions made were a bit too strong. The recommendations at the end of the paper, in particular, may have overstated the case a bit. Such as: "Establish policy declaring economic efficiency as the central criterion in water management decisions." While it should be a consideration, I don't see how you can justify making it the "central criterion."

I was also disappointed in the examples they chose to use for applying economic principles to analysis of water policy. After opening the paper with a pretty good discussion of how to consider all costs associated with a policy in your decision-making process, they completely failed to do that in their examples. I viewed the examples as a pretty blatant way of demonstrating that conservation and environmental uses of water don't stack up in terms of economic efficiency the same as acquisition of additional water supplies and application of all water to serve growth.

The authors could have done a better job of presenting the value of economic principles in a way that would further the central focus of the study - balancing growth and the environment in ways that provide long-term benefit to our communities. And some of the committee members could have done a better job of seeing the paper for what it was (at least arguably) intending to accomplish - remind us that economics are part of good policy.

As for the primary focus of that meeting - evaluating the cost of growth - representatives of our water and sewer utilities did an admirable job of demonstrating how they have changed their financing and billing structures over the years to shift the costs of new services (growth) onto those customers, rather than sharing the cost among all customers. It's still not perfect, but that is mostly because of failings in state law that restrict the ability of local jurisdictions to recover some costs through impact fees. But even so - the costs of water and sewer will be going up in this area for the foreseeable future because of regulatory requirements and other needs associated with aging infrastructure. Glad to see they're planning ahead.