Watering the Desert

So What's the Hold-up?

2012-02-12T21:04:00.000-07:00

From today's Arizona Daily Star, an article about the Vail (AZ) Water Company facing the prospect of refunding to it's customers the money it has been collecting for over 10 years to pay for a means of taking their allocation of CAP water. Vail is about as far away from the CAP canal as you can get while still being technically within the Tucson area. This makes it a challenge to get that water to their customers. But in recent years the City of Tucson (and their water company) has been pursuing wheeling agreements that allow other water utilities to take their CAP water by having Tucson Water deliver it through the city's pipes to a point where the other utility can access it without having to build large delivery infrastructure of their own. They have done this recently with Oro Valley and are working on doing something similar with Metro Water.

So why doesn't Vail do something similar, or at least why haven't they done so to comply with the agreement they made with the Corporation Commission? A couple of ideas come to mind. While the idea of doing wheeling agreements with Tucson Water has been discussed for several years, it's only within the last 2 or 3 years that the idea has begun to be looked at really seriously. Earlier, utilities like Metro and Oro Valley were considering plans to take the CAP water themselves, possibly by building a treatment plant and pipes to deliver it themselves. The cost of doing so was simply prohibitive. I'm sure Vail at least thought about doing something similar at one time. But they are a pretty small utility - only about 3,900 connections - so the cost of building that kind of infrastructure (at least 20 miles from the nearest point where they could tap into the CAP) would be pretty high per customer.

The article suggests that wheeling had been considered previously, but Tucson Water wasn't that interested. There is likely some truth to that. Tucson Water had a reputation for many years of not wanting to play nice with others - deserved or not. I also think that for a small company like Vail Water the cost of pumping groundwater is much less than they would have to pay for CAP water, so the prospect of coming into compliance and having to hit their customers with a big rate increase wasn't real attractive. It's also likely that Tucson Water will have to upgrade some of their infrastructure in the vicinity of Vail to accommodate the extra water and Vail Water would have to pick up most, if not all, of the tab for that. So even a wheeling agreement is not cheap - Vail may have just been counting the beans and deciding to continue pumping from their wells.

So solutions are not easy to come by in this situation. But I do know for sure that a solution is extremely important in this case. Because in the near vicinity of the rapidly growing community of Vail is one of the gems of riparian habitat remaining in Pima County - Cienega Creek. This is a phenomenal spot where shallow groundwater surfaces to create a small flowing stream flanked by towering cottonwood, willow, alder, and ash trees and an amazing diversity of wildlife. And the more development in the area that is supported by drilling wells to tap groundwater, the more likely it is that Cienega Creek will someday stop flowing. So I really hope they can finalize a wheeling agreement, because Vail has a renewable resource it could use, Tucson is willing to work with them to get it to their neighborhood, and riparian areas in Pima County are few and getting fewer. And once they're lost, they are really hard to get back.

Upcoming Conference in Tucson on Green Infrastructure and Low-Impact Development in arid environments

2012-01-19T21:05:00.000-07:00

Not sure if I'll be able to make it to this one - a shame really, since it's so close to home.
But it looks like a great event, so if you're from Tucson or would like to come visit to attend the 2012 Arid LID Conference, March 27-29, check out the link for all the info you need. The agenda includes several really interesting presentations, but the best part is there's lots of opportunities for hands-on learning.
Be sure to check it out.

The Failed Promise of Indian Water Settlements, Part II

2012-01-18T19:38:00.000-07:00

Taking advantage of a sick day to finally get around to this thread again.

So you may remember from my previous post that it was the Arizona Water Settlements Act (passed in 2004, became law in 2007) that resolved a couple of the most significant Indian water rights claims in Arizona, as well as settling several other pressing issues in allocation of Central Arizona Project (CAP) water and costs associated with the project. The legislation enacting those settlements allocated both water and money to help the tribes involved purchase their new water from CAP and put the water to use on their reservations, mostly in irrigation projects.

But the general consensus at the time those agreements were being negotiated was that it would be many years before the tribes could put all that water to use (if they ever did) because of the amount of money, time, and effort needed to develop irrigation projects on the scale involved. As a result, the extra water that the tribes couldn't put to use would either return to a pool of available water called "excess water" or would be leased by the tribes to cities or farms. And in fact that is what happened with most allocations of Indian water - up until 2008-2009, which is when the tribes started to discover the benefits of storing their extra water. Putting the water into recharge facilities permits the storing entity to earn long-term storage credits (LTSC) that are marketable within the Active Management Area (AMA) where the water was stored. Other than the geographic restrictions on marketing those credits, their marketability is only limited by the demand for such credits at the time they are sold. Their value is generally determined by the price for an acre-foot of equivalent water (CAP water), currently $137 for non-subcontract (or excess) water.

While earning marketable LTSCs does not provide a current income stream (in fact it costs money to store water) the potential value of storage credits makes them generally more attractive than water leases. When tribes lease water (under the terms of the settlement agreements) the lessee pays the cost of the water, so the value to the tribe for leased water, while generating a current revenue stream is less than the value of an equivalent amount of water represented by LTSCs.

The problem that storage poses, however, is that it constitutes a drain on the funds established to pay for Indian water from CAP (the Basin Fund and trust funds as described in the previous post). This was a drain not anticipated by the feds (Reclamation and congress) when they established them because they didn't think those funds would be paying for as much water as they currently are, as soon as they are. They also likely didn't anticipate the rate at which the cost of CAP water has increased. In 2001 the cost for an acre-foot of excess water was $101 - but $43 of that was capital repayment, the operations and maintenance charge (O&M, what it costs to run the CAP) was only $58. By 2006 the excess water rate was $108, but $87 of that was O&M. The current rate, as noted above is $137 -- $122 of which is O&M; a 110% increase in O&M costs in 10 years. At those rates, with the amount of water being stored and the amount of money in those funds they are likely to be exhausted within 10 to 20 years.

So how does this effect the utility of the water settlements to the tribes? The provisions in the settlements permitting tribes to lease water are not there for the benefit of the tribes. That's my opinion, but it's not an outrageous opinion. Not by a long shot. Every idea floated in the last 10 years to augment water supplies for cities in Arizona has mentioned lease of Indian water as one of the top 2 or 3 options. The cities in Arizona grudgingly admitted that they needed to settle the Indian water rights claims - if only to remove the enormous uncertainty they added to the stream adjudication process. But they still wanted to have access to that water if/when they needed it. The only way the Indians could use the amounts of water they received was by farming. And everyone in the state knew that the cost of CAP water would make its use for farming prohibitive in the near future. The tribes were no exception.

The language in the settlements permitting recharge of Indian water was almost a mere formality. There was very little discussion about how it might occur, how it would be paid for, or any kind of limitations on doing so. The provisions for leasing Indian water were much more detailed. Some specific leases were even included in settlements. Terms for payment for leased water, duration of leases, geographic restrictions on leases, among others were included in settlements.

Finally, the fact that the provisions for leasing required the party that leases the water to pay the O&M costs, but not the capital costs is significant because it ensures that both Reclamation and CAP will be fully on-board with those agreements (they both have to approve the terms of any non-Indian leases of CAP water, Reclamation alone approves leases of Indian water, but I suspect in-state parties could have some influence in that process). It helps any M&I lessee because they avoid capital charges, which they pay on their own subcontract water (although they are likely to make lease payments that are at least equivalent), and they typically get additional water that is of equivalent priority to their own water, in times of shortage - something very valuable.

Where does this leave the tribes? With water that they fought for over many years to achieve a settlement of their rights - about 30 years in the case of the Tohono O'odham - but cannot use because it's too expensive and the funding sources they were provided with are insufficient to cover those costs. It's also too expensive because the only way they can use the water on their reservations is by irrigating crops - most of which don't earn sufficient income to justify the cost of the water. How can they pay for the water? They can lease it off-reservation. Was the outcome of this ordeal predetermined by the parties who were original sued by the tribes to protect their rights to water that had been taken from them long ago? I'll let you decide.

Water Marketing - Who Wins, Who Loses?

2012-01-08T19:16:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to post a link to this commentary (that came to me by way of Aquafornia) about water marketing in California. It makes the point that opening up markets can create unequal opportunities, when one one part of the supply chain is (functionally) controlled by a monopoly (the federal government). Something that could be very prevalent throughout the West, where the Bureau of Reclamation controls access to much of the big water that goes to agriculture and might find its way into markets in the coming years.

This is also my way of introducing the upcoming Water Rights Trading Summit being hosted by American Water Intelligence and WestWater Research, in Scottsdale, AZ, in early Feb.

Should be an interesting conference. And I'm hoping to re-connect with some contacts I haven't seen in a while at the conference.

Anniversary of a Tragedy

2012-01-08T11:05:00.000-07:00

It was exactly one year ago that I posted something completely uncharacteristic for this blog. It was an event that had a tremendous impact on me, but I'm still not sure it had the kind of impact it should have had on society-at-large. This idea is well articulated in this piece by Jeff Biggers, posted on Salon today.

I don't want to initiate an ongoing discussion on this blog about these events, but didn't want to let the anniversary pass without at least mentioning it. It's one of those events in our lives we should try to never forget because the lessons to be learned from them are just too important. The most important of which is to be part of a community, know your neighbors, be nosy sometimes, and take care of each other. Fear and suspicion are enemies of these ideas - they need to be fought.

I'm hoping to pick up the thread of my recent discussion of Indian water rights soon, so bear with me.

Nefarious shenanigans in redistricting process

2011-12-10T20:13:00.000-07:00

Found a link to a funny article from the Yuma Sun in BC Arizona Water News this week and just had to share. If you're from Arizona and follow the news you have probably heard about the big fight going on in the state over the decennial redistricting process that is currently going on. I won't go into the details here, it's too convoluted and at times sordid.

Let's just say that folks from both political parties have their gripes about the way the process has been going, but the ones who identify with an elephant have been griping the most - probably because they have the most to lose and since they hold most of the power now, they actually have some ammo to derail the process.

But the alarm bells being rung by State Senator Don Shooter from Yuma are a new form of attack on the process that I confess I never saw coming. His premise is that because the new district boundaries that include the Yuma area - along the Colorado River where this is lots of farmland and high priority rights to water from the river (higher priority than CAP rights) - divide the area and those districts stretch all the way to Phoenix and Tucson, there must be plans afoot by those city folk to rustle up some water rights. Well maybe not plans afoot, but the idea is that if someone were to concoct a plan it would be easier to implement if there was no one representing the interests of those folks out in Yuma in our state legislature.

Have to admit it makes for a nice story. Seems pretty far-fetched though, right. Yeah, probably. The only way the cities are going to wrest that water from the farmers out in Yuma, though, is by buying up the rights and getting approval from Reclamation to transfer that water. That certainly seems more do-able if you have the state legislature and our congressional delegation on board. But really if they are intent on doing that, how much difference will one local representative make? If those water rights could be taken away by legislative fiat I think it there would have been more action along those lines already. The water rights, if and when they are transferred to cities, will be purchased in a heavily negotiated transaction that the people giving up their rights will fully support. And they're not gonna let some state senator stand in the way of that deal.

And if you take a look at the maps, his claim about those Yuma districts being controlled by people from Maricopa and Pima Counties is a bit overdone as well. The districts that cover Yuma do stretch towards the big cities, but only touch the outskirts, so the population should be pretty well balanced between urban and rural. Sounds to me like just another shady attempt to derail the process.

C'mon, the Arizona legislature never acts without thinking things through first

2011-12-02T22:24:00.000-07:00

A quick follow-up on my earlier post about funding the Arizona Dept. of Water Resources (ADWR). Seems some people in our fine legislature here in Arizona came to the realization that a tax imposed to cover general services of a state agency is probably not accurately described as a user fee. The Phoenix paper reports that they might reconsider the bill passed last year that allows ADWR to make up the money they used to receive as a general fund appropriation by taxing municipalities in the state on a per capita basis. It's not an idea entirely without merit, but the way it was implemented just reeked of a hastily devised plan to patch a hole in the state budget. What I find really amusing is that the political mind finds it preferable to admit that they didn't really know what a bill they voted for meant than to admit that they previously supported a complete piece of garbage.

Some worthwhile things to read

2011-11-26T20:12:00.000-07:00

I'm way overdue on one of these and only a little bit on the other.

I have often wondered if the concept of unitization (a governance regime for oil/gas reservoirs that imposes reservoir-wide management by combining the interests of multiple producers under a single management entity) could be applied to aquifer management. In my opinion there are certain aspects of existing forms of aquifer management that incorporate elements of unitization - adjudicated groundwater basins probably come closest, but none are truly unitization as practiced in the oil fields. Todd Jarvis, who is on the faculty of Oregon State University, as part of their Institute for Water and Watersheds, recently authored a paper (links to the abstract, I think you have to pay for the full paper) that looks at this idea from a theoretical perspective. Todd points out in an email that this approach might be useful in places, such as California, that have very little existing management of groundwater resources but considerable experience with unitization in oil fields. It's an interesting idea that I think merits further study.

The other document that is of great interest to me is the final Cornerstones Report on Market-Based Responses to Arizona's Water Sustainability Challenges prepared by the talented folks at Ecosystem Economics and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation under a grant from the Walton Family Foundation (who have been funding a number of initiatives related to preservation of riparian ecosystems in Arizona). I haven't had a chance to do much more than glance through the report, but I did have a chance to review a draft copy last winter and participated in one of the workshops that helped brainstorm ideas to inform this report. It's a very honest and thorough assessment of the realities and challenges associated with using market-based approaches to securing water for environmental needs in Arizona and I highly recommend taking a look if this interests you.

The White Man's Viewpoint on Indian Water Rights

2011-11-11T10:57:00.001-07:00

This is purely coincidence - but just after I decided to post something about Indian water settlements I came across this opinion piece recently published in the Phoenix paper. Don't be mislead by the title referring to the "role" of Indian tribes in Arizona's water future. This is the same role tribes have had throughout history - donors of water supplies to non-Indians.

The author notes that the story of how the Indians came to control a major portion of Arizona's Colorado River water supplies is "too complicated and lengthy to be told" in his short opinion piece, but then goes on to completely disregard the significance of that story in concluding that there has been an "unfair distribution of Arizona's Colorado River water... ."

Giving people the impression that tribes have been highly favored in the apportionment of water in this state, when in fact they have barely been compensated for the fact that over the previous 100 years the outrageous favoritism toward non-Indians in water supply management left tribes impoverished, thirsty, and unable to pursue many traditional aspects of their cultures, is clearly disingenuous if not simply dangerous.

And as I plan to lay out in my next post, even the rights that tribes have earned in their settlements may turn out to be mirages, once the full cost of that water comes to bear. The views expressed in Mr. Zarbin's piece need to be denounced in very strong terms and the rights of tribes to their water must be protected. When non-Indians can come to terms with that, then the tribes might be willing to become a larger part of Arizona's water future.

The Failed Promise of Indian Water Settlements, Pt. 1

2011-11-10T23:45:00.000-07:00

If you know me, or know this blog well, you might be aware that I work for an Indian tribe in Arizona. While my views expressed in this blog post are clearly informed by my work with that tribe, they in no way express the views of the tribe itself and I write this not as an advocate for any specific tribe but to shed light on some challenges for tribes in Arizona, specifically, but my observations may have applications outside Arizona.

I will try to present this story in two parts - there's too much for one post, maybe too much for two, but that remains to be seen. I'll start by laying out the history and rationale behind the existing water rights settlements (focusing on Arizona because that's what I'm familiar with) in this post, then explaining why they amount to failed promises in the next.

In my work I have been involved in the implementation of one very significant water rights settlement, as well as participating in negotiations for another settlement being sought by this same tribe. I have learned a great deal about how such settlements work and how they are developed. I have also learned that the promise of those settlements - intended to compensate these tribes, who were in Arizona, using water to support their communities, economies, and cultures for hundreds (if not thousands) of years before the arrival of non-Natives and their boundless thirst for water to support their farms, mines, and cities - is currently proving to be yet another of many empty promises made by the U.S. government to tribal sovereign nations over the past 200 years.

The Arizona Water Settlements Act (AWSA) was enacted in 2004 (but not actually implemented until 2007). It is a complex, often cumbersome piece of legislation that attempted to resolve, in a single legislative action, several lawsuits (via negotiated settlement agreements that became part of the legislation), several pending Federal reserved water rights claims in the largest surface water adjudication (this link goes to a webpage with all relevant documents in the adjudications) in Arizona, the repayment obligations of the State of Arizona to the federal government for construction of the Central Arizona Project (CAP) and the reallocation of hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of Colorado River water that had been under long-term contract to several irrigation districts in Arizona. What is truly amazing is that most of that was actually accomplished.

The tribes that received settlements through this legislation were the Gila River Indian Community and the Tohono O'odham Nation (the links provided go to the Arizona Dept. of Water Resources website, which has comprehensive summaries of each settlement), and to a minor extent, the San Carlos Apache Tribe. The Gila River tribe received a water entitlement that totaled over 650,000 acre feet of CAP water, groundwater, effluent, and other surface water sources. The Tohono O'odham received 66,000 acre feet of CAP water plus rights to 13,200 acre feet of groundwater. The legislation authorized use of money from the Lower Colorado River Basin Development Fund (sort of a slush fund for lower basin projects left over from the Colorado River Basin Project Act) to pay for much of the cost of the CAP water that was included in the settlements, as well as for construction of irrigation projects to put that water to use.

The intent of the settlements was to compensate the tribes for the fact that their surface and groundwater supplies were taken, over many years, to support the growth of Anglo communities. The settlements incorporated both water and money - the water intended to provide the tribes with a resource for economic development; the money to enable purchase of the water (and development of things like farms to use the water). The money was necessary because, in most cases, the water included in the settlements was Colorado River water, delivered by the CAP. The delivery costs for this water are significant. This water source was necessary because the surface water previously relied on by tribes is long gone and groundwater was well on its way to being in the same state.

In exchange for agreeing to these settlements the tribes were giving up all future claims to water as compensation for what was lost. They were supposed to be getting water and the ability to use that water to compensate them for the considerable lost economic opportunity that resulted from having their water taken previously.

These are the things that were promised to the tribes in return for settling their water rights claims. In the next post I'll lay out why I think the government may soon fail to deliver on that promise.

Our failed development model

2011-10-22T11:14:00.000-07:00

I found an interesting series (links to part 1 of 5) about the failure of the suburban planning model in a journal (Aug. 2011 issue) of the American Planning Association and thought it was worth sharing. I traced the article back to a series of blog posts by the author on the website of the New Urban Network - one of those New Urbanism advocacy groups that have sprouted up over the last two decades.

This isn't really about water - but water resource planning plays a huge role in it, especially in arid areas like the southwest. But I found this series very interesting because it does a really good job of articulating some things I have been trying to say, somewhat inarticulately, for a long time. I think the Ponzi scheme language is maybe a bit strong - maybe because that term has been so degraded through use by a certain presidential candidate, but the overall point of the series is pretty much dead on. The way we have grown - especially in the Sunbelt, but all over the U.S., since WWII has resulted in financial obligations taken on by most local jurisdictions that are proving to be unsustainable. Especially since the financial meltdown. I call it the junkie model of growth - a city gets a taste of something it likes, in this case subsidized growth that increases local tax bases, and before you know it they can't seem to get enough of it and if they stop getting it they're headed for a nasty crash.

I highly recommend checking it out if you find this sort of thing interesting like I do.

Hit the high points

2011-10-16T15:36:00.001-07:00

There are a number of initiatives currently on-going around Tucson. I've got my hand in two of them, have dabbled in another, and may become involved in a fourth.

1) Way back in 2007, the city changed directions in its role as a regional water provider when the then city manager decided the city needed to have some sort of coherent policy to guide decisions to expand the service area of our water utility. This policy change (it actually was the creation of a policy that didn't previously exist, in my opinion, because prior to that the city would provide water to anyone who asked for it and agreed to pay for the infrastructure needed to make the connection) was a huge step around here and I'm still a little surprised that it has remained in effect. I have several other previous posts on this topic: i.e. here, here, and here.
This was just an interim policy. The city wanted to wait for completion of the City/County Water study before implementing a final policy - which happened in mid-2010. One of the requirements with that adoption was that the policy would be reviewed annually. That annual review process has been underway for the last 4-5 months, coming before my subcommittee of the Citizen's Water Advisory Committee on several occasions. After receiving feedback from the development community, the city council requested that Tucson Water staff set up a formal stakeholder process to request feedback from other sectors of the community. That has resulted in two public meetings occurring the 2nd half of October to provide people with background on the policy and give them an opportunity to comment and suggest modifications. After the public meetings are complete I'll post something on the likely changes to the policy - which should be fairly modest. One change has already been made, when Mayor and Council approved changing the time that water assurance letters are valid from one year to two. This gives a developer more time to finalize development plans and get their development underway with iron-clad assurance that they will be provided water once built-out.

2) The Safe Yield Task Force, which I wrote about briefly here, has continued chugging along. We have revisited the main issues/recommendations that came from a similar effort a little over a decade ago (the AMAs produce a new planning document every 10 years and they usually lead to a certain amount of soul-searching within the region). This group has been meeting almost monthly for about a year and has probably accomplished most of what it is likely to accomplish - but it hasn't accomplished what some in the group had hoped it would accomplish - deal with sub-area management issues. That is because most of the issues addressed require regional solutions to regional problems, but sub-area management requires figuring out who is causing more localized problems and getting them to fix their own mess - unless you can get everyone to agree that we will deal with the mess as a region. But the good outcome has been (I think) a commitment to measure and monitor what is happening in the region to get to full utilization of our renewable water supplies - which is a pretty big step.

3) The city is currently in the first part of the process to update the General Plan that is used to guide zoning and growth decisions for the next 10 years. One of the working groups assigned the task of establishing goals to be accomplished via enumerated policies is discussing the role of water in growth decisions. That group has a working document that was developed at the last meeting (probably the extent of my involvement) and will be further refined at their next meeting, Tuesday 10/18.

4) When the City/County Water Study wrapped up, the intent was for the discussion to move to the regional level - incorporating all jurisdictions and major water users in the Tucson AMA. The mantle was taken up by a group of 5 individuals representing some of the major water interests around here, calling themselves the Regional Water Assessment Taskforce. This self-appointed group developed a pretty clever way to assess the motivation and possible methods of implementing some sort of regional effort to develop more sustainable water use practices. Last year they convened a number of local individuals with expertise and/or influence in the use and management of water resources in a series of discussions they called "think tanks". Which were kind of like focused internet chat rooms where everyone was talking about local water policy, guided by a set of common questions. You can find out more about the process by reading the report on the website linked above.
After completing these discussions they compiled all the comments made into a report that tried to distill them into distinct areas of common interest. This report was recently unveiled to the public at a well-attended meeting. They are hoping to elicit feedback on the report and a series of recommendations they made to continue the discussion within a set of 4 regional water strategy groups - water supply, infrastructure, conservation/demand management, and reliability, sustainability and aquifer health.
It will be interesting to see if the region can sustain any momentum with this effort in the face of anemic economic growth and struggling government budgets.

New Funding Source for the Arizona Department of Water Resources

2011-09-10T22:52:00.000-07:00

Back in April I posted about a piece of legislation passed up in Phoenix that would allow the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) to replace the funding they used to get as a general fund appropriation by taxing all Arizona cities, based on their population. ADWR finalized the rulemaking (specially exempted from the governor's moratorium on new regulations, that seems to be a moratorium in name only) last month and set the fees for each of the cities in the state. The authorizing legislation allows ADWR to use the fee to collect up to $7 million each year, but they gave the cities a break by only going for just over $6.25 million this year. Obviously Tucson and Phoenix, as the two biggest cities, will be covering a big chunk of the fees - $650k and $1.8 million, respectively. This municipality fee is meant to cover roughly half of ADWR's budget - the rest coming from fees on permits, permit reviews, and other services the agency provides. But in the current economic climate I suspect that is probably most of what the agency will be operating on for the coming year.

The big question that has been bugging me is - how are most cities planning to pay for this new fee? There are many cities that have public water utilities that will permit them to pass the fee along in their water rates. Tucson has a utility, but about 30% of that utility's customers live outside the city limits, so it doesn't seem fair to do that here. There are also many cities that don't have their own water utilities - usually they have private water utilities. That requires some cities to just cover this fee out of their general fund. But budgets are pretty squeezed for everyone these days. Then there are all the people who live in unincorporated areas. They will pay nothing, presumably, but still derive some value from the services that ADWR provides.

Bisbee, a city of 5,500 people in far southeast Arizona has a private water utility and their city manager sounds none too happy about having to pay an additional 7 grand to the state to keep the doors open at ADWR. I wonder how much value Bisbee receives from the work that ADWR does? Or how much value the city of Tucson receives for their share of the money. Admittedly, you might say that funding the agency the old way probably resulted in many parts of the state receiving more from ADWR than they were paying for, so maybe this method makes more sense. But I have a feeling the only place that will be getting what they pay for under this system is gonna be the Phoenix metro area. Although, that has arguably been the case since ADWR closed down all their offices outside of Phoenix last year.

It's just that the services different parts of the state require from a state water management agency vary based on the hydrologic issues that area is dealing with and those services are usually not directly related to population, although population is a factor - but in my opinion it's more about population growth than absolute population. Maybe that gets covered by the fees for services part of ADWRs budget, hard to say. But I remain astonished that things looked so grim for ADWR that the cities agreed to fund their activities in this way.

Oh and one other thing. If you look at the bottom of page 2 of the notice of proposed rulemaking there is a sentence that says: "Monies in the fund are subject to legislative appropriation". That means the legislature can sweep the fund in future years if they need to top off their budgets, just like they have been doing for the last 3 years. They have had their wrists slapped by courts on a couple of occasions recently - including their sweep of money from Las Vegas that was intended to buy excess Colorado River water for banking in Arizona. In that case the court said the fund sweep was unconstitutional, but they refused to order the legislature to give the money back. Real nice.

A few water conservation ideas

2011-09-10T22:09:00.000-07:00

I have received a couple of emails recently from people wanting to publicize their water conservation info. One is about some simple ways to conserve water during droughts.
When I first saw the url I thought it said Connecticut Utilities and thought to myself, "well they certainly don't have to worry about drought right now." But it has nothing to do with that soggy New England state.
The next one is from bestcollegesonline.com and presents a list of ways that different colleges are implementing water conserving projects. Looks like some pretty progressive water conservation is happening on college campuses.

Recent Recognition

2011-08-19T19:59:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed I have a new gadget along the right margin. I was notified last month by someone from Seametrics.com that I was on their list of Top 25 Water Conservation blogs. I of course promptly added the link on the side but failed to acknowledge the honor in any way. Noticing who some of the other blogs on the list were I was humbled and felt quite honored to be included. So this is a shout-out to all those other blogs on the list and to the good folks at Seametrics for including me.

Assorted Property Rights for Sale

2011-08-19T19:52:00.000-07:00

For some reason I was searching through a list of books on water marketing on Amazon the other day and an advertisement on the bottom of the page caught my eye. It offered a forum for buying and selling water rights and listed a website: http://georights.com/.

So I clicked through to take a look. Seems they offer just about every sort of interest in land there could be: easements, mineral rights, hunting/fishing rights, etc. It must be fairly new because they are offering free sign-ups to list and bid on properties in order to build their traffic.

So I checked out their listing of water rights for sale. Not real extensive at this point, but pretty good geographic diversity for what is there.

I'm kind of curious if anyone out there has any experience with this outfit or knows of the people behind it. Anyone .... Bueller? Chris Corbin?

Training in Urban Stream Restoration

2011-07-19T21:52:00.000-07:00

Watershed Management Group (WMG)* is planning a 3-day hands on short course in urban stream restoration this fall in Tucson. If you or anyone you know might have an interest in this the info is below:

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Technical Training in Urban Stream Restoration with Watershed Management Group, October 6-8, 2011, in Tucson, AZ

Apply by August 1 for Reduced Course Fee!

Join Watershed Management Group (WMG) for a 3-day, hands-on course in Stream Restoration through the Watershed Technical Trainings program. This course will provide participants with a basic understanding of how desert streams and arroyos function, how they change over time, and the human influence on them, both positive and negative. Based on this foundation, students will participate in hands-on sessions in site assessment, design, and implementation of small-scale restoration features. Emphasis will be placed on urban wash restoration approaches and practices from backyard to larger drainage scales.

The course curriculum includes:

· Classroom lectures

· Site assessment, surveying, design, and planning sessions

· Hands-on restoration workshops

· Tour of local restoration sites

Apply early for the reduced registration fee by August 1, 2011; application deadline for the regular registration fee is September 1, 2011. To view the full course announcement and download an application, visit WMG's Watershed Technical Training webpage. For more information, please contact Tory Syracuse at tsyracuse@watershedmg.org or 520-396-3266.

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* While I am a board member with WMG I derive no financial benefit from any of the work they do, only the satisfaction of seeing them be successful.

Sweet, wonderful rain!

2011-07-05T05:45:00.000-07:00

The monsoon arrived in So. Arizona on schedule over the 4th of July weekend. We received more rain at my house during the past week than we had received during the previous 7 months - almost 1.5 inches. See how much fell in your neighborhood at www.rainlog.org.

Trying to re-discover my focus

2011-07-04T10:43:00.000-07:00

I've had a number of things swirling in my brain for the last few months (being shoved out of the way several times by exogenous factors) but have been waiting to find some sort of motivation or focus to help them coalesce into a cogent written form. In the meantime, I'll just take the route of some of my fellow water-bloggers and shoot out some quick updates.

Many of the readers of this blog probably already know this but for any who don't, David Zetland, of Aguanomics, recently released his first book - self-published no less - called "The End of Abundance: Economic Solutions to Water Scarcity." David's a very bright guy and I'm sure his book includes some outstanding insight into water allocation problems, including actual solutions, and the dry wit that he is known for. Should be an excellent read and I'm hoping to get a copy for myself before my vacation in August.

But for the moment I'm working through Jamie Workman's recent book, "Heart of Dryness," about the struggles of the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert and how the indigenous wisdom of drought-adapted societies can help modern humanity cope with coming water shortages. I'm a few chapters in right now and it's a very compelling narrative Jamie presents. Of particular interest to me are the similarities I see between the Bushmen - their interactions with outsiders, struggles to maintain their traditional way of life, and the failure of those outsiders to learn important lessons from ancient cultures - and some of the traditional Native American cultures of the Southwest. I had the opportunity to meet Jamie in Tucson a few months back and really enjoyed talking about our mutual passion for changing existing paradigms in water management to deal with scarcity.

A few things I'm hoping to compose some thoughts on in the near future:

Response within the Arizona water management community to the CAP proposal for allocating new water supplies by a market-clearing auction. This was a novel and interesting proposal that was given a less-than-warm reception when released almost 9 months ago.
The recent US Supreme Court opinion in Montana v. Wyoming that has important implications for the significance of return flows in interstate river compacts.
The prospects for future Indian water rights settlements in Arizona - essentially, not especially good right now.

In memoriam, Steve Brooks, 1959-2011

2011-06-05T14:20:00.001-07:00

My brother Steve passed away recently, losing his battle with cancer. Steve was both my inspiration and my nemesis at various points in my life. He was the reason I went to school to become a hydrologist (he was already in the masters program at University of Arizona when I entered to pursue my BS). I followed him into consulting in Arizona, where I was forever known as "Steve's younger brother" within much of the local hydrology community. At times I think I may have left consulting to go to law school as a concession that I would never be as good a hydrogeologist as he was. But the reality is, he had things he was really good at - computer modeling and theory - and I had things I was very good at - field hydrogeology and policy. In the end I came to the understanding that he pushed me at times to make myself better at what I did (which I often resented), but ultimately I would not be where I am today without his influence in my life. I am a better person both professionally and personally because he took the time to care about me and where I was going with my life. I owe him a huge debt of gratitude that I was never very good at expressing. I hope he occasionally looks down on me and smiles at my accomplishments.

Quick follow-up on Rainwater Harvesting legislation in AZ

2011-05-07T11:59:00.000-07:00

I recently posted about a piece of legislation being considered in Phoenix that first would have created a new water right to harvested rainwater, then was modified to create a state commission to study the practice of rainwater harvesting and how it could be used to augment renewable water supplies. Just to keep you up to date, I recently learned that the bill, SB1522, didn't make it out of the legislature this year. According to an article in the Prescott paper, the bill was held up in committee by the committee head who says he just doesn't like study committees. Maybe next year they'll try to move it through a different committee.

King in Waiting says "Lay off the beef!"

2011-05-07T08:10:00.000-07:00

Prince Charles was speaking at a conference at Georgetown this week (taking a break from the royal wedding festivities, I suspect) to tell Americans that our fondness for dead cow is seriously straining the worlds water supplies. He's absolutely correct, that the amount of water needed to produce each pound of beef is almost outrageously disproportionate to the value of the nutrition produced. But I suspect that if you did a similar calculation of the amount of water needed to grow the grains to produce a fifth of gin or a pound of almonds it would look similarly disproportionate [I did a quick check online - 1) the numbers reported vary widely by source; 2) I didn't find any reported numbers for water used in the production of gin and the numbers I found for almonds were not useful]. Another thing is that probably 1,900 gallons of the 2,000 needed to produce the beef is used to irrigate the feed and if we didn't eat the beef we would still need to be fed so that 1,900 gallons of water would probably still be used to irrigate something.

If you look at trends for beef consumption and water use in the US for recent decades, it's clear that beef consumption is down and water consumption is flat. So maybe he's preaching to the choir in this country. What would really be helpful would be to convince people in the rapidly developing parts of the world that as they grow richer, greatly increasing their meat consumption is going to put enormous strains on their water supplies, which generally are pretty poorly managed at present. If they want to avoid significant negative environmental consequences of economic development it would be smart to manage water supplies in such a way that the majority of their water isn't used to grow food for animals that will be fed to people - especially if the people they are being fed to live in other countries.

Finally ... I don't really appreciate members of the one of the wealthiest families in the world telling me what I should eat. I'm a commoner, living in a constitutional democracy, that's just how I feel.

Making some changes

2011-05-04T19:48:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to play around with the design within the confines of Blogger. I'm not convinced I like the result and might consider moving to a different platform. If any of my 3 or 4 readers has an opinion I'd appreciate if you let me know. And if you have a favorite blogging platform that I should check out let me know about that too.

More AZ Legislature stupidity

2011-04-25T20:42:00.000-07:00

Many in our state legislature have signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge of Americans for Tax Reform, in which they vow to never vote for any tax increase. As evidence of the anti-tax zeal of our legislators they even pushed through a very large corporate tax cut during the legislative session that just ended - before they got around to dealing with our current state budget, which is $1 Billion in the red. Never mind that any future shortfalls in state revenues that might result from those budgets cuts (if the projected increased revenues due to expanded business activity in the state fails to cover the foregone taxes) will have to be made up somehow - and the state budgets are cut pretty much to the bone at this point. They are also reducing state-shared revenues to the cities and counties, which will have to be made by either cutting local services or raising local taxes (property or sales) and forcing cities and counties to fund things that the state previously did - like housing prisoners short-term. And more recently they passed legislation, that has since been signed by the governor, that determines how certain state agencies can spend the money they have available to them and permits the Department of Water Resources to make up a gap in its budget (caused by the legislature taking away previous general fund appropriations) by imposing a new tax on municipalities in the state (they call it a fee in the bill, so maybe they think that means it's not really a tax).

So, no, our state legislature will not permit the imposition of new taxes that would violate their pledge. But they have no compunction about establishing rules that require other entities to increase taxes to make up for revenue shortfalls that result from fund sweeps, budget cuts, and sweetheart tax breaks to favored entities. Way to be consistent in your ideology folks.

Nice job, Tucson

2011-04-22T11:01:00.000-07:00

Tony Davis has an article in the morning daily congratulating Tucsonans for their thrifty water use habits. In the article, he does a nice job of pointing out the obvious connection between conservation and giving consumers information about their water use - unmetered uses will almost always be higher than metered uses (assuming there are volumetric charges for the water). But there is always bad news that must accompany good news (wouldn't want folks getting too cocky). In this case, reduction in water use is rewarded by increases in water rates because of the way rates are structured in Tucson. Here's how it works:

Tucson water rates are set in increasing blocks - the more water you use, the higher your rate per unit of use; this is intended to send a strong conservation message to consumers
when rates are increased most of the increase is added to the upper blocks (don't want to punish the people who are doing the best job of conserving)

Here's what Tucson's rate structure looks like on a graph, comparing it to other 4 block rate structures:

over time, because most water revenue is derived from water sales, the utility becomes overly dependent on sales in the higher blocks to meet its revenue targets
who do you think is most likely to conserve when water rates increase, especially rates in the higher blocks? That's right - the users in the higher blocks, because much of that use is discretionary
the next year, the utility projects another revenue shortfall so rates go up again, even though there was increased conservation the previous year

How do you fix this? You restructure your revenue model so that more of your fixed costs are covered by fixed revenues (monthly service charges paid by all customers or increase the rate in the first block).

Here's how Tucson's monthly service charge compares to those from several other cities:

This is what Tucson Water is trying to do this year, but they are certain to get pushback from the city council because of the potential impact on low-income customers. So we'll be revisiting this issue again next year, and probably the year after that.

What's going on up in Phoenix?

2011-03-28T21:42:00.001-07:00

Our legislature in Arizona is currently in session. This has always been a somewhat frightening prospect, but never more so than this year. We have the usual raft of bills seeking to demonize illegal immigrants and micromanage state agencies, but the big story this year has been the legislators efforts to collectively flip a large bird at the federal government. Everything from re-interpreting the 14th amendment's birthright citizenship provision to seeking to seize federal property through eminent domain. Fortunately, most of the crazier stuff has not made it out of committees or has been voted down on the floor. But I don't consider it my job to comment on everything they do up there - there are plenty of other people doing that. I just want to talk about some of the ideas that have been floated this year dealing with water.

One in particular caught my eye recently. It's SB 1522, which relates to use of harvested rain water for aquifer augmentation. The original bill would have essentially created a new form of water right in Arizona - a right to harvested rain water. The idea was that someone could harvest rainwater on a sufficiently large scale - think cities or large subdivisions - and put that water in some form of recharge facility where it would percolate into the ground and recharge local aquifers. The entity that collected and recharged the water would then get a groundwater storage credit equal to 50% of the water that they could verify actually went into the ground. That credit would allow them to legally pump the amount of water represented by that credit and call it "renewable water." This idea was being pushed by a couple of legislators from Yavapai County (i.e. the Prescott AMA and city of Prescott) where there is a very serious lack of renewable water supplies (data from 2003 - it's definitely worse now).

If there is anyplace in this state that could really benefit from large-scale rainwater harvesting, it's the Prescott area. Problem is, this area is also where a couple of the rivers (Verde, Agua Fria, Hassayampa) that supply quite a bit of water (both surface and groundwater inflow) to the Phoenix area have a source or sources. So it obviously piqued the interest of a few of the bigger players in the state in terms of water. This was evident in a recent article from the Prescott newspaper.

In addition, the legislation asked the Arizona Department of Water Resource (ADWR) to develop a new regulatory scheme that would set rules for how rainwater recharge facilities would be managed, how the water collected and recharged would be accounted for, inspection of those facilities, and presumably a permitting system and accounting system to track the water. But the legislature, I'm sure, had no intention of providing ADWR with additional money to take on and complete those responsibilities.

Looking at the original legislation, it seemed pretty silly to me that you would go to the expense of harvesting rainwater just to put it in the ground, then pump water back out of the ground to provide to customers. Seems a lot simpler to just spend that money buying rain barrels for people they could use to harvest their own water to then use in place of potable water. In theory, that would permit water providers in the area to reduce their pumpage, thereby cutting into the amount of the overdraft. But it doesn't really work out that way. Having decisions made by thousands of individual homeowners is not how water providers like to manage their water supplies (although to some extent it is kind of like that now). And having current customers reduce usage doesn't mean that water will stay in the ground, it will just be used somewhere else or at some other time. This also doesn't create more renewable water that satisfies the requirements of state law, so it can't help areas that need renewable water to keep growing.

This is an issue I've been wrestling with for a while now. How do you set policy that encourages individual water users to do the right thing AND gives the water provider an incentive to want their customers to do the right thing? Setting prices for potable water that make harvested rainwater competitive with tap water is clearly one option - just a politically difficult one. And somewhat logistically difficult as well, but not impossible. The other problem is that you want customers to actually replace existing uses of potable water with other sources - rain water or gray water. Again, if you just incentivize it by providing subsidized rain barrels or mandating gray water stub-outs on houses there is no guarantee that people won't just view that as free water with which to support additional vegetation, rather than replacing existing water uses - which would seem to lead you back to the pricing solution. And it's important to note that you don't need to change state law to use pricing to encourage more use of unconventional supplies of water.

Anyway, the law (as amended in the State House) now merely calls for creation of a commission to study the feasibility of establishing a scheme to do large-scale rainwater harvesting. I think this probably puts the idea of any sort of state-sanctioned water right for harvested rainwater to rest. It remains to be seen if this commission can come up with a viable way to make rainwater harvesting a significant component of regional water management strategies - as clearly it should be in places that lack imported, renewable supplies.

That was the main bit of water legislation that interested me enough to write about it here. If anything else comes along that gets me excited I'll mention it in an upcoming post.

Note - Edited 3/29/11 to add reference and link to Prescott Daily Courier article.

Wacky Shenanigans in the AZ Legislature

2011-03-06T21:29:00.000-07:00

I wish I had more time to track what our legislature is up to ... sometimes. But it seems that when I do try to pay attention lately, what I find out just makes me want to smash things.
They do have some bills in the works that affect water use, water management, and especially the state agencies that oversee water. I should try to make a few comments on them soon, so that's what I'm planning to do next.

Development Community Attempts to Derail Environmental Water Allocations

2011-02-12T15:11:00.001-07:00

Previously I alluded to efforts by the development community in Southern Arizona to derail plans by the city and county to allocate up to 10,000 acre-feet of treated sewage for environmental uses in the region. These folks have decided that the process for allocating this water to environmental uses wasn't sufficiently rigorous and risks the loss of a significant portion of renewable water that can be used to support future population/economic growth. They sent a letter to both the County Board of Supervisors and the City Council saying (among other things) that: "[e]ffluent is a highly reliable, locally available component of our region’s renewable water supply portfolio" and "the proposed IGA does not contemplate replacement of these entitlements, which are needed to promote and support regional economic growth."

Whoa! Wait a minute. I didn't know that this water was surreptitiously taken from some magical bucket of water reserved to support future growth in the region? Admittedly, that is one possible use for that water - not to be turned into potable water to be provided to future residents of Tucson (unless state law changes, that's currently illegal), but to be recharged to generate storage credits that permit future pumping of groundwater to supply homes and businesses. But this water belongs to the entities that generated the effluent (the city and the county), who are free to allocate it in ways they believe will best benefit the region. Clearly there was some discussion within the community when the decision was made to set aside this water for environmental restoration. I don't remember any similar discussion when the decision was made to wipe out 90% of the riparian habitat in the region so that water could be provided for the growth of the community.

But the current reality is that most of that water is currently wasted (this links to a fairly large pdf, but go to page 6 - the table shows where the water goes from the treatment plants - the row titled AZPDES discharge is what is dumped in the river; some of that generates storage credits, presently, but most of it does not and quite a bit of it actually flows out of the AMA). It does support some pretty degraded habitat along the Santa Cruz River, downstream from the sewage treatment plants and when the upgrades of those plants are completed in the future, the quality of that water will actually support some aquatic life. But for now, some of that water is used to supply the reclaimed water system (replacing groundwater pumping for turf irrigation), a portion of it recharges naturally along the rivercourse and earns credits for various entities, but over 20,000 acre-feet of that water provides essentially no benefit to the region.

Fortunately, both the city and county governing bodies chose to continue with plans to implement their agreements for dedicating this portion of the water to environmental uses. But I suspect this battle is not entirely over, because parties wishing to use this water for environmental projects still have to go to the city and county to be approved to take it. Many of the arguments being made will be made again, especially because water supplies will almost certainly be tighter at that point than they are now. But when it comes to finding ways to restore lost riparian habitat (and especially the water needed to do so) I think this is the most promising avenue to realize that objective. It's not elegant, it's not simple. But it may just be effective.

Conserve to Enhance - helping the environment via water bills

2011-01-30T08:54:00.000-07:00

While my previous post discussed the myriad problems associated with allocating water for the environment, here I'd like to talk about something novel being tried in Tucson to connect individual water conservation decisions with environmental restoration. The program is called Conserve to Enhance (C2E) and operates by having municipal water customers here in Tucson implement something on their property (i.e. rainwater harvesting or graywater reuse) that will decrease the amount of water they use each month, leading to a regular savings on their water bill. That savings does not come off of their bill. Instead they continue paying the same amount and the money they would have saved is put in a funding source for environmental restoration projects that typically require a water source to establish and maintain riparian ecosystems.

A pilot program for C2E was just started, so the program has been in the news recently (see here, here, and here). The program evolved from an idea developed at the University of Arizona's Water Resources Research Center (WRRC) that was originally known as Environmental Water Banking. It evolved from what was perceived as a need to link water conservation activities with environmental benefits in the community. A common complaint in the past has been that water conservation only frees up more water for new development so why bother.

I'm not involved in the program, but Watershed Management Group (for whom I'm a board member) is the entity running the program, with assistance from WRRC and the Sonoran Institute and grant funding from EPA that is providing subsidies for some of the pilot program participants to install the infrastructure necessary to realize their water savings.

While this is a rather small step in the overall goal of bringing the environment to the table when water is being dished up it is a very big step in public perception of water conservation and how it's connected to protecting the environment. And perhaps more than that, it's an example of people assigning an economic value to environmental amenities and backing that up with real money to provide water for the environment. Hopefully in a year I'll be talking about how successful the pilot project has been and that plans for a full-scale roll-out are imminent.

Allocating Water for the Environment

2011-01-29T13:44:00.000-07:00

View of the Santa Cruz River near downtown Tucson from 1904.
Copyright Information: 1904 - Arizona Historical Society. Photo ID: 26691

Back in 2009, when I participated in a study of regional water resources with the objective of finding policies that would encourage sustainable water use in Tucson and Pima County (the City/County Water study - see multiple previous posts), one of the key findings of that study was that future water planning in the region needs to incorporate environmental water needs as well as water for people and our economy. While acknowledging that fact was an important step in this community, the real challenge is determining how to actually incorporate the environment in water allocation decision-making.

The Phase II report produced from that study identified 5 broad goals and 13 recommendations related to "Respect for the Environment" that talked about identifying opportunities and water supplies for environmental restoration and preserving the few existing riparian environments remaining in this area. But in terms of actually identifying those opportunities it talked about things like seeking to incorporate multiple benefits into future infrastructure projects and maintaining the "effluent dependent" riparian habitat that has been created in the Santa Cruz River as a historical accident of our need to dispose of treated wastewater. Not exactly earth-shaking stuff. As for identifying water supplies for the environment the main recommendation was to finalize a 2000 inter-governmental agreement (fairly large pdf) between the city and county allocating up to 10,000 acre-feet per year of the effluent coming from county-owned treatment plants for future environmental restoration projects. Don't get me wrong - it was very important for that to be completed - but it hardly constitutes a long-term strategy to "put the environment at the table where water is distributed," as stated in the report. That's putting the environment at the kids table, where the grown-ups tell it what it can have and when.

And this water is not entirely safe until they start actually allocating it. The local development community has been trying to derail the plan to implement the Conservation Effluent Pool (CEP), as the 10,000 acre feet is known locally. But that is the subject of a separate post.

So how does the environment get a seat at the grown-up table in future water allocation decisions? One idea is to have the environment as a full economic participant in water allocation. That means obtaining water rights for the environment by outright purchase (of water or land with water rights attached), various types of lease agreements, or conservation easements. Some of these ideas are described in a recent article (links to pdf) in the Arizona Journal of Environmental Law and Policy, by Aaron Citron (a fellow Arizona law grad). But there are a lot of limitations to this type of solution because of various quirks of water law and land use law in Arizona.

Those limitations are described very well in a forthcoming report from Ecosystem Economics that I hope to be able to share when it's finalized. Their report resulted from workshops they conducted with a variety of Arizona water policy experts last summer (I was honored to be included in the second workshop) and will hopefully culminate in a number of policy recommendations the state could implement to foster greater market activity in water rights in the state that could benefit the environment if water from low-valued uses could be shifted to environmental uses via market transactions. The biggest challenges (in my opinion, but also echoed in the report) are the failure of Arizona water law to fully recognize the connection between surface water and groundwater and the highly uncertain nature of many water rights in the state.

The first challenge means that even if surface water rights can be secured for environmental purposes they cannot always be protected from depletion resulting from groundwater pumping (i.e. San Pedro River). The second, results from the lack of adjudication (another pdf) of most surface water rights in the state, which means that determining the value, the quantity, and the seniority of many of those rights is challenging - leading to high transaction costs that hinder the creation of robust markets.

What this all means, is that until the right conditions can be created for markets to reallocate water in the state, the best way to allocate water for environmental purposes may be by government edict (or enforcement of federal environmental laws - this could be another series of posts in its own right). It's not entirely hopeless, the particular circumstances in some parts of the state do lend themselves to economic solutions to environmental problems with water allocation. But those solutions most often require outright purchase or partial purchase of land with associated water rights - not the most efficient solution. In the meantime, we can enjoy those rivers in the state where downstream senior rights holders (very politically powerful senior rights holders) will ensure that the rivers supplying those rights continue to flow. But in other areas we have to rely on people flushing their toilets to provide the water necessary for rivers to flow. How's that for imagery.

Moving on

2011-01-23T22:52:00.000-07:00

OK. I had my brief foray into political discussion (non-water related). Time to get back on message. I've been involved in a few things dealing with the challenges of allocating water for the environment within the context of western US/Arizona water policy/law. I'm going to try to post something in the next week on that topic.

Enough already!

2011-01-08T16:20:00.001-07:00

Something tragic forces me to speak to an issue other than water today. Earlier this morning, my congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, along with several of her staff and bystanders were shot by a nut-job with a gun as she was meeting with constituents at a grocery store here in Tucson. I didn't know Rep. Giffords personally, but I have supported her in the past and believed she was a good person, who did an excellent job of representing a district that is almost evenly divided among democrats, republicans, and independents. What that means is she knew how to compromise and craft common-sense solutions.

First, I want to express my condolences as well as my thoughts and prayers for those injured and killed, their families, and those who worked with them and knew them for the good people they are. While Rep. Giffords, at this point has a good chance of surviving despite being shot in the head at point blank range, it appears that among those killed were a federal district judge and a 9 year old girl.

Second, I want to note that while a part of me wishes that this were nothing more than another random, senseless acts of violence, the character of the political discourse that has evolved in this country, and especially some of the comments made about Rep. Giffords in the recent election, which she narrowly won over a republican candidate who ran a very negative campaign (supported by a lot of national conservative money that often used language against her that could be construed as advocating violence against those they oppose) makes me think there was more than that involved. In this kind of political climate, common sense tells me that the acts of this individual, while clearly indicative of some degree of mental illness was surely motivated by political belief and may have been nurtured by strong statements against democrats from conservative commentators and bloggers.

It's time to return to more civilized discourse in this country. If this tragedy can help us all realize that political power is not important enough to threaten or incite violence and focus our leaders in on doing what is truly important, then at least something good may come out of this tragedy. But if it only leads to more anger and invective then we will have learned nothing and will be doomed to repeat tragedies like this. I sure hope that's not the case.

Update: A gunman is in custody and it appears that he was a very disturbed young man. While his particular motivations are currently unclear, it's inevitable that the current state of politics will lead many to read a lot into his motivations and actions beyond the seeming prevalence of senseless violence in the world around us. As I said before - if leads to some genuine discussion and redirection of our political discourse, that's great. But if it will only add fuel to the flames, I'd prefer that we just call this more random, senseless violence.

1 foot of elevation - could mean 80,000 acre-feet or 320,000 acre-feet

2011-01-07T22:41:00.001-07:00

There have been a few news articles recently (i.e. here and here) about an announcement by Central Arizona Project (CAP, interestingly there's no mention of the idea on the CAP website) that they are considering leaving a portion of their allocation of Colorado River water in Lake Mead this coming year in an effort to maintain a higher lake level and hopefully avoid the potential for a declaration of shortage.

How does this work, you might ask? Part of the agreement from 2007 that allocated who will bear the brunt of shortages on the river also included some complex rules for what is called Intentionally Created Surplus (ICS). The general idea is that the lower basin states could develop arrangements whereby water that they don't really need in a given year - usually by engaging in some activity that actually conserves water that would have been used, i.e. fallowing farmland for a year - is left in Lake Mead, to be withdrawn in some future year. I don't know if Arizona's actions are considered ICS because nothing extraordinary is being done to save this water - it's basically water that Arizona doesn't currently need and for various reasons it might make more sense to leave it in Mead rather than pump it into the canal. But California entities (MWD) have taken advantage of this arrangement in the past. Arizona - or more specifically, the CAP - has not. CAP has been doing everything it can to take all its water.

Here's a little background. Arizona is allocated 2.8 million acre-feet (MAF) from the Colorado. 1.6 MAF goes to the CAP and the rest is used generally along the river for irrigation. But the thing is, entities that contract for CAP water don't currently need 1.6 MAF - so much of that water is put in the ground for storage, to be pumped out at a later date, like when there is a shortage on the river. Here is how the 2010 uses of CAP water break down, according to documents on their website:

2010 scheduled subcontract deliveries – 425,000 ac ft (this is mostly the water that is used by cities)
2010 scheduled deliveries to agriculture (technically excess water, but specifically allocated to the Ag pool) – 400,000 ac ft
Other excess scheduled deliveries (includes deliveries for firming*; water purchased to offset pumping; probably some water purchased, taken and used directly for industrial purposes; and water purchased and recharged for generation of credits by private entities) – 474,000 ac ft
Deliveries to Indian reservations (primarily Ag uses) – 104,000 ac ft
Deliveries of Indian water for off-reservation uses (mostly recharge and leases to non-tribal entities) – 240,000 ac ft

this adds up to slightly more than 1.6 MAF because some of the water delivered was water previously stored that was recovered (pumped out of ground) and delivered

This means that somewhere around 1 maf of water taken off the river by CAP was actually needed and used, while the rest was taken and stored underground, primarily so the state would not lose that water and to provide insurance against future shortages (*this is what is termed "firming" the water -taking lower priority water and changing it's character so it will be available during a shortage that otherwise would have curtailed the availability of that water).

By leaving this water in Lake Mead this year, Arizona hopes to 1) forestall a declaration of shortage and 2) make that water available to be taken out of the river in a future year when the reservoir storage is higher. This strategy makes a lot of sense for several reasons.

1) The water will hopefully be available in the future.

2) The in-state entity that handles most of the firming for the state (by recharging excess water or using it to replace groundwater pumping that would otherwise happen to supply irrigation water) is the Arizona Water Banking Authority (AWBA), an entity created specifically to help the state take its full allocation of Colorado River water sooner than we could actually put it to use in more traditional ways. In past years the AWBA has been given money from state budgets to carry out those activities, but some of that money has been taken away, leaving them with a reduced ability to carry out that function. But the main reason it makes sense at this point is:

3) If it really looks like Lake Mead is heading for that magic elevation of 1075 ft Arizona stands to lose out on 320,000 ac ft of water from the Colorado, which is a whole lot worse than temporarily losing out on 80,000 ac ft.

The whole reason Arizona has been taking all that extra water and putting it in the ground in the Central parts of the state was because we knew that shortages were gonna come some day and it would be much better to be able to pump that water out of the ground in-state than try to get any additional water from the Colorado. We're last in line at that tap anyway. But that was a good strategy as long as the level of Lake Mead stayed high enough that we should be able to take our full allotment. When shortages are looming - possibly in the next 2 years - a new strategy is called for. That's when you try to limit your losses as best as you can.

But, looking at the snow pack in the upper basin, it may be a very good year for flows into Lake Powell, which means more water will flow down to Mead in the summer and possibly forestall that shortage a little longer. We'll see.

updated 1/8/11 for content and clarity

On the rise

2010-12-04T13:11:00.001-07:00

Lake Mead is finally beginning to climb - see projection graph.

This was supposed to start happening a month ago, but ... better late than never.

Everything old is new again

2010-11-07T21:22:00.000-07:00

So I finally got around to reading "Water and the West" by Norris Hundley, Jr. (yeah I'm a little behind the curve on some things) and came across this passage in the section discussing the 1944 treaty with Mexico and a report by the Bureau of Reclamation about that same time describing their most recent estimations of flows on the Colorado:

Even so, calculations revealed that during a future drought, there would be a shortage. Though the shortage could be temporarily met by extra releases from Hoover Dam storage, the drawdown on the reservoir result in power losses; and if the drought lasted more than thirteen years, the reservoir would be exhausted.

This was reported in hearings on the treaty in the Senate in 1945. Just in case anyone thought that awareness of the likelihood of shortages on the lower river was a more recent phenomenon. Additionally, this is reported in a book that was written in the 1970s. 1945 was still a few years before the construction of Glen Canyon Dam, which certainly changed the projections for reservoir exhaustion at Mead, but the possibility remains frighteningly real.

Lake Mead expected to hit historic low today. Is anyone paying attention?

2010-10-17T10:23:00.001-07:00

John Fleck is winging his way to Lake Mead to observe an historic event expected to occur later today (10/17). As I'm writing this the water level elevation in the reservoir is at 1083.2 ft. As John points out, the lowest level the reservoir has ever seen (except when it was filling after first being constructed) was back in 1956, when it dropped to 1083.19, during what had been the historic drought of record for the river basin.

This is momentous for water geeks like John and I who love to observe the significance of historical events, but probably not so momentous for the average person. The number that should have great significance, especially for anyone who relies on water from the Central Arizona Project, is 1075. That is the elevation at which Arizona's share of Colorado River water will be reduced under the Shortage Sharing provisions adopted by the basin states a few years ago. Many water managers in the Southwest think it's likely the reservoir will reach that level as early as next year.

When the level of 1075 ft is reached, Arizona (specifically the Central Arizona Project) will have it's water delivery reduced by approximately 300,000 acre-feet. That's enough water to irrigate about 50,000 acres of alfalfa in central Arizona, or enough to provide municipal supplies to a city of almost 1.5 million people for a year. Does this mean any cities in Arizona will have to cut back on their water deliveries. No. This means that the amount of excess water being taken by Arizona mostly to recharge aquifers in the central part of the state will be reduced. Some farms will probably have to go back to pumping groundwater, but no municipal or industrial supplies will be affected until reductions become much larger - an unlikely occurrence in my lifetime.

But I can't help but wonder - what is the average Arizonan, who doesn't track these kinds of issues on a regular basis going to think when they hear Arizona's allocation from the Colorado River is being cut because of shortages on the river? Will they drill deeper and learn that the water they use in their home will be unaffected? Will they panic and start extraordinary conservation measures? Or will they look to move somewhere else?

I don't know how much resource managers in Arizona are thinking about these questions or if they have developed strategies to get the right message out to the public, or even thought about what the right message is. Do you tell people not to worry or do you say this a real threat to the continued viability of some communities in this state? I'd like to know if there are answers to these questions, because I don't have them and I think they are needed.

Water Sustainability Policy in Action - Sort of?

2010-10-07T07:00:00.000-07:00

Back when I started this blog my main objective was to report on the progress of an ongoing study by the City of Tucson and Pima County (where I live) that was intended to develop policies for a new water resources paradigm in this one little Sun Belt city, built up over the years on the promise of water - of sufficient quantities and suitable quality - to sustain whatever growth might come our way. After two years, 36 public meetings, 14 technical reports, and one comprehensive summary of water/wastewater resources and infrastructure in the region, an amazing collection of city and county staff (prodded on by a 12 member citizen's oversight committee) produced a Phase II report that outlined a menu of 19 community goals with 56 specific recommendations for reaching those goals. It was enormous effort that produced some impressive reports that could very easily have proceeded to sit on a shelf in someone's office.

But the process was designed from the start to prevent that from happening. To the credit of our public officials and staff who work in the city and county departments involved in the study, they were tasked with developing a plan within 6 months for implementing those 19 goals and 56 recommendations. The results of that effort were recently posted to the study website.

Having been involved in this process from the beginning - initially as an observer and concerned citizen, then as a member of the oversight committee during Phase II - I had very high hopes for this implementation document. I have also been frustrated by the failure of this city and most southwest cities to make the connection between water resources planning and land use planning for so very long - leading to horribly planned and potentially unsustainable conurbations in the midst of deserts, completely reliant on imported water supplies that could become unreliable and extremely costly in a climate-and-cheap-power-constrained future.

Coming from that perspective, on my first read, I was pretty disappointed in what I saw. It was mostly a collection of promises to study this, assess the feasibility of that, and a list of things that we were already doing or intended to do before this process even began. On further reflection, I decided this rather tepid implementation approach was due primarily to current budget problems in local governments limiting available resources. I think that has a lot to do with it. But I think it also reflects what is commonly seen as the play-it-safe approach of public employees. Radical ideas are not often rewarded in that setting.

I'm probably being too impatient with what is at heart a very political process, with the potential for some definite winners and losers. But I believe there is good reason for some impatience. We are currently in the midst of a near-standstill in property development around here due to the economy. It's possible we will never get back to the kind of development pressures we were seeing 5 years ago, but I have no doubt that our local economy will pick back up and this region will see more growth in the future. This makes now the ideal time to implement some of the policies that will help guide that renewed growth. Otherwise we will just go back to playing catch-up all the time. We will be trying to implement new policies while growth is occurring, always having to determine which projects those new policies apply to. And some development will be rushed into the approval process to obtain vested development rights - creating the potential for too rapid development with impacts that are very difficult to mitigate.

I don’t have the answer for how the city and county can find the resources for a more complete implementation of the Phase II policies, but I know that waiting until the economy is growing enough to provide them with the fiscal stability to obtain those resources could add greatly to the cost of implementation. We can still get there; it’s just a matter of how hard do we want to work to get there. And what might be lost in the meantime?

What is Safe Yield and Does it Actually Matter?

2010-10-02T09:28:00.004-07:00

Arizona's Groundwater Management Act (GMA), the landmark legislation passed in 1980 intended to finally get groundwater pumping under control in the state, has a mandate that by 2025 groundwater mining (pumping out more that is replaced) should cease in the most populous parts of the state. The law also defined safe yield as the condition where water pumped out of the aquifer is in balance with water entering the aquifer, whether naturally or artificially. The law mentions artificial recharge specifically, reflecting an understanding that natural recharge to many aquifers in the state is very limited and must be augmented by adding water through specially constructed recharge facilities.

Does this mean that water tables in the state would stabilize when safe yield is reached? Not necessarily, because the safe yield concept applies over large areas, only requiring that there be a balance over those large areas – called Active Management Areas (AMA) – which, in reality, could mean that water levels could be continuing to drop precipitously in one part of an AMA but if that pumpage is offset by recharge in another area it's still kosher under the law. That is the precise situation that is currently occurring in the Tucson AMA (TAMA) and is one of the issues to be addressed by a recently created working group, called the Safe Yield Task Force. These specific problems are known as sub-area management issues.

This problem has been significantly exacerbated by the creation of the Central Arizona Groundwater Replenishment District (CAGRD). Many in the water field know of the CAGRD as the legislative acquiescence to the needs of the property development industry in Arizona – the one sector of state commerce not at the table when the GMA was being crafted. The less cynical view is that the CAGRD became necessary for the state to implement the Assured Water Supply rules that were necessary as part of the GMA – rules that required future development to rely on renewable water supplies (essentially Colorado River water via the Central Arizona Project (CAP)).

The CAGRD is an entity that acquires and recharges (replenishes) renewable water to offset the groundwater pumping of cities, towns, and subdivisions that enroll as members in the district. And because the GMA only requires that water use be in balance on an AMA-wide basis, there is no requirement that this pumpage be offset in a way that mitigates water level drawdown caused by that pumpage – i.e. the replenishment can, and often does, occur many miles away and down-gradient from where the groundwater was pumped.

While I would like to think that this Safe Yield Task Force will be able to tackle these sub-area management issues it's an issue that reaches too far into our local economies and involves several key entities who are probably less than enthusiastic about solving these issues (in the most rational and cost-efficient manner). In a nutshell, resolution involves a combination of infrastructure investment (extending renewable water to up-gradient areas for recharge or direct use) and regulatory restrictions on pumping in the most-affected areas (setting pumping limits and restricting new wells in areas where water declines are greatest and the cost of extending renewable water supplies is prohibitive). Property owners in the sub-areas with water supply problems don't want to be excessively restricted in their use of groundwater – they want taxpayers to subsidize the installation of infrastructure to offset their excessive pumping. Taxpayers don't want to subsidize expensive infrastructure to save the bacon of property developers who continue to insist on building in areas with limited water supplies, so they are ok with imposing restrictions on pumping.

As I'm an ongoing participant in the Task Force I will try to post updates on what is occurring there periodically.

Another issue that deserves a post in the next few days is the Draft Phase II Action Plan recently developed by the city and county staff charged with implementing the recommendations of the Phase II City/County Water Study report. There is currently an open comment period on the Action Plan until 10/7. I haven't decided yet if I will submit comments, but will be going over the Action Plan with the Phase II report this weekend to assess whether I should.

Fun article recently in Inside Tucson Business

2010-09-10T23:31:00.002-07:00

I recently ran across this article that happily combined two of my favorite topics – water and downtown redevelopment. Oh what fun. The general premise is that the only thing lacking from our recent downtown redevelopment efforts (which if you're from Tucson, you know have been mostly laughable) is water. Of course – splash it and they will come, right? So what sort of brilliant ideas have these folks come up with to add water to our moribund downtown, thereby creating green shoots of life?

The first guy wants to build a canal running from just south of downtown to a spot about 4 miles north of downtown. It would run east of the freeway that generally follows the path of our currently dry Santa Cruz riverbed – except the riverbed is west of the freeway. According to Mr. Rose, who came up with this idea, it doesn't make sense to just use the existing riverbed to create this man-made river for, among other reasons the fact that it's west of the freeway. I guess the whole idea is that this is meant for downtown, which is east of the freeway. But downtown is only about ½ mile of the route of this canal and he envisions a canal that would run for about 6 miles – some of it through, frankly, some currently butt-ugly parts of town. He's right, though, that putting the water in the river is a bad idea because the channel capacity is needed to convey our infrequent flash floods.

But building a 6 mile canal, 8 feet deep and 25 feet wide just doesn't sound like the right way to go about adding a water attraction to downtown. Let's start by looking at the water involved: the capacity of a canal like he envisions is just over 6.3 million cubic feet – in water terms that requires about 145 acre feet to fill up. But this will be a recirculating system, so in addition to the water in the canal you will have water being pumped from the northern terminus of the ditch back to the south, where it will go into a holding pond before travelling back north. Let's just say conservatively that the whole system will have about 300 acre feet of water in it. Mr. Rose further states that because it's essentially a closed loop system there will be minimal water lost to evaporation – huh? Is this canal going to be covered by some sort of enclosure to maintain a sealed environment? Cause that will bump the cost up considerably right there. No it will be an open canal, as will the holding pond. And because this is southern Arizona it will lose several feet of water to evaporation each year. He's talking about a lot of water for this ditch. And the only way you going to do that is by using reclaimed water – which precludes most human recreation in that water – something I think would be necessary for this to work. You need people fishing, kayaking, swimming – not just walking or riding a bike along the canal, looking at the nice water. Something similar to this (but on a much smaller scale) was proposed and partially built along the west side of the Santa Cruz river back in the late 90s and it was conceived (I believe) to be a part of the redevelopment of the area west of downtown, which is still ongoing. Mr. Rose wants to do something like Riverwalk in downtown San Antonio, but the fact is, this is Tucson, not San Antonio. And what makes the Riverwalk work is not so much the river, but everything along the river. You don't just re-create downtown San Antonio in downtown Tucson – you need to re-create downtown Tucson first.

The second idea I actually kind of like – it's bold, although like the first, not real original. But I like the idea of tearing down and replacing our current convention center, which looks pretty dumpy these days even with the recent upgrades. A large, impressive fountain would be a nice addition to downtown – not something overly garish like the one in Fountain Hills, outside of Phoenix – but something with enough heft to make people say wow when they turn the corner and see it for the first time. It also proposes bringing some much needed development to downtown. The problem is finding investors to actually build something that impressive downtown. Maybe in another 10 to 20 years when some of the smaller development project in downtown have proven its viability, but the only way something like that gets built any sooner is with public money and that's the huge problem we are trying to deal with right now. But this guy has at least put a little more thought into his project than the first guy – even putting together a website.

The last idea really doesn't even belong here. It's not an idea that specifically includes a water element to make it successful. It has a grass element that heavily depends on water to remain attractive. The guy pitching this idea claims it has a dual purpose – recreation fields that would bring people downtown and groundwater recharge. OK, sure having soccer tournaments downtown would bring people down there but what would they bring to downtown? Parents with their kids don't spend a lot of time in clubs or fancy restaurants – they go to IHOP and Applebee's – is that what we want downtown. He says downtown is the best location because of access, I say availability of land is important too, when you're talking about large open fields for sports. Plus when our new convention center, hotel, and multi-use development goes in downtown that land will be much too valuable for soccer fields. But let's talk about his idea that the fields can also serve to recharge the aquifer. The article says this would occur by irrigation water draining off the fields into the river. Why would you want to irrigate the fields so that excess water drains away and enters our rivers? Are you going to be applying fertilizer or pesticide to these fields at any point? Why not just build the fields so that excess water percolates through the soil beneath the fields and recharges the aquifer? Having it drain into the river just provides further opportunity for the water to evaporate or be transpired. Finally, the only reason you would pursue recharge as part of this project would be to earn groundwater storage credits. But at present the statutes governing recharge facilities do not have provisions for recharge from overwatering of soccer fields. At best this would be a managed recharge facility that earns credits for 50% of the water that can be shown to be entering the ground. But I guess you need to provide more than just grass if you want to stick your straw in our limited water supplies for a new project.

In general, a pretty silly article. But I guess when the economy is in the toilet and everyone is out of town for summer vacation, this is what passes for news in a publication like Inside Tucson Business. I think I might propose an idea to install a massive misting system downtown that would cool the entire area by 10 degrees in the summer, making it much more attractive for new development. That might get my name in the papers. And I swear it won't use that much water.

A Short Commercial Break

2010-08-23T20:15:00.000-07:00

OK, I never envisioned using this blog as a platform to seek financial support for anyone. But there is a truly wonderful non-profit located here in Tucson, AZ (for which I am a board member) that is in the midst of their summer fund-raising drive and was recently informed by one of their supporters that they would match all donations during the month of August. This non-profit for which I schlep is called Watershed Management Group and I believe strongly in their mission.

But aren't they just involved in work in Tucson - which is not where I live? - you might be asking yourself. And the answer is - no, they do not only work in Tucson or in southern Arizona for that matter. Since the creation of the organization a few years ago they have engaged in work in India and West Africa, as well as training certified water harvesting technicians from throughout the United States and Mexico. They are creating community-based, grassroots momentum to encourage more sustainable use of water in neighborhoods throughout Tucson, Phoenix, and wherever the graduates of their certification program land and begin to teach.

I decided to use my blog on this one occasion to promote their organization because I believe that my readers (however few you may be) are the type of people who would like to support the efforts of a group of dedicated young professionals trying to make a difference in local communities.

If this sounds interesting to you, please take a moment to visit the website and consider making a donation to support them.

some sad news to report

2010-07-30T19:58:00.000-07:00

I heard this afternoon that Gregg Houtz, deputy counsel with the Arizona Department of Water Resources, passed away this morning. I only met Gregg on a couple of occasions and saw him speak on a few others. But in those brief encounters I could tell that he was one of the most knowledgeable people around on Arizona water law in general and the rather arcane world of Native American water rights settlements, in particular. He was also passionate about his work, down to earth, and a pleasant guy to be around.

Gregg had been with ADWR for several years and prior to that had worked as a legislative attorney on Capitol Hill. If I come across a complete bio on him from somewhere I'll post it.

The recent difficulties at ADWR with budget problems and staff reductions probably created a lot of stress for people like Gregg. I just hope that wasn't a major contributor to his death. What I do know is that he will really be missed in some circles around this state. My sincere condolences go out to his family.

City council decides not to decide

2010-06-10T21:08:00.000-07:00

This is a follow-up to my previous post.

The city council first voted unanimously to reconsider their previous vote in favor of annexation (as was expected). Then they heard from a few people in the audience and voted to go into executive session so they could discuss the options with the city attorney. When they came out, they simply voted to give the city attorney 30 days to find an alternative solution to resolving the lawsuit - i.e. find some other land for the pension fund to develop, or more specifically, ask the county to find some other land they could trade with the developer or just buy this parcel outright. OK.

Seems to me that if that option was on the table in the first place the county wouldn't be asking the city to refuse annexation and water service to the developer. And that's pretty much what the county administrator says in the article. So 30 days from now we'll have another round of political theater, except this time the final act will be the council seeking forgiveness because their backs were really against the wall on this one and the only thing they could do was to cut a deal with the developer. But hey - they tried right?

Seeing red over Painted Hills - aka another edition of Using Water Policy to Manage Growth

2010-06-05T14:41:00.002-07:00

There's a big, ongoing fight coming to a head this month in Tucson. On one side you have the county administrator, environmentalists, and a powerful and well organized neighborhood association. On the other side you have a property development company that represents the interests of the Dallas Police and Fire Pension Fund. And in the middle, for the moment, is the Tucson City Council.

The fight is over the right to develop a parcel of land just west of downtown Tucson, but outside the city limits, known as Painted Hills. This parcel is just under 300 acres of prime Sonoran desert landscape, just 10 minutes from downtown. Most of the land surrounding the parcel is developed (to the extent allowed by the terrain), but there is also a large county park in the general vicinity. The site is supposedly home to over ~~1000~~ 10,000 mature saguaros - the acknowledged symbol of the Sonoran desert - as well as prime habitat for many birds, small mammals, and probably quite a few coyotes. It's a pretty location and something of a rarity so close to a rapidly growing Sunbelt community.

more below

These factors also make the land very valuable for development purposes - which the pension fund recognized several years ago when they purchased the land. One other potential purchaser of the land at that time was Pima County. The county had recently allocated bond funds to open space purchases for preservation of wildlife habitat, wildlife corridors, and general recreation for the community. The Painted Hills parcel had been specifically identified for preservation when the public approved the bonds for that purpose. The value of the property (appraised) is going to be very different if the potential use is a county park vs. a large residential development. Therefore, the pension fund vastly outbid the county for the land, then once they owned it began creating development plans to earn a return on their investment.

Once the county lost out on the chance to preserve the property they had to deal with the developer. Because the existing zoning on the parcel probably permitted 3 homes per 10 acres - or something similarly low density - and the hilly nature of the parcel made development of some of the land impossible, the developer pursued a planned area/unit development (PA/UD) with a cluster development scheme. This permits maximization of salable lots while minimizing the overall impact on the land. It's really a win-win in some respects - the developer gets a better return on their investment and the public gets preserved open space. However, it's a lose-lose if your perspective does not permit any development on the land whatsoever.

That's the view of the county (who failed in their promise to protect the land) and the local neighborhood association (who stand to benefit in many ways if the parcel remains undeveloped). The county, nonetheless, went ahead and approved the development plans for the parcel and the enviros and neighbors threatened to sue. There was one hitch, though. To develop the property with homes requires water and the availability of groundwater on this site (which would enable the developer to create a water utility to serve the property) was limited. So they approached the city water utility (Tucson Water) about providing water service for the development. This is a whole separate back-story that I have previously written about here and here. But what has transpired since the city originally refused to provide water service is that the developer has petitioned the city for annexation (if they are in the city, the city must provide water service) and has filed a notice of intent to sue if they are not provided with water service.

I don't know enough about the basis for that suit to make any predictions on its merits, but I think it's safe to say that no matter the outcome it would cost the city plenty to defend itself. And the county would likely be on the hook as well. Here are what some other commentators have remarked on this issue from the largely anti-environmentalist view.

Now I'm all for open-space and using public funding to provide that open space. But only if there is widely dispersed community benefit proved at a reasonable cost. This case doesn't meet my litmus test. The cost of preserving this land - either by outright purchase from the developer or by outlasting them in a lawsuit - is enormous. The developers would need $27 million just to recoup their initial investment. And the benefits of preserving this land - in my opinion - would flow largely to the current residents of the Tucson Mountain foothills (i.e. the Tucson Mountains Assn.). This would increase their property values because of enhanced scenic amenities and reduction of developable land in that area. The argument could be made that anyone who drives past the area or hikes in the area would derive benefits - and they would and this could include anyone living in or visiting the Tucson region - but I still believe the greatest benefit accrues to the immediate neighbors.

So I say that everyone who wants to see this land preserved should pay a proportionate share of the cost of preservation - then they would have free access to the recreational amenities of the land in perpetuity while all the rest of us would have to pay for access. Or the alternative would be to do what the city is in the process of doing (and the opposing forces are trying real hard to prevent). Work out a deal with the developer. Provide water service as long as the property is annexed and the developer (hopefully) pays the full cost of extending water service to the property; and either donates the open space to the city or at least provides a permanent easement over the open space so the public can make use of it. And while they're at it offer some pointed criticism to the county for largely creating this difficult situation for the city and then telling them to open up the residents of Tucson to a lawsuit in order to bail out the county by refusing water service to the development. Is it the most elegant solution - hell no. Is it the most reasonable and practical solution - hell yes.

Economist special report on water

2010-05-25T20:52:00.001-07:00

The Economist magazine has a special report on water in its latest issue and they tackle subject in the thorough and well-written style they are known for. The articles in the report have a very international flavor - special focus on China, India, and Africa with only passing mentions made of much of the developing world - such as the U.S. I think the focus is wholly appropriate, considering that while water crises are much discussed in places like the western U.S. and Australia, the real dire situations in the near future are in areas of the world undergoing rapid economic development - with rapid development of water supplies going along with it. The effects of climate change on water supplies are also going to be disproportionately felt in places like China and India, which have extensive arid areas, enormous populations, and astounding economic growth - coupled with little effective management of water supplies.

The sections of the report that really impressed me were:

1) The section that discussed local management efforts to protect groundwater resources in parts of India. This is a great example of how communities on the watershed or basin level can develop workable solutions to managing their resources without top-down mandates from governments imposing one-size-fits-all policies. It also demonstrates how good science, coupled with good data collection, can empower farmers and other local water users to manage their resources for the benefit of all - what gets measured, gets managed.

2) The author also does a pretty good job of debunking the water footprinting concept in the section on using economics to encourage conservation. There was some good discussion of the general need to match demand with supplies but he didn't go into much depth on how this can be used to develop sustainable water policies.

Overall a really good bit of journalism - about what I expect from the The Economist. Check it out for yourself.

Chiming in on the ADWR situation

2010-05-07T22:24:00.001-07:00

At this point the fate of the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) should be old news to most people. But I've commented on this in the past so I wanted to chime in with a few observations.

First of all this was in the works for quite a while - the budget problems in Arizona have been big news around here for almost two years now and any part of the state budget that isn't protected by a voter mandate or required by some existing law has been fair game and taking major hits. That's what happens when the yearly deficit in the budget equals about 20% of the total budget. There were plans floated in the legislature to allow ADWR to become self-funded through fees and/or taxes. The problem with using fees is that the same factors leading to the state's budget deficit have seriously impacted the ability of the department to collect fees. Most of those fees would come about as a result of economic development occurring that requires various permits from the state. That economic development just hasn't been happening. One idea that came up was to allow ADWR to impose a tax on most large water users based on the amount of their usage. Arizona has a state legislature that wanted to cut corporate taxes during what must be the biggest budget crisis the state has faced since it became a state - you don't really think they would allow a new tax on water use? And of course they didn't. It was an ambitious plan, but it had some merit. A main reason for having a department of water resources is to provide some certainty to water users (especially those who have a significant economic stake in their continued water use) that those water supplies are being properly managed. So instead the department's budget has been reduced from over $20 million just two years ago to about $7 million for the coming year. The staff in the department was over 200 two years ago and is currently at about 90.

The only ADWR office that will remain open is in Phoenix - there used to be satellite offices in Tucson, Nogales, Casa Grande, and Prescott that handled matters related to the state Active Management Areas (AMAs), which were created by the Groundwater Management Act of 1980 that finally imposed a sensible legal structure on groundwater use in the areas of the state under greatest development pressure. That legal structure is supposed to bring those areas into safe yield in the next 15 years and those local offices were responsible for developing the management plans to guide that process. The fourth of five management plans mandated by the law was supposed to be nearing completion about now because it would cover the period from 2010 to 2020. If it does get completed it's going to take a few more years.

So why would our legislature gut a state department that has such an important role in the functioning of water management in a state where very little development can occur going forward without adequate management of water supplies? Are they just ignorant of the importance of ADWR or are there more sinister motives lurking under the surface. Other people have speculated on this point and I've talked to some others who have their opinions. John Mawhinney, who was a state legislator when the Groundwater Management Act was passed and currently helps run the Arizona Water Banking Authority and heads up the Groundwater Users Advisory Council in the Tucson AMA, wrote an op-ed piece for the Tucson paper recently where he speculated that ADWR was a victim of their own success in some respects. They have done such a good job of managing water in the state that no one is aware of what they do or thinks they serve an absolutely necessary purpose. There may be some truth to this - in regards to some in the legislature and much of the general public. Also John, as a former legislator, may be giving some in the current legislature the benefit of the doubt. But many other people I have talked to - very knowledgeable people - think that there is an element in state government and the private sector that wanted to see ADWR emasculated, presumably to remove the yoke of regulation and give them freer reign with water. Seems to make sense, but frightening nonetheless.

One other place where some discussion of this matter has been occurring is on the blog run by Gary Yaquinto, of the Arizona Investment Council. He put up a very thoughtful post on this earlier this week and has received some enlightening comments. He references an article from the Arizona Republic that pretty well spells out what is going on with the budgets of both main state agencies that regulate water ADWR (quantity) and Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) (quality).

The amount of institutional knowledge that is being lost from these departments in order to balance our budgets is staggering. Even if they can return to previous staffing levels when the economy recovers it will be a long, long time before they can return to their previous level of competence. And I mean nothing against those people who remain in their jobs there. They must all be stellar performers and dedicated to what they are doing. But they can only do so much. Keep an eye out for those people who want to take advantage of the lack of oversight to endanger our water supplies - we are all watchdogs now.

Update on previous post

2010-04-27T21:26:00.000-07:00

My last post included a feeble attempt at showing that there is some correlation between price and water usage. The connection, I believe, still stands but a helpful reader made a suggestion that greatly improves the interpretation of the data. So I switched the x and y axes and tried some other types of regression and came up with a pretty good fit using a power function. Here's the new graph:

I'll spare myself the embarrassment of trying to explain power functions, but the equation listed on the graph (above the R-squared value) describes the curve and indicates a non-linear relationship between price and consumption. As might be expected, demand drops off rapidly when price increases initially, indicating greater sensitivity to price at the high end of water usage, then drops off more slowly when you get down towards 50 gpcd, which would mostly be indoor water use (less discretionary). That seems to make sense to me.

Also, the most recent update from Circle of Blue includes the data shown on the map in their previous update in table form. And provides sources for the data as well! Ask and ye shall receive. The article also discusses the alarming phenomena of falling demand and rising prices that seems prevalent among water utilities recently. This is an unintended consequence of some of the more progressive rate-setting policies (like increasing block rates) and has been occurring for several years here in Tucson. It could be largely avoided, most easily by returning to single or seasonal rates for water but that would have other, unwanted consequences. So until the standard formulas for cost recovery in water rates are changed it will continue to be a fact of life in many cities.

How strong is the connection between price and water use?

2010-04-24T09:20:00.001-07:00

I get a weekly email with updates from the website Circle of Blue, that occasionally contains gems like this one that showed up recently. What I've really been impressed with on their site are some of the nifty things they do by combining data with mapping functions.* So if you scroll down on the Circle of Blue page linked above you will see a Google map that has a bunch of data call out points on it. Click on any of those points and it will show you data on per capita residential water use and average costs for water in each of the cities shown.**

By way of background, I received an email from John Fleck last year where he asked if I knew of a source listing per capita water use that compared "apples to apples" - i.e. comparing only residential water use, not just taking some random total water use number and dividing it by population. This can be surprisingly hard to find.

So as I was looking at the water use data I got the idea that it might be interesting to try plotting the gpcd numbers against the average price numbers just to see how well they correlate. And this is what I came up with:

If I remember my statistics, 0.3563 indicates pretty strong correlation, but obviously there are other factors present besides price. You might notice that I pretty much cherry-picked the data I presented as well. I tried to include data from Western cities that might have similar water use patterns so that price would be main variable being tested here. Is the result fairly obvious - sure. But that's often the point of statistics - to test something that appears obvious and try to figure out if it really is.

Oh, and there was one other nice bit of data in the call outs attached to the map - it says what type of rate structure each city uses. I hope the Circle of Blue folks keep up the good work.

* My only quibble with data presented in this way is that they don't indicate a source for their numbers. There's an email address for the person who put the graphic together, so I might have to email him and find out where he got all his data from and verify that it really is "apples to apples".

** The data for Fresno is pretty shocking, but when you consider that they charge a flat rate for water and I believe still don't meter most of their connections it seems pretty self-evident. Also I was disappointed that there was no gpcd data for San Diego and Los Angeles - they're probably pretty tired of taking their lumps for residential water use.

Still here

2010-03-23T21:21:00.000-07:00

Yeah, it's been awhile - I know. I hate it when the real job keeps me so busy I can't spend any time on my pretend job.

There are some things going on that I need to comment on, so I will try to get to it soon. First is the impending, near-complete destruction of the Arizona Department of Water Resources that now appears imminent as a result of our state budget crisis and the shameless way our state legislature and governor have dealt with the problem. This will have very serious and long-lasting ramifications for water management in Arizona.

Second, I still plan to get back to the discussion of water harvesting I started at the end of 2009.

And finally, there are some rumblings going on in Tucson about getting the next phase of our regional water resource sustainability discussion going later this year. Which should tie in nicely with some recent developments at the state level related to water resources (of course who will staff and pay for any such efforts will be a real question - see above).

It's gonna be a very weird and busy year. Should be fun.

on-going brouhaha over water policy in the Tucson area

2010-02-13T10:21:00.002-07:00

Anyone who has followed this blog through most of its existence will be aware that I started it during the initial stages of a local water resources study initiated by the City of Tucson and Pima County - where I live. This was a 20 month, two-phase, multi-disciplinary, multi-agency effort to catalog our existing water resources, water and wastewater infrastructure, and existing policies for managing those resources; followed by a discussion of recommended policy changes that could help ensure sustainability of those resources as this area continues to grow. Those recommendations were contained in a Phase II report that was issued in December of last year.

On Jan. 12, the City Council and the County Board of Supervisors held a joint meeting where they considered a resolution to accept the Phase II report and commit to following through on its recommendations. At that time the county voted to endorse the report but the the city, expressing reservations about the content of the report and the process of its creation, voted to continue the comment period for another 30 days then revisit the resolution.

Last week the city council (the paper incorrectly reports that the council approved the study, but all they did was agree to reconsider the resolution next week) held a study session and a public hearing on the report, which were well attended by both proponents and opponents of the report findings. Some on the city council are very concerned about recent charges that city government is unresponsive to the needs of the business community and that posture is stifling economic growth in the city. They point to the current slump in the development industry as evidence of those charges and insist that loosening up some of the regulations on development would spur this industry and restore the sort of economic growth we experienced during the years immediately preceding this current slump. This argument is preposterous (in my opinion, but I think it's a well-supported opinion) because the city policies and regulations regarding development were pretty much the same during the go-go years as they are currently AND the city has been looking at suspending a number of fees during the current slow-down.

The development folks are also pointing to a current policy (as I discussed here) recently enacted by the city to deny extension of water service to areas outside the current service area of the water utility unless there is a legal obligation to serve that area. They claim that there are many developments that would be moving forward if only the city would agree to provide water service. This is purely a bluff. There are other water providers in the area noted that could potentially provide water service (although there may be greater infrastructure needs for those utilities) if these development really were "shovel-ready", but I doubt they actually are.

This is basically a situation where our political leaders have to make a choice between serving the short-term economic needs of the community or caring for the long-term sustainability of the region. If you understand politics like I do, you'll understand why I'm worried about the prospects for full approval of the report. But they may yet surprise me. I'm hopeful that they will, but prepared to be at least a little disappointed.

Give us more water ... or the aquifer gets it!

2010-02-03T20:45:00.003-07:00

This is just priceless.

A farmer from the Central Valley of California makes the argument, in an opinion piece for the Modesto Bee, that if only the Delta restrictions could be dropped, allowing more surface water to be delivered to farms, they could stop overpumping the aquifers - resulting in subsidence, diminished water quality, and wholesale dewatering of their insurance supply.

Come on guys. Are we really supposed to be sympathetic to your plight? OK, you're behaving rationally under the circumstances because the State of California has chosen (start at p. 8) not to govern in the case of groundwater use, but you could still choose to manage the resource more wisely by setting up local governance that actually collects some data on groundwater use, sets some pumping limits, and tries to avoid some of the external costs of over-pumping. But no, this is just another lame opportunity to whine about the Delta smelt and how the little fish is harming farmers.

Time to move on.

Once again, thanks to Aquafornia for bringing this to my attention.

LA Board of Public Works calling for on-site rainwater retention

2010-02-01T20:01:00.002-07:00

There has apparently been much talk of low-impact development (LID) standards in the Los Angeles area recently and now their public works board is calling for a new requirement that 100% of runoff from a 3/4 inch storm must be contained on-site on all new developments and some redevelopments. The plans are detailed in an LA Times article here.

Tucson has a rainwater harvesting ordinance that is aimed primarily at collecting rainwater to replace use of potable water for on-site landscape irrigation, but also has incidental effects of reducing off-drainage of stormwater. The LA proposal is strictly aimed at realization of benefits from reduced runoff.

In some respects, the LA proposal is much stricter than Tucson's ordinance because it requires containment of all water produced by a 3/4 inch rainstorm, while the Tucson ordinance requires using on-site generated rainwater for at least 50% of on-site landscaping irrigation. Tucson does have regulations about managing runoff generated by property development - and these have resulted in a few recent developments around town that manage stormwater on-site to avoid costly mitigation of runoff effects - but in most cases there is infrastructure in place to handle some or most runoff from developed property.

If LA successfully implements this change it could prove difficult to comply with. As the story notes, in some locations getting the runoff to infiltrate into the soil will be a real challenge. And a 3/4 inch rain might occur over 30 minutes or over 36 hours - with the amount of runoff generated varying greatly between the two. This definitely changes the type of development you do - how much of a lot is built on, use of underground parking (if storage of runoff is necessary) - it could get costly. As this is just a proposal at this point it will undoubtedly undergo some changes before implementation. But should be interesting to keep an eye on it.

h/t to Aquafornia for bringing the Times article to my attention.

Some recent news from the Arizona water community

2010-01-07T20:39:00.004-07:00

There were a few news items of note this week that I wanted to post on briefly.

First the good news. Kathy Jacobs of the University of Arizona (and formerly head of the Arizona Water Institute) was recently appointed to a new position in the White House (the one in Washington, D.C.) Office of Science and Technology Policy where she will work on climate change policy. Prof. Jacobs has pretty impressive credentials in that area and should be a real asset to the administration. Congratulations professor!

Second, the bad news. The latest issue of Southwest Hydrology showed up in my mailbox this week with a banner on the front indicating that it would be the last issue. This is a significant loss to the regional water resources community because SW Hydro has been a tremendous resource for disseminating new research and policy ideas in the management of water resources in arid and semi-arid hydrology. And they've been important to me because I have published a couple of short articles in the "On the Ground" section of the magazine. Betsy Woodhouse, who was the publisher has taken a new position at the University of Arizona and her colleague Gary Woodard gives the impression that they would like to bring the magazine back in the future if they can find a new funding source. But, their major source of funding - the National Science Foundation - has dried up for now. If anyone has ideas for keeping the magazine running send them to Gary Woodard (gwoodard@sahra.arizona.edu).

Finally, the final Phase II report on the Water & Wastewater Infrastructure, Supply and Planning Study (aka the Tucson/Pima County Water Study) has been released and can be downloaded from the study website - www.tucsonpimawaterstudy.com - of you're interested. The report will be formally presented to the local elected leaders of both jurisdictions in a special joint meeting next Tues., Jan. 12, at 9:00 am in the Pima County Administration Building, 130 W. Congress, 1st Floor, Board of Supervisors Hearing Room. Hope to see you there. If not, take a look at the report. It's no masterpiece but it provides a pretty good roadmap to a sustainable water future for this piece of dirt.

Holiday Greeting

2009-12-21T12:32:00.003-07:00

Happy holidays to my readers, followers, and fellow bloggers. Hope you have safe travels, good company, and a prosperous new year. I'll be back in 2010.

Chris

The Technical Feasibilty of Rainwater Harvesting for Domestic Water Supply

2009-12-12T14:25:00.003-07:00

Getting back (finally) to my most recent topic I have some numbers to throw out, in order to assess whether relying on rainwater for a domestic water supply is technically feasibly in a semi-arid or arid climate. Tucson would be considered semi-arid because our average rainfall is roughly 12 inches per year (although this year we have only had about 6-7 inches, which makes us arid at this time), but we are classified as arid because of our high evapotranspiration rate.

There are many skeptics who say that rainwater cannot be relied on as a water source in places like this because rain is too unreliable. Our annual rainfall typically comes in two seasons - winter and summer. Our winter rains tend to be gentle, slow rains that might occur several times a month, amounting to about 5 inches on average during the period December to April. Our summer rains, on the other hand, are known as monsoon rains because they result from a seasonal wind shift in summer, and often come in torrents. We typically receive between 5 and 7 inches of rain in the summer and it's not uncommon for the bulk of that rain to arrive in 3 or 4 rainfall events during the months of July and August. In between those seasons we might typically go for 2 or 3 months with little or no rain.

With that type of rainfall pattern, obviously, the key elements of rainwater harvesting will be capture area and storage. If you have a sufficiently large surface area from which to capture water and sufficiently large storage to hold onto that water during long dry periods rainwater becomes a feasible water supply.

Here are a few basic calculations of available water:

10" of rain falling on 2000 sq. ft. of roof surface will yield roughly 12,500 gallons of water.

10" of rain falling on 3000 sq. ft. of roof surface will yield about 18,700 gallons of water.

12" of rain falling on 2000 sq. ft. of surface yields about 15,000 gallons, and

12" of rain falling on 3000 sq. ft. of surface yields about 22,400 gallons of water.

If you take those numbers and average them out over the course of the year you come up with a range between 34 and 61 gallons per day. Obviously you are not going to maintain a home, yard, and pool by collecting rainwater unless you have a very large surface from which to collect the water. But it's perfectly reasonable for two people to survive on 61 gallons of water per day for indoor uses such as cooking, cleaning, bathing, and drinking.

But how do you make rainwater suitable for drinking? That is the tricky part, some of which I will try to address in a post on the regulatory limitations on use of rainwater for water supply. But in a general sense, you must install a home water treatment system to make this water suitable for consumption. This ranges from selecting proper roofing material that won't leach chemicals into the water falling on it, to engineering the collection system so the first flush of water coming off the roof is bypassed (to limit the bird poop in your water supply), to a system of filters and treatment technologies that will ensure no harmful bacteria or other nasties in your water. This is the primary annual cost of this type of water supply - the energy and maintenance of the treatment system. Most of the other costs are upfront when the collection and storage are installed.

This site includes some helpful information on what is necessary for making rainwater suitable for potable uses.

Is this type of system suitable for the average homeowner? Clearly not. But there are people out there who are willing to invest the money, time, and effort to get off the grid, or off the pipes in this case, and whose lifestyle allows them to live on only the amount of water necessary for basic, indoor human needs, without all the extraneous uses of high-quality drinking water many of us find necessary for our quality of life.

More when I find the time, including the aforementioned regulatory analysis of rainwater harvesting.

Starting to think a lot about rainwater harvesting

2009-11-29T14:22:00.003-07:00

Life has been extremely busy lately (even before holidays started rolling into the picture) and that has kept me from posting. But the ideas have been churning, just waiting for an opportunity to emerge onto these pages.

One thing I have been spending a lot of time thinking about and discussing with various people is the viability of rainwater harvesting for domestic water supply in places like Tucson. I know of people doing it so clearly it's possible. But I've been wondering what it would take to bring it more into the mainstream and maybe even be viable as a water source for a small development - not just the individual lot scale.

One person I know of who relies on such a system in the Tucson area is in a location where municipal water service is not available and drilling a private well is unreliable. So rainwater probably was their best option. They also weren't overly concerned with the cost of the system - they had resources to cover that and because of their desire to live in a remote location any option for water supply was going to be costly. I suspect this type of situation is the primary motivator for going with rainwater as a water source.

This makes me concerned that greater use of rainwater harvesting would lead to increased sprawl - as people move to locations where previously they may not have been able to build because of the lack of a water supply. But I think the reality is that the people who would choose this type of water supply are the ones who are likely to move into remote areas regardless and harvesting gives them an option for water supply that doesn't rely on a non-renewable source - such as groundwater (under most circumstances).

I'm still putting these ideas together and plan to post on this topic over the next few weeks, where I will try to outline the feasibility of rainwater as a domestic water source and the types of changes I think would be necessary (i.e. regulatory) to permit greater use of this type of system.

Tucson/Pima County Water Study update

2009-11-06T21:07:00.002-07:00

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)?

2009-10-23T19:52:00.006-07:00

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

2009-10-21T12:16:00.002-07:00

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

2009-10-18T14:30:00.004-07:00

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

2009-09-14T20:52:00.003-07:00

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

2009-09-07T20:38:00.002-07:00

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?

2009-09-07T16:29:00.002-07:00

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.

Follow-up on Imagine H2O Prize

2009-09-07T16:18:00.002-07:00

If you follow this blog you may have noticed my recent post on a prize being offered this fall for visionary entrepreneurial ideas in water conservation being offered by Imagine H2O.

Last week I received another email from them asking me to make note of the fact that the competition is now open - as of Sept. 1. Here are a few excerpts from the press release they sent me:

The competition offers prizes of $70,000 in cash and in‐kind services, which will be awarded to the business plans that promise the greatest breakthroughs in the efficient use and supply of water.

The Imagine H2O Prize is designed to encourage entrepreneurs, investors, inventors and academics around the world to address water challenges. This inaugural business plan competition focuses on solutions to improve water efficiency in agriculture, commercial, industrial or residential applications, such as water demand reduction, improved water use, water recycling and/or reuse.

Entries will be accepted from around the world beginning September 1 through November 16, 2009. Winners will be announced at a showcase event in early 2010. The annual competition will feature a different water‐related prize topic each year.

Check out their website if you want to learn more about the competition. One thing I might note is that the press release indicated a total prize amount of $70k, which is $20k more than they originally told me.

upcoming meeting of the City/County Water Study Committee

2009-08-18T20:40:00.002-07:00

The next committee meeting is this Thurs., Aug. 20, at the Tucson Ass'n of Realtors on Tucson Blvd. just north of Grant Rd. (this is where I will be that evening instead of at the Imagine H2O event in San Fran).

The agenda is posted on the study website as well as the technical paper up for discussion this week - covering the "Cost of Growth". It's all about what our water and sewer utilities are doing to separate operation and maintenance costs (associated with their existing infrastructure) from costs of expanding their systems (building new infrastructure to accommodate growth). People around here have been clamoring that "growth needs to pay for itself!" And I generally agree. You don't want existing water customers paying the cost of acquiring new water supplies or for conservation measures that are intended to provide enough water for the people who might move here in the next 20 years. But as with most things, what seems like a simple proposition on its face is far more complicated when you get into the nitty-gritty. It should make for an interesting discussion. I'll post more after the meeting.

A chance to profit from your water conservation ideas

2009-08-18T20:08:00.003-07:00

I received an email this week from someone representing Imagine H2O, a "San Francisco based not-for-profit organization committed to enabling water entrepreneurship." They are organizing an event in San Francisco later this week (yeah I probably won't make it either) to launch a new initiative to promote entrepreneurial ideas in water conservation, or as they described it to me:

... on Thursday August 20th we are hosting what we hope will be a uniquely productive evening for identifying water customers’ needs, brainstorming ideas and building teams in anticipation of the upcoming launch of the inaugural Imagine H2O Prize. More information on this event can be found at the event website (http://waterefficiency.eventbrite.com).
Imagine H2O hopes to positively affect the world’s water problems by forming a dynamic environment for water entrepreneurship. You can view our media page at (www.imagineh2o.org/media) for more information on the organization ...

Here's some more info on the contest they are sponsoring:

The topic for the 2009-10 competition is Water Efficiency. Competitors will provide solutions that reduce the demand or use of water in either agriculture, commercial and industrial, or residential applications. This could be done via demand response, recycling, reuse, or through any other smart management ideas. Total prizes given in 2009-10 will be $50,000. Winners will receive cash, in-depth business incubation including introductions to financiers, potential beta customers and go-to-market partners, and reduced-rate or free office space.

I was provided with two names and contact info if you are interested in learning more than can be gleaned from the websites:
Jared Dunnmon, jdunnmon@gmail.com, or
Director of Operations Aaron Schwartz, as@imagineh2o.org

If you think you have a great idea for fostering water conservation and efficiency this could be your big break. Certainly seems worth looking into.

overdue - some discussion of the link between water and growth from the Joint City/County Water Study

2009-08-09T14:49:00.002-07:00

Finally found some time to post on this. The committee discussed the report "Integrating Land Use Planning with Water Resources and Infrastructure Technical Paper" that can be downloaded here. My comments to the committee on the paper are also available on the study website, but I'll briefly discuss them here as well.

My two main points of discussion on the paper were in regards to the concerns expressed over operation of the Central Arizona Groundwater Replenishment District (CAGRD) and their discussion of the Interim Water Service Policy established by the city manager in late 2007.

On the CAGRD, there has been extensive discussion recently about the physical disconnect between the replenishment activities of the District (whereby they recharge renewable water supplies to offset pumping by water utilities or subdivisions that are enrolled in the district) and the actual groundwater pumping that leads to the replenishment obligation. The point I wanted to make is that, in the way the CAGRD was created it was not really meant to replace pumped water in an aquifer with recharged, renewable water. As with much of the Arizona Groundwater Management Act (GMA), it was a water accounting system designed to ensure that accounts remain in balance within each Active Management Area (AMA). Without going into whether this was a good or bad thing, it is what our legislators decided to do to accommodate population growth and further development within AMAs. The problem we have encountered with it is not that the pumping is occurring far away from the recharge, but that the program has been much more popular than many originally envisioned, so the quantities of water being pumped have become pretty large, resulting in considerable water level drawdown in some locations. Here's what I said in my comments to the committee:

Due to constraints on land availability, complexity of hydrogeology, and cost considerations in implementing recharge that directly mitigates effects of pumping it will prove to be very difficult in practice.
... seeking to routinely and effectively mitigate pumping effects by suitable location of recharge will result in many situations where it would simply make more sense to utilize the renewable supplies for the new development, rather than enroll in the CAGRD, because the renewable supply will be brought close enough to make its use economical vs. the cost of recharge. If such policies were strongly pursued the need for the CAGRD would be virtually eliminated, but at considerable cost.

While doing more to use recharge for mitigation of pumping effects is a good idea in theory, I think it's pretty difficult to implement in practice.

As for the "interim water service policy" my opinions on this have been explored in the blog in the past (see this post). I really have a problem with this being referred to as a policy:

I believe it is overly optimistic to refer to this as a “policy” when in reality it is more of an acknowledgment that no policy has ever existed. The former city manager acknowledged as much in an interview published in the Daily Star last October. Until there is an actual policy to evaluate requests for extending water service to new development the City is entirely at the whim of outside forces that will determine how water is supplied to new developments outside of the obligated service area.

I also reiterated my earlier statement that one of the criteria for agreeing to serve a new development should be a requirement that the effluent from that development be available to the city to augment our reclaimed water supplies.

The future linkage between water supplies and growth is a critically important issue for the future of Tucson and other cities like it that have seen their available water supplies stretched almost to the physical limits by rapid growth in the recent past. There should be more exciting discussion on this issue when the committee tries to reach agreement on this portion of the Phase II report.

Playing catch-up: Shameless self-promotion edition

2009-07-20T21:34:00.002-07:00

This blogging business sometimes seems like you are having a conversation with 3 or 4 other people who share your interests. That makes it especially nice when, as a water-wonkish type, I have the chance to reach a wider audience with something I say or write. Two specific instances occurred for me recently. I had the privilege of writing a short piece for the current issue of Southwest Hydrology, on a topic that always sparks my interest - property rights in groundwater. My article was a brief discussion of a recent Arizona Supreme Court case that I discussed on the blog previously (here), involving an attempt to separate rights to pump groundwater from ownership of the land itself.

The second opportunity came as a result of various on-line discussions I have had with John Fleck, over at his Inkstain blog. John's day job is as a reporter for the Albuquerque Journal, where he writes on science in general, and frequently water, specifically. He had an article (may require viewing an ad to get to article) last month on the connection between solar power plans and water use, for which he interviewed and quoted yours truly. The article discussed the often overlooked fact that most utility-scale solar projects currently proposed or under construction in the West are of the Concentrating Solar Thermal variety. What that means is that the plants collect the sun's heat and use it to produce a hot liquid (typically some type of oil or molten salt) that is used to boil water and generate electricity with a standard steam turbine - just like traditional coal or natural gas power plants. The big difference between this type of plant and a photovoltaic solar plant is that CST plants use a lot of water (as do most power plants, for cooling purposes) while PV solar requires no water for operation. Unfortunately, these plants have to be built in places where the sun shines a lot and those places are often where water supplies are limited. It doesn't mean you shouldn't build the plant, but you have take water supplies into consideration when deciding where to site the plant to make the most effective use of water for it's operation.

Playing catch-up; City/County Water Study; my new job

2009-07-15T20:58:00.002-07:00

I have been a bit lax in posting lately for a number of reasons. Number one of which is the fact that I recently took a job working for the Tohono O'Odham Nation, a local Native American Tribe in Southern Arizona. My official title is "hydrologist" but I will likely be engaged in work that I like to refer to as "water resource specialist." The job involves a little bit of everything that might fall under the rubric of hydrology - surface water, groundwater, water rights, and water quality. With the commute out to the seat of tribal government in Sells I have pretty long days, which cuts into some of my extra-curricular activities.

Fortunately I plan to maintain some of my local activities related to water, including attending the monthly City of Tucson/Pima County Joint Water/Wastewater Study meetings. This is the program I have been reporting on intermittently since last summer, now just past the halfway point in Phase II of the study. I now have an obligation to attend the meetings because I have been asked to replace one of the members who had to relocate out of state. This is a very exciting appointment for me because the issues being discussed by the committee are in large measure the focus of my decision to move away from hydrology, attend law school, and refocus my career on water policy (my current employment situation notwithstanding). My membership on the committee is an outgrowth of my being a member of another committee here in Tucson, the Citizens Water Advisory Committee, which advises the mayor and council on budgets and other operational matters of the City water utility (Tucson Water).

The next meeting of the city/county study committee is taking place tomorrow night, July 16, at the Tucson Association of Realtors offices on Tucson Blvd. just north of Grant, beginning at 5:00 PM. Sorry for the late notice, but as I mentioned above I've been pretty busy. This meeting is really the focal point of this phase of the study. They will be discussing ways to link growth decisions (rezonings, development agreements, comprehensive plan updates) with some form of examination of available water resources (preferably renewable water). The website for the study has a report posted discussing this issue that I am currently working through. I will try to post another update within the coming week with my impressions of the meeting and the report.

The Virtues of Conservation - Is Lawn Watering a Wast of Water or a Useful Recharge Tool?

2009-07-02T11:43:00.002-07:00

There has been a rather spirited discussion occurring on John Fleck's blog that I was sucked into. I just can't stand by and watch people use bad science to try to influence policy-makers.

The whole thing was prompted by a comment at a Pasadena (California) city council meeting where they were discussing the implementation of new conservation measures to deal with expected cut-backs in water deliveries from the Metropolitan Water District of So. Cal. (MWD - the main water wholesaler in the LA-San Diego region). A retired engineer made the point that convincing people to stop watering their landscaping could have unintended consequences - a loss of recharge to the aquifer that results from infiltration of over-applied water. This concept was leapt on by a local blogger in Pasadena who made it his mission to stop water conservation measures aimed at outdoor water use because it was necessary to save their local groundwater resources.

The point I sought to make is that if water is being pumped from the aquifer (Pasadena typically gets about 40% of their water supplies from wells, the remainder from MWD), pumping more water so people could continue watering their lawns would not help the aquifer - it would further deplete it. Now if imported water is used for outdoor irrigation there is a benefit to the aquifer from over-watering to the extent that some of the irrigation water will in fact recharge the aquifer, but if the goal is to recharge the aquifer there are far more efficient ways to do it than by having residents over-water their grass. And because the city probably cannot determine whether a given resident is watering with imported water or groundwater, banning or limiting outdoor watering probably has more benefit to the aquifer than encouraging wasteful watering practices.

Fortunately Pasadena appears to be listening more to people who actually understand these issues than to rebel bloggers and will be imposing watering restrictions in order to compensate for cutbacks in MWD water deliveries.

The Really Big News from the Prescott/Big Chino water hearing

2009-06-22T13:35:00.003-07:00

This was another article that came out last week, discussing the conclusion of the hearings discussed below - this time from the Verde Valley paper. Sandy Fabritz-Whitney is the assistant director of ADWR, who testified at the hearing about the agency's role in the process and admitted that the state has been looking into the possibility of creating an Active Management Area (AMA) that would include the Big Chino area. This would be the first AMA created by the State since the Santa Cruz AMA was authorized to form by splitting from the Tucson AMA in 1994. All original AMAs were created by the Groundwater Management Act in 1980.

This might just be a way for the state to encourage local stakeholders to get their act together in this area or there may be genuine local interest in having the state manage the aquifer. Either way I suspect the announcement sent some shockwaves through that part of the state if they were as unaware of this development as I was. I can't wait to hear more on this.

Prescott/Chino Valley water hearing wraps up (with some testimony that really bothers me)

2009-06-22T12:43:00.003-07:00

The administrative hearing on Prescott's application to pump nearly 9,000 ac-ft of water from the Big Chino aquifer wrapped up last week, according to the local paper. If you're hearing about this issue for the first time check out my previous posts: here, here, and here.

Now it's a matter of waiting for the administrative law judge to review the testimony and filings of the parties before issuing his opinion, which the article indicates may come in the fall. That opinion then goes to the head of the Department of Water Resources (ADWR) who can then affirm or change his initial ruling. Then one of the parties can move the case into the regular court system by filing an appeal in Superior Court. In other words, this won't be resolved this year.

The day prior to that article, there was another article in the Prescott paper talking about the final day of testimony in the case that I would like to comment on because it really raised my hackles. This was a discussion of testimony by two experts on the validity of the studies conducted to estimate the effect of pumping from the Big Chino aquifer on flows in the upper Verde River. (Everyone acknowledges that the springs that are the source of the Upper Verde are outlets from the Big Chino aquifer, but there is dispute over the contribution of that aquifer to the flow from those springs and hence the degree of impact the pumping will have on those springs.) A USGS scientist, Laurie Wirt, published studies on her work looking at the geochemistry of the aquifer, the springs, and the upper river, where she concluded that the aquifer provided 80% of the flow in the springs. Unfortunately, Ms. Wirt died recently in a kayaking accident so she wasn't available to defend her work in the hearing. But two former USGS employees presented differing views on the robustness of her results. Ed McGavock, currently with the consulting firm E.L. Montgomery & Assoc., argued that Ms. Wirt was biased because of her personal beliefs in support of the river, leading to unreliable results. Hjalmar "Win" Hjalmarson, a retired USGS engineer, who assisted Ms. Wirt on her studies defended her results and her integrity.

Here's what the article says about McGavock's testimony:

McGavock kicked off the debate Monday by testifying that he believed Wirt, who died in a kayaking accident in 2006, rigged her studies to come up with results consistent with her passionate views about protecting the environment.
"Laurie had a different mindset than most of us in the USGS," McGavock said. "We had a long tradition of objectivity."
In contrast, "Laurie cared deeply about what was going on in the environment," McGavock said, adding that Wirt "became very impatient with Survey procedures. No one in the USGS ever accused Laurie of being objective."

Now I have no problem with another scientist getting up to challenge the results of someone else's studies, but to do so by attacking the integrity of another scientist who cannot defend herself because of her untimely demise really bothers me. I hope McGavock also discussed what was wrong with Ms. Wirt's methodology and the reporter just didn't discuss that part. Because to challenge someone's results by attacking them personally goes against most everything that I believe science should stand for.

Then if you go to the bottom of the story the reporter includes this:

Even so, McGavock allowed that he and most hydrologists agree that the Big Chino is the "primary source" of water for the Upper Verde. After the hearing, he estimated the Big Chino contribution at "somewhere between 60 (percent) and 80 percent."

So her results were biased, but not that far off from your own estimates and possibly irrelevant to the real point of the case? Must have been a pretty good cross-examination. This is the kind of work that consultants covet because they charge their highest rates for expert testimony. But at what cost? This sort of behavior can be incredibly damaging to the credibility of the profession. It's an unfortunate trade-off we have to make.

Article touting the growing popularity of rain barrels

2009-06-16T12:38:00.003-07:00

I came across this on Aquafornia yesterday. The article discusses use of rain barrels for rainwater harvesting in places like Illinois and Minnesota, but what about in California, Arizona, and New Mexico where they should be standard equipment on all homes? I'm a big fan of making better use of free resources whenever possible and collection of rainwater provides so many benefits in places where lots of potable-quality water is typically used for outdoor irrigation. Installing water storage can be costly, but if water were priced to discourage its use outdoors, it would become very economical to capture rainwater. And there are a lot of benefits to be derived from just doing some landscape modification to slow runoff from your property and direct it to trees and shrubs, which doesn't cost very much at all.

If you have an interest in learning more about rainwater harvesting there are some great resources on the web, here are a few:

http://www.harvestingrainwater.com/
http://www.harvesth2o.com/

And a local non-profit in Tucson that works with neighborhoods and other organizations on rainwater harvesting projects is Watershed Management Group, found here.

More poorly managed groundwater resources

2009-06-16T12:24:00.002-07:00

John Fleck posted this link about a week ago. It's got all the familiar themes for us in the West: drying rivers, dropping water tables, unregulated groundwater pumping, and large irrigated lawns. But it's not in the West, it's in Massachusetts!

Pretty amazing to think of people in Mass., where it rains 48 inches a year, watering their lawns. Do they just really enjoy cutting the grass? The article cites some per capita water use numbers showing that some communities use more water than people do in Tucson - where it rains 12 inches in a good year. The state is stepping in to mandate that average water use for residential customers get down to 65 gallons/capita/day - easily enough water for average indoor needs. Which should deal with the people who don't have the ability to sink a well on their property. But unless they also intend to regulate well drilling on residential lots that might not solve the problem entirely. At the very least they should get people to meter their private wells and pay an extraction fee for pumpage above some limit.

A couple of recent articles discussing improvements in irrigation efficiencies by farmers in Ariz. and Cal.

2009-06-08T14:28:00.003-07:00

I thought these two articles were very encouraging in showing that farmers in the West (even the ones growing alfalfa) can invest in improved irrigation efficiency and have a positive impact on their bottom line. With all the recent bad news about climate change and diminishing water supplies it's going to be necessary for farmers to adapt and alter their operations if they want to survive as farmers and if we want to continue to grow crops locally, here in the West.

The first of these articles appeared in the Western Farm Press last month and describes a farming family in Central Arizona that started growing alfalfa in fields where they had already installed drip tape and found their yields were enough higher than their neighbors that they claim a system like it can pay for itself in 3 to 5 years.

I confess, I don't personally know enough about irrigated farming or growing alfalfa to properly evaluate these claims, but what I have always heard is that it just isn't economical to install high-efficiency irrigation systems in alfalfa fields because it's considered such a low value crop. Maybe higher prices for alfalfa in recent years have altered the equations sufficiently to make things like drip tape a good investment. But I think the key in this story is that the drip system was already installed in the field for growing things like cotton and wheat (not really high value crops themselves in most years, but probably better than alfalfa). The other thing the story doesn't discuss is the overall effect on consumptive use of water with the drip vs. flood irrigation. Some investigations have indicated higher consumptive use with drip, meaning that any savings in overall water use are illusory because the return flow component of flood irrigation is lost. But this clearly is the most efficient way to irrigate crops.

The second article appeared this week in the Fresno Bee (and I lifted it from Aquafornia - thanks Aqua Blog maven!). The article discusses farmers in the Central Valley of California switching to center pivot irrigation systems to get more crop per slowly shrinking drop of water available. Most farmers growing row crops in that area have always used flood irrigation, probably because there has historically been a reliable supply of cheap water available so there was zero incentive to switch to higher efficiency systems. Some farmers are now finding it worth their while to make investments (and apparently finding sympathetic bankers in the area willing to finance those investments - a very important and often overlooked point) in higher efficiency irrigation systems.

These articles show the ability of farmers to adapt to changing conditions and remain profitable in their farming operations. It would be very interesting to look at how many farmers are actually making changes in these difficult times because all you seem to hear about are how farmers are being forced out of business because the water isn't there and they just can't cut it without intervention to supersede environmental laws and more taxpayer funded water storage projects. The Pacific Institute released a report last year outlining steps that could be taken by farmers to implement water conservation measures potentially freeing up more than 3 million acre-feet of water in Central California. I saw a fair amount of criticism of that report as being unreasonable in its assumptions. Obviously there are efficiency gains to be made out there because these articles show that it is happening. But I don't think anybody really knows the extent to which it could occur, or how much it might cost. These would be good things to know.

Follow-up on previous post, parts 3 and 4 from the Verde News on Prescott/Big Chino/Verde River controversy

2009-06-07T13:44:00.003-07:00

The final two parts of this series came out during the past week - find them here and here. Actually, on that last one I'm guessing it's the fourth part - it's not exactly clear from reading the lead-in, but it came out just after part 3, by the same author, and has the same subject, so I'll call it part 4.

Part 3 talks about the history of the area some more, but the real focus is on what is occurring in the Big Chino watershed apart from the Big Chino Water Ranch project.

According to the State Land Department, there are approximately 318,000 acres of privately owned land in the Big Chino basin.
That number will grow when the Yavapai Ranch Land Exchange is completed.
In addition to private land, the State Land Department holds 233,000 acres in trust, which, by state statute, could be auctioned off and become private land in the future.
Virtually the entire basin, since it is rural Yavapai County, is zoned for one residence on every two acres. That, too, is subject to change as developers trade infrastructure, open space and other amenities for higher zoning densities.
And since the Yavapai County Board of Supervisors has yet to endorse a new state law that would allow them to deny a subdivision based on the lack of an adequate water supply, any and all developers have the right to sink a well, even if it eventually dries up.

What they are saying is that in addition to Prescott and Prescott Valley's plans to pump about 12,000 acre-feet of water from the basin, there could be thousands of small ranchettes out there with their own wells, pumping who-knows-how-much water from the aquifer. My guess is that will have some kind of impact on the Verde River eventually and because it will be the result of the actions of thousands of individual landowners, pinning the blame on the Water Ranch, while logistically tempting, will be difficult to do. Oh sure, they will be the only one's pumping from the aquifer and piping the water far away - their use will be essentially 100% consumptive - while the individual landowners will be pumping from their wells, using some of the water in their homes and yards, but eventually returning most of it to the watershed either through septic leachfields or sewer plant discharge. But if the private land in the valley were fully developed at some point in the future, the springs feeding the Upper Verde would dry up at some point.

So will all that land be developed? Pretty unlikely. Hopefully the majority of it will be taken off the market for development by purchase of development rights, conservation easements, or outright purchase of the land. The state land makes for a challenging issue because of the statutory requirement that the state obtain maximum value for that land (typically by selling it to a developer, who can then put the land to its "highest value" use by building homes, highest value strictly in terms of cold, hard cash). But there has been a strong push in the state in recent years to relax that requirement and hopefully the law will be changed by the time that land is considered ripe for development. But some of what you hear from the area is not real encouraging:

The new owners of the CV/CF Ranch, Chino Grande Ltd., have applied to the Arizona Department of Water Resources to pump 20,776 acre feet of groundwater from the aquifer -- twice Prescott's allotment.
They have also proposed selling 3,000 acre-feet a year of water rights from historically irrigated acres on the ranch, to the Town of Chino Valley. And they intend to build 25,000 homes on the land above.

The final article is a profile on two of the political players in this drama. John Munderloh is the water resource manager for the Town of Prescott Valley (one of the parties to the Water Ranch project) and Doug Von Gausig is the mayor of Clarkdale, a small community in the Verde Valley, downstream from Chino Valley. They both talk about sustainability in the article - Munderloh from the perspective of sustaining both water supplies and growth in the Prescott area and Von Gausig mostly from the perspective of sustaining the river.

Munderloh believes that all that is required to protect the river and permit his community to continue to grow is better management. Of course he still believes they need more water to support that growth. He takes the position that the estimates of natural recharge to the aquifer in Chino Valley are grossly understated because anytime water is flowing in the creek above the Verde headwaters, that means the aquifer is full and unable to take more recharge - a condition he claims is fairly common. It's a pretty simplistic view of hydrogeology that the proponents of pumping seem pretty fond of up there. They like to point to the fact that there has been pumping occurring in the valley for years to support irrigated farming and the river hasn't dried up yet. But they only have estimates of how much pumping has occurred (because no one measures those things in rural parts of Arizona) and the timing of that pumping may be quite different than the timing of pumping from the proposed supply wells. There really is very little known about what the long-term effects will be.

Von Gausig just knows that a healthy river is essential to his town because it supports existing water rights in the area (which would not be protected from upstream groundwater diversions under Arizona law) and most importantly is probably a significant source of tourism dollars for the area. That's why he supports a regional governing body that manages the river and the aquifers, plans for future water supplies, and generally ensures that everyone is on the same page. I wonder if the Salt River Project will be represented on that regional body?

More on the Prescott/Big Chino/Verde River controversy

2009-05-29T13:22:00.002-07:00

The Prescott and Verde Valley papers are in the midst of running a series of articles on the battle over plans up in the Prescott AMA (in north-central Arizona) to pump groundwater from the Big Chino Aquifer and pipe it south to support the growing communities of Prescott and Prescott Valley. I've been posting intermittently on this controversy and some of the legal issues surrounding it in the past (i.e. here and here). I like to think of this situation as Arizona's mini version of the controversy in Nevada over pumping from aquifers in east-central Nevada to supply water for continued growth in Las Vegas. In both cases you have municipal interests seeking to take groundwater from rural areas to support continued growth where existing water supplies are already overstretched.

So far the first two articles in a four-part series have come out and can be found here and here. The first article is about the geologic history and hydrogeology of the area and the second is about the legal and political history of the controversy. As you might guess the reporter does a better job with the legal and political stuff than he does with the hydrogeology. I'll save my discussion on the articles until the series is complete - the best stuff is yet to come anyway.

Speaking of good stuff - the people who want to pump water from the Big Chino aquifer to compensate for excess pumping in their own aquifer have put up a website to present their side of the issues. It's the Big Chino Water Ranch Project (that is what Prescott and PV are calling the ranch properties they have purchased in Chino Valley, where they plan to pump the water and put it in a pipeline). It's a nice website, with lots of interesting information, although a bit one-sided. It doesn't clearly state who is responsible for the website, but presumably it's the cities, the developers, and the other money interests in the area. I don't know if the other side has a website up yet - most likely the opposition is covered on a variety of websites. If anyone knows of a site, drop me a line or leave a comment.

update on City of Tucson/Pima County Water & Wastewater study

2009-05-20T10:45:00.003-07:00

Tomorrow night (Thurs. 5/21) is the next meeting in Phase II of the study. This meeting will wrap up the discussion of water conservation begun last month as well as protection of riparian areas and stormwater management (collection and use of rainwater, either by landowners or collectively by the city or county).

They are running once-a-month, four hour marathon meetings in this phase, which has weeded out all but the most die-hard attendees. I went to the last meeting, but will miss this one (it's my son's 2nd birthday). Fortunately, all the discussion materials for the meetings are available on the website (here), and if you really want to hear the committee discussion it's available either on the web or on local cable Channel 12.

They are running the meetings slightly differently from Phase I. Most of the time is spent on committee discussion with the presenters - the presentations are kept brief. And they do allow plenty of time for questions and comments from the public. But the technical documents prepared and distributed for each meeting are very informative - I highly recommend reading them. Just keep in mind they are prepared by city and county staff, so don't expect anything really radical or ground-breaking.

Groundwater Management in California

2009-05-18T10:53:00.004-07:00

The NY Times ran an article last week about groundwater use in the Central Valley of California. The article was mentioned on Inkstain, Aquafornia, and On the Public Record, but I just couldn't resist throwing my two cents in as well because this is one of my favorite issues.

California may earn the distinction of having less regulation of groundwater use than even Texas, which still follows the absolute ownership rule - the most permissive legal regime governing groundwater. Texas is at least in the process of developing regional planning documents to guide local agencies that presumably "regulate" access to groundwater in the state (there is plenty of debate about how effective those efforts are or are likely to be). California similarly has only local control of groundwater resources and those efforts range from, basically nothing, to fully adjudicated groundwater basins where rights to groundwater are quantified, prioritized, transferable and for the most part fully-regulated. But the adjudicated basins are primarily in urbanized Southern California. This report from the CA Dept. of Water Resources has a map showing what management regime is in place in different areas of the state (pdf file, about 2.6 mb; it's 10 years old, so not the most current). The areas with little or no management of groundwater are in the main farming areas of the state - the Central Valley, in particular.

The article notes that the state has been making noises recently about actually collecting some data on groundwater use throughout the state - most pumping is not metered in any way and those relying on groundwater consider metering the first step in limiting their "property rights" in groundwater (see my previous post). As the farmer quoted in the NYT story says:

“I don’t want the government to come in and dictate to us, ‘This is all the water you can use on your own land,’ ” said Mr. Watte, 57. “We would resist that to our dying day.”

Strong words there. Of course if they were to run out of groundwater they would surely be clamoring for someone (the government, perhaps?) to come to their rescue by spending tax dollars to bring in a new supply of water. We know what that is like in Arizona, where we were racing to the bottom of our aquifers in the central parts of the state back in the 60s when the feds finally came through with approval of the Central Arizona Project (CAP) to bring Colorado River water in to rescue all the farms and cities from a certain fate. But ... it turned out that the feds were carrying a stick along with the carrot of new water. They insisted that Arizona clean up its act on groundwater regulation by setting some limits on pumping, collecting data on how much pumping was occurring, and creating quantified, transferable rights in groundwater. If we didn't do that, funding for the CAP just might dry up - along with our economy. So the state enacted the Groundwater Management Act of 1980 that imposed fairly stringent regulation of groundwater pumping in the areas where overdraft was most severe.

I'd guess that the most likely reason they have been able to resist more significant regulation of groundwater in California is because they only rely on the stuff when the surface water situation is dire - like it is now. If groundwater is your primary or only source of water (as it was in much of Arizona), the pressure to take action is much stronger. But the California farmers (in the Central Valley at least) have been supplied for the most part with ample surface water from the Central Valley Project, State Water Project, and other large water delivery systems that convey surface water from where it is to where it is needed. When surface water is unavailable or limited, the farmers most affected restart their pumps, and everyone wrings their hands over depletion of groundwater. When surface water supplies return, the pumps turn off and water levels are allowed to recover. This removes the pressure to regulate groundwater use. The difference this time is that the surface water may be gone for good in some instances, so there will be more farmers relying on groundwater more of the time. This may lead to sustained pressure for action. And this being California, you can pretty much bet that action will be state action. The best those farmers can hope for is that they implement some kind of system that gives them something more closely resembling real property rights in groundwater - quantified, transferable, and sustainable. That way they will have both an incentive to manage the use of groundwater and more valuable property rights associated with their farmland, generally.

I'd suggest Mr. Watte start pricing flow meters pretty soon.

Chino Valley Town council candidates to protect well owner's property rights (what property rights?)

2009-05-12T11:15:00.004-07:00

This little piece showed up in the Chino Valley Review last week, describing a candidate forum for the Chino Valley Town Council. Chino Valley is a very small town just north of Prescott, Arizona and happens to be in the vicinity of where Prescott is planning to pump groundwater that will be transported into the Prescott area to support current and future growth. If you're interested I have posted previously on this project and some of the interesting legal issues that have some up because of it here and here.

I really love the way local politicians pander to their constituents by talking about their property rights in groundwater - when those rights consist of nothing more than the right to pump water out of the ground faster than your neighbors, who are trying to do the same thing. The property rights claims are always made when someone mentions the possibility of metering peoples wells to determine how much water they are using - this is just the first step in regulating how much water people can pump, they say. I guess they will know if they are pumping too much when they have to deepen their wells every 5 years. In this case Prescott is asking people to meter wells in the area, presumably so they can determine the sustainable yield of the aquifer, but those intrepid town council candidates see right through that ruse:

As for metering private wells, Schmidt said, "The metering idea comes from Prescott so it can get more water. Our private wells have no impact on Prescott."
Another candidate, Linda Hatch, said, "I don't think it (metering of private wells) will happen. If the wells go dry the town will offer them an opportunity to go on the town's system."
Candidate Robert Justice said metering of private wells is not the way to go. If a person's well goes dry they will have options.

Their big concern is that pumping by Prescott will dry up individual wells and they might be right, because Prescott has the same "property right" in the groundwater that they do, but they also have the resources to put in large, deep wells with high capacity pumps - giving them a heavy-duty property right.

So these folks are basically saying: there's no need to meter your pumping, because if everyone is pumping too much their wells will go dry and we'll hook you up to the city water system. What they don't mention is that those people will then be paying a lot more for their water and ... their water use will be metered (unless they have flat-rate water service up there). In other words they're happy to talk about protecting your water rights to get your vote even though they acknowledge that those water rights really aren't worth a damn. Do people really fall for this stuff?

Some numbers to look at

2009-05-01T15:59:00.002-07:00

I was recently involved in a discussion with John Fleck over at Inkstain about per capita water use numbers - comparing Tucson and Albuquerque data. Then I recently came across this graphic (courtesy of On the Public Record) that shows some pretty startling numbers.

It was in the Sacramento Bee so it focuses on data from that area, but also provides some numbers from elsewhere for comparison. It shouldn't be surprising from looking at these numbers that many areas in and around Sacramento have no metering for residential water service. What is surprising is that anyone from Sacramento could even raise the subject of drought or water shortages when their own consumption looks like this. Mind you, I'm not accusing anyone in particular, just pointing out that it's best to have your own house in order before pointing the finger at others. I'm sure there are other examples of water waste that could be pointed out in California that could be considered contributors to their current water crisis - efficiency is often a moving target.

Can you say irony?

2009-04-23T11:50:00.003-07:00

I was looking through some of the Arizona Water News postings on the Arizona Water Institute's (AWI - the same one that is being defunded by our state legislature over the summer) website recently and this piece from the Yuma Sun caught my eye because it appeared just a day before the news referred to in my post yesterday about the falling water levels in Lake Mead.

The Sun article refers to a somewhat common situation on the lower river during spring, when farmers in Imperial Valley and other places along the river must place orders for irrigation water 2-3 days in advance to give it time to come down the river to where their turnout is located. If it rains during those 2 o 3 days the farmer may decide to not take the water he ordered letting it flow down the river. From the article:

The almost .03 inches of rain was enough to cause some water users to not take the water they requested from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation almost three days before. And that caused the river to rise about four to five feet, according to Bob Walsh, external affairs officer with the bureau.

Obviously it doesn't take much rain to alter irrigation schedules and have a big impact on river levels.

...with no place to store the excess water, it runs downstream to Yuma and into Mexico.

Las Vegas funded a project to eliminate this situation somewhat on orders from Imperial Valley. It's called the Drop 2 Reservoir, which would store water off the river, adjacent to the All-American Canal in SE California. When completed it will allow water ordered but not taken to be stored for the next call, which is supposed to save about 70,000 acre feet per year. I believe Vegas funded the project in exchange for any water saved.

I'm not sure whether water ordered but not taken is counted against a given farmers allowable water allocation in a given year - I suspect it isn't. But I'm sure there are a lot of water agencies that shudder to think that, at times, water is being released from Lake Mead that isn't used by anyone (unless farmers in Mexico are grabbing it). Do you suppose efforts will be made to tighten up management of what is currently occurring on the river if it can delay or lessen the impact of water shortages in the basin?

More bad news on climate change effects on surface water flows

2009-04-22T13:42:00.002-07:00

The Christian Science Monitor has a blog on their website called Discoveries, that had a post yesterday summing up the recent Scripps study on the possibly dire future of the Colorado River watershed (discussed in my previous post here).

If you have followed the news this week the story has been pretty inescapable. The gist of it is that with or without the effects of climate change, the Bureau of Reclamation will be unable to meet the existing water delivery obligations in the lower basin almost half the time by the middle of this century because of overallocation of the river. This is primarily due to the fact that the amount of water divided up by the Colorado River compact was based on anomalous weather during the 20th century according to records reconstructed from tree-ring data. If average flows on the river over the past 1300 years or so are an accurate indication of reality, the river is currently over-allocated by as much as 4 to 5 million acre-feet per year.

These reports are on top of the recent announcement by the Bureau that the level of Lake Mead is expected to drop below 1,100 feet at some point this summer. That is a level not seen since Lake Powell was being filled upstream in the 60s and would be perilously close to the level that would initiative provisions of the recently completed shortage-sharing agreement(pdf) under which the basin states agreed to divvy up any shortfalls on the river during prolonged shortages.

The Discoveries post also mentions a recently completed study that shows declining flows in 2/3 of the large river basins in the world over the second half of the 20th century. The only places where flow is increasing is in rivers fed primarily by melting glaciers in places like the Arctic. That's some really ominous data there.

Keep an eye on developments on the Colorado and watch what is occurring in Australia with the Murray-Darling River Basin. If these predictions come true for the Colorado, what is currently occurring in Australia will be an important lesson for planners and policy-makers here.

A real treat for a lowly water blogger

2009-04-22T13:17:00.003-07:00

Last night I had the opportunity to meet a guy who passes for a celebrity in the small realm of water wonkery in the blogosphere. Michael Campana, of WaterWired fame (in addition to being a highly respected academic, philanthropist, and generally good guy), is visiting Tucson this week for the National Ground Water Association's Ground Water Summit, a meeting of groundwater professionals from universities, government agencies, and consulting firms across the globe. I'm not attending the conference but decided to attend a networking mixer associated with it last night in order to, well, network.

You may not realize this but shortly after starting this blog in a somewhat tentative (and very locally focused) fashion last summer, Michael - out of the blue - mentioned my blog in one of his posts. Then shortly after that I was mentioned in two other blogs. Suddenly I was on the map and realized that other people actually were occasionally reading what I had to say. It was at that point that I decided to stay with this blog, continue to expand the focus, and try to apply what I know to what is happening around me in the hopes that I can contribute to the discourse on these very important issues and maybe provide someone with useful information they were not previously aware of. But I might not have gotten this far if not for the subtle encouragement provided by Michael in that one brief post. So thank you Aquadoc.

It's been a fun several months and will hopefully continue to be so. And maybe I'll get the opportunity to meet more water bloggers in the future.

Grim predictions for Colorado River

2009-04-20T12:43:00.005-07:00

Click on the chart to see the entire image.

This post from Tom Yulsman on the Center for Environmental Journalism website paints a picture of a pretty grim future in the Colorado River watershed. When you have combined trends of steadily increasing water use with a likelihood for steadily (or is it abruptly?) decreasing river flows the outcome of dry reservoirs appears unavoidable, unless some drastic changes are made. The question is: is the Law of the River robust enough to make those drastic changes? Or do we need to scrap it and start over?

Hattip to John Fleck for pointing me to the CEJ post and providing the image above.

Some discussion on using water policy to manage growth from John Fleck

2009-04-09T12:57:00.002-07:00

John Fleck is the science writer for the Albuquerque Journal, who blogs on his paper's website and independently at Inkstain. His post today included a link to a post from his Journal blog back in February (still with me?) that caught my eye. In it he discusses the idea of using water policy to manage growth in the context of New Mexico's efforts to assert regulatory authority over deep, brackish aquifers in the state that have recently seen a flurry of speculative activity, seeking to lock up these water sources to supply future development. Previously, the New Mexico State Engineer (who oversees water rights in NM), had no regulatory authority over deep, brackish aquifers because they weren't considered potential sources of usable water - they were mostly of interest to the oil and gas industry because they are associated to some degree with formations containing valuable deposits in the SE portion of the state. But I digress.

The main point of his post is that, while water scarcity would seem to be a natural constraining factor on growth in places like Albuquerque or Tucson, it does not logically follow that policies for managing the water supply are a useful proxy for managing land use and growth. This is a point frequently made by Sharon Megdal at the Water Resources Research Center at the Univ. of Arizona and I usually agree with her, because she's much smarter than me. But if you think about it, it does make sense. Land use policy should be used to manage land use decision-making, while water policies should be used to manage water supply decision-making. The problem is - these two issues need to be considered together, as part of an overall plan for managing and ensuring sustainable growth policies. This means that water policies need to take into account the water supplies reliably available and what sort of growth they can accommodate, while land use policies need to take into account the availability of water supplies and infrastructure and what effect growth of a certain type, in a certain place will have on water supply availability in the future.

An important aspect of this (because of the way laws relating to property development are structured) is that water supply issues related to development have to be considered very early in the process of development approval, because once a developer reaches a certain point, vested rights to develop the property accrue, meaning there may be no turning back (see my earlier post here). In the past, decisions about land use (zoning, planned developments, etc.) were made without considering their impact on available water supplies. It was just assumed that water would be found to support the development when the time came. This has begun to change recently and Tucson and Pima County have actually made some pretty good strides in this area. These are pretty new policies and ordinances around here and there is very little development occurring at the moment, so it remains to be seen how effective they will be and (more importantly) what sort of unintended consequences they may have. It may also be necessary to make changes at the state level for this to really be effective. But as tools for land use planning (comprehensive plans and the like) become increasingly more sophisticated (as seen here) this idea will become much more prominent.

Signs of Progress in the Gila Adjudication?

2009-04-02T13:51:00.003-07:00

According to a news report from up in the Verde Valley, signs of visible progress in Gila Adjudication are apparent. For those unfamiliar with the adjudication process, this is the largest court case in Arizona and one of the largest in the U.S., with somewhere on the order of 30,000 parties or water rights holders, seeking adjudication of their rights. The adjudication process is designed to assign both priority and quantity to all surface water rights in the Gila River system.

The article reports that the adjudication of rights along the San Pedro River are nearing completion and that the Arizona Geological Survey is progressing with its mapping effort of the Holocene Alluvium along the Verde River. This mapping effort is intended to permit compliance with one of the key court rulings from the adjudication declaring that all wells pumping within the subflow zone of the rivers would be required to file for surface water rights (prior appropriation rights). This subflow zone was defined by the court to encompass the full extent of the Holocene alluvium along those rivers. So this mapping effort will effectively decide which well owners are to sucked into the adjudication (assuming they aren't already in it) and could impact their ability to pump water from their wells.

As to the final adjudication of rights along the San Pedro, I know that there are still hearings occurring related to some of the federal reserved rights in that basin - i.e. San Pedro Riparian area, Aravaipa Canyon - but because there is historically limited water in the river the number of surface right claimants should be fairly low compared to say the Verde. So I think it would be safe to say that this tributary is further along than anywhere else in the Gila system. But I think in terms of overall progress of the adjudication the thing that resulted in the most progress being made was the settlement of nearly all tribal rights to water from the Gila. While its encouraging that mapping is proceeding on the subflow issue I don't see significant evidence that the pace of progress in the adjudications has picked up recently.

Arizona Supreme Court Rules on Severability of Groundwater Rights from Property

2009-03-24T10:36:00.002-07:00

This is a follow-up to a previous post regarding a recent legal case in Arizona that considered whether rights to groundwater associated with a parcel of land can be held separately from ownership of the land.

The Arizona Supreme Court obviously felt it was an important case because they accepted it for review near the end of 2008, then scheduled it for oral argument in early Jan. 2009, and published their opinion late last week.

If you read my earlier post you will notice that I half-heartedly endorsed the Court of Appeals decision and thought the Supreme Court would affirm. On further consideration I changed my mind because the property rights to groundwater created by the Appeals court reading of the cases would be incomplete and do nothing to encourage efficient use of groundwater. I also began to see the illogic in their reading of the cases on which the decision hinged. It turns out I was right the second time. The Supreme Court went with what I would call a much more straightforward reading of the law (and the nature of property rights in groundwater) and held that, because there can be no future right to groundwater in Arizona (outside of an AMA), a property owner cannot reserve the right to pump groundwater from property after conveyance of the property.

The ruling appeared to hinge on the way the appeals court interpreted a few earlier cases they thought meant that a real property interest in future groundwater use could exist. But the Supreme Court differed in their interpretation of those cases and relied primarily on the Arizona case Town of Chino Valley v. City of Prescott and the U.S. District Court case Cherry v. Steiner to support the notion that rights to groundwater are perfected only by pumping the water to the surface (usufructory rights), therefore land ownership vests no rights to groundwater prior to pumping, so the previous owners who tried to reserve rights to groundwater had no actual property rights to reserve.

This reading of the law is in agreement with traditional economic notions of property rights to fugitive resources - something not all courts seem to grasp. In Texas, by contrast, their courts have interpreted the rule of absolute ownership as creating actual property rights in groundwater in situ (also the original common law view in Arizona until changed by the courts), permitting the reservation of rights to groundwater when property is conveyed. I looked at a couple of cases decided by their appellate courts recently affirming this view. One thing I found very interesting in the Texas cases was the statement that the rule of absolute ownership is distinct from the rule of capture. They claimed the rule of capture is simply a rule of tort liability (non-liability really) but the rule of absolute ownership is a property rights rule. That is a legal interpretation so it does not have to relate in any way to economic realities - but I think they would be better off if it did.

update on City/County water study

2009-03-24T10:06:00.003-07:00

Last week was supposed to be the first meeting of Phase II of the study, but first the committee had to clear up some unfinished business on the Phase I report. Unfortunately, that unfinished business dominated the evening and bumped the discussion of drought preparedness off the schedule. I didn't wait around til the end of the meeting and am still waiting for the revised schedule to be posted, but I'll assume the report was wrapped up and the next meeting (4/23) will be devoted solely to Phase II.

While I was at the meeting most of the discussion was focused on language in the report describing uncertainties associated with our water supply resulting from possible shortages on the Colorado River. This discussion focused on a need to clarify that the potential for shortages on the river does not affect Tucson Water's designation of assured water supply - which is true. But this brings up the distinction between paper water rights (the amount of water you have legal rights to) and wet water rights (the amount of water physically available to satisfy your paper water rights). This was something that possibly could be more clearly stated in the report, although doing so is likely to result in more questions for the average reader who may have some difficulty with the subject. And in the end what people really need to know is what the effects on our wet water supplies are likely to be - and the impacts from those effects.

The remainder of the discussion I was present for mainly related to dropping or inserting a sentence here and there - housekeeping mostly.

World Water Day - 3/22/09 - Focusing on Transboundary Waters

2009-03-19T12:42:00.008-07:00

To commemorate World Water Day, happening this Sunday, Daniel Collins, an Australian (correction - Kiwi) hydrologist who blogs at Crikey Creek, suggested that all bloggers who focus on water dedicate a post to the issue of transboundary waters - water resources that are shared by more than one country (or state).

Transboundary waters are commonly discussed in the context of surface water sources - i.e. the Colorado River in the Southwest U.S. that is shared by 7 states and a portion of Mexico - but just as contentious can be conflict over shared groundwater resources, which is what I will focus on in this post because of both the importance of groundwater as a water supply in Southern Arizona (where I reside) and the importance of groundwater in terms of its interaction with the few remaining surface water sources in this area.

The two locations arguably of greatest importance in this regard, in Southern Arizona, are the upper Santa Cruz valley in the vicinity of Nogales, Arizona and the upper San Pedro valley, near Sierra Vista, Arizona. These are locations of historically rich riparian areas supported by perennial streams that depended on baseflow from adjacent aquifers to maintain streamflow during the driest parts of the year. These are also northward flowing rivers that travel from Mexico into the United States.

Baseflow to the Santa Cruz River has been significantly compromised by urban growth and development near the border with Mexico. Nogales, Arizona has a population of approximately 21,000 while Nogales, Sonora has an official population of about 200,000 but some estimates place the actual number closer to 300,000. Although residents on the American side of the border undoubtedly use much more water per capita than their poor neighbors in Mexico, the sheer numbers south of the border in addition to poorly maintained, leaky water systems result in significant groundwater use in Mexico. What Mexico does provide to the river/aquifer system, however, is effluent. This is why the Santa Cruz River, which historically was perennial over much of its course between Nogales and Tucson is currently perennial in two distinct stretches - north of Nogales and north of Tucson, where the flow is supported by effluent.

Among the management goals for the Santa Cruz Active Management Area (AMA), which encompasses the valley from Nogales north about 45 miles, is to maintain the riparian area and local aquifers. This goal is only possible with the contribution of the effluent from a border treatment plant that handles most of the sewage from Nogales, Sonora. North of the border, much of the historically irrigated acreage along the river has been retired to permit further population growth (which has been rapid in the past 20 years). Interestingly, pursuit of this goal requires recognition of the connection between surface and groundwater, something the common law in Arizona typically ignores. Hopefully the new residents of the area will appreciate the riparian area in their neighborhood and understand the potential impact future growth can have on that resource.

The story along the San Pedro River, about 40 miles east of the Santa Cruz, is similar in that the major factor impacting the aquifer (and hence the river) is rapid population growth. However, in this case the growth is almost entirely on the Arizona side of the border. This area is not within an AMA so there is little regulation of groundwater pumping under state law.

The San Pedro drainage located south of the border is still largely undeveloped apart from ranching and some mining so the focus of efforts to maintain the aquifer/river system has been in the vicinity of Sierra Vista, the largest city in the area and a rapidly growing community during the last several decades. There has been much concern about the fate of the San Pedro River since the creation of the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area in 1988. Fortunately the Federal Government has considerable leverage over the growing cities and towns in the area, not just because of the federal reserved water rights associated with the Conservation area but also because the main economic engine in the area is a military base, Fort Huachuca. The fort has been a leader in the region in promoting water conservation measures so that constraints on the local aquifer can be minimized. Local political and business leaders are terrified of losing the fort, resulting in an alliance of business, governmental, environmental, and military interests to ensure that river remains flowing (and the area continues growing).

So far they have conducted numerous studies of the river and aquifer, the connection between the two, and the sensitivity of the river to groundwater pumping in various areas. They have reduced per capita water use in the area, constructed projects to capture and recharge both stormwater and reclaimed water in an attempt to minimize the extent of the effects from local groundwater pumping (hopefully providing long-term protection to the river) and different organizations have purchased land adjacent to the river to retire irrigation rights, which provides the best short-term protection of the river, although there is still considerable pumping occurring adjacent to the river (again the issue of legally distinct surface and groundwater in Arizona rears its ugly head). But the biggest threat of all could ultimately be from climate change which might alter recharge patterns to the aquifer (less winter precip and more summer precip, meaning more flash floods that are less effective recharge sources than the widely dispersed, cold weather precip that historically occurred during winter months).

The saving grace for the San Pedro is likely to be the fact that there are lots of people watching to see what happens and lots of data is being collected, so hopefully someone will notice when changes need to be made in the region and they will have the necessary data to support those changes. But the population growth that has already occurred or has been approved for the near future could be too much for the aquifer to support long-term. That would mean augmenting water supplies in the region somehow. They have already been looking at that but funding will be a significant issue.

Raising global awareness of water issues

2009-03-17T14:32:00.003-07:00

This is from an email I received earlier this week:

I'm collaborating with ONE DROP an NGO launched by Cirque du Soleil founder (Guy Laliberté) to realize his dream of fighting poverty by providing access to clean water to the world's population.

To get one step closer to this remarkably ambitious goal from March 16th to March 22th ONE DROP will be raising awareness for the Global Water Crisis and World Water Day (March 22nd) across Blogs, Digg, Tweeter, Facebook and many other social networks in an upcoming social media effort called Ripple:

http://www.onedrop.org/ripple

This Friday March 20th an unprecedented rally event will be held on Digg: DIGG FOR WATER asking as many supporters as possible to dig our cause. This effort will hopefully allow us to collectively take the front page on Digg and to make Web audiences sensitive to the urgency of action to tackle Global Water Crisis.

Could you please be so kind to help us spread the word by providing some coverage to this story on Watering the Desert.

Thank you in advance!

All the best,

Andres Restrepo

This seems like a worthy cause. It's important to remember when we fret over our water problems in the developed world (i.e. an occasional lack of sufficient water, of a quality and at a price we are accustomed to, to meet all the demands we place on the resource) that there are billions of people in the developing world (where access to reliable sources of clean water is often one of the greatest luxuries) who would love to have our water problems.

Take a moment to check out their website and participate if you can.

Three recent articles on Reuters about water problems in the West

2009-03-12T20:44:00.004-07:00

Reuters News Service has been focusing on water a bit this week. Hard to say why. Maybe because it's National Groundwater Awareness week or maybe it's just because the State of California is all in a tizzy this winter over drought, climate change, ecological calamity, agricultural decline, etc. because there just isn't enough water in the state any more to meet all the competing demands being placed on it. If you haven't taken a look at the Aquafornia blog in a while you should, just to get caught up on the latest round of finger-pointing going on over there.

But back to Reuters. First there were two articles on Tues. the 10th, one discussing impending water crises in the West resulting from rapid growth dependent on occasionally unreliable water supplies and the second discussing the limited options available for water managers to stretch existing, thin supplies or augment supplies. Then on Thurs. the 12th, they carried an editorial, written by a former head of the California Department of Water resources and current water policy advisor for an environmental advocacy organization, comparing current water crises in the West with the current financial crisis - both caused by growth based largely on speculation (that the water would keep flowing in one case and money in the other). He makes some good suggestions for improving water use efficiencies in the residential sector but that's pretty small potatoes in the overall water picture.

If we want to adapt to new climate realities and maintain our quality of life we will need big changes in how water is allocated and priced (and those two things are highly interdependent) before too long.

Nifty new Google Earth tool

2009-03-11T13:07:00.003-07:00

I was checking out a site called Circle of Blue today and came across a really clever plug-in for Google Earth. If you are a user of Google Earth, just follow the link above and look for "Click here to download the module". If you don't have Google Earth installed on your computer you will have to do that first.

What they have done is linked the data collected every 5 years by the U.S. Geological Survey on total water use in each state of the U.S. What you are actually seeing when you look at the data in Google Earth is average daily use of all water for each state compiled in 2000. These data sets compiled by USGS are really useful - I've used them for some of my research - but some of the data is a little inconsistent.

I sometimes forget how cool Google Earth is, but it is truly an amazing resource.

Min(e)d the Gaps

2009-03-09T10:43:00.003-07:00

There was an interesting post on WaterWired that referenced a recent article in the Santa Fe paper, discussing the issue of ownership of underground pore spaces from which oil and gas had been extracted. Just so you know - I am a big fan of interesting and novel property rights issues and this is a gem.

Some quick background:
All sedimentary deposits are composed of mineral grains of various sizes intermingled with pore spaces that are typically filled with air or water, but sometimes contain recoverable quantities of oil or gas. This is true of unconsolidated deposits (loose sand, gravel, silts and clays) and consolidated materials (i.e. sandstone or shale), however the native porosity of hardened materials is often less than unconsolidated materials because some of the pore space will be filled in by mineralization (with hardrock the dominant porosity is often what is called secondary porosity, resulting from joints and fractures in the rock).

Under the common law of property the person who owns real property (land) owns everything within their property boundaries including the sky above and the earth below. This concept has been modified over time such that landowners cannot prevent airplanes or satellites from passing over their property and the subsurface estate can be split from the surface estate, so that a landowner may own the surface of their property but someone else owns what lies below or at least the right to extract any valuable minerals lurking underground. Much of oil and gas law is based on this split-estate concept.

The issue they are addressing in New Mexico (and also Wyoming, Montana, and perhaps Utah) is who owns the empty pore spaces remaining underground after the minerals have been extracted. This issue is coming to the fore right now because utilities and regulators are looking at old oil and gas reservoirs as possible places to store captured carbon dioxide as part of climate change mitigation measures. I find this interesting because of how it relates to the practice of using depleted aquifers to store water through aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) programs. With ASR there typically is no issue over pore space ownership because (by statute) the entity recharging water into the aquifer owns the water placed there (regardless of pore space ownership), although it usually requires ownership of some overlying surface land in order to put the water in the aquifer. There are probably some state-to-state differences because of differing rules regarding water rights, but I'm not going to get into that here.

With a split estate, the party owning rights to extract oil and gas, would typically only own the hydrocarbons within the pore spaces, not the actual pore spaces. The oil and gas industry is arguing to the contrary but most political support appears to reside with the surface estate owners who believe that once the oil and gas have been removed nothing remains for the extracting party to own. I suspect this is not an issue that has arisen in case law or been addressed by state statute, which is why legislators are addressing it now. But the oil and gas industry must be interpreting some law to make their case and probably have a plausible argument somewhere.

Another issue likely to have a significant role in resolution of pore space ownership questions will be liability for carbon dioxide storage projects. The power industry has been pushing Congress to limit or remove their liability in the event that a storage facility fails to contain the CO2. If a landowner owns the space in which the CO2 is stored they will want similar protection from liability. This would probably be resolved through contracting for use of the space once the ownership is worked out.

Finally, despite what the coal industry has been pushing about the viability of CO2 capture and storage (probably their only hope for survival in a post-carbon society) this is a largely untested technology with a lot of uncertainty associated with it. For more on that issue, check out this recent article in The Economist.

New post on water rate policies from "On the Public Record"

2009-03-04T21:55:00.002-07:00

This is a fairly new blog by an anonymous civil servant in California that has become one of my favorites recently. It's called On the Public Record. One of the virtues of posting anonymously is that you can shoot from the hip and not worry too much about offending anyone, which this blogger certainly does.

He has a couple of posts from earlier today about the issue of water pricing and its use as a conservation tool - post 1, post 2, post 3. In the posts he jumps on people (mostly economists) who oversimplify the ability to reduce use by raising rates, by pointing some of the practical limitations of that policy.

Here are a few comments that I particularly enjoyed, but I encourage you to read all 3 posts in their entirety.

On the real meaning of our current "drought":

When everyone says “drought” and “shortage”, what we basically mean is “less then we’re used to”. We don’t mean, and won’t in the foreseeable future, “not enough to drink and bathe”. So far we’re not even close to that range. What we do mean is “not enough to use it like we’ve always been able to”, on lawns and embedded in our meat supply and on wasteful appliances and by deferring maintenance on leaky pipes.

Stating a very simple reason why conservation pricing has not been implemented in California:

... one side effect of Proposition 218 [in California], put forth by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, was that it became illegal to charge any household more than the costs of conveyance to that parcel. It was illegal to charge punitive rates to send a price signal to wasteful users . . . So you have all these economists telling districts they could solve their shortages by charging more for excessive use, and districts saying, we’ll get sued. It was illegal until six months ago.

And my personal favorite referring to some of the people who complain most loudly about being asked to pay the real costs of their lifestyle choices when water or sewer rates are raised:

... the truth is, most of those new fees are different forms of internalizing environmental costs. Someone who can’t afford to pay those cannot afford their standard of living. They’ve grown used to that standard of living under artificially low prices subsidized by the environment, but that is a false expectation. . . their fight is to impose the costs of their lifestyle, of which water is just one example, on anything else. The environment, most likely, or the collective as a second choice. Then I am not so sure that that lifestyle is such a valuable one that I care if they get to continue it. I am even less sure that I care enough to spend money supporting their lifestyles.

Is it harsh? Yes. Is it true? Also, yes.

Water & Wastewater Infrastructure, Supply, and Planning Study - Phase I report, part 4

2009-03-02T11:32:00.003-07:00

The 4th Chapter of Vol. 2 of the committee report contains their recommendations for Phase II of the study, commencing later this month. This next Phase is envisioned by the committee as a transitional phase - leading to a larger regional discussion occurring in later phases of the study. For this reason, one of their first recommendations is that the existing committee complete its work on Phase II, then disband, so that a new committee with more regional representation and focus can pick up the next phases of the study. This sounds like a reasonable proposition. My suggestion would be to tie the incoming committee tackling Phase III, etc. in with a regional visioning process, as discussed in the December forum on land use planning.

This section then sets up a framework for the discussions in Phase II, outlining 3 broad areas of discussion:

1) Adaptive management - making better use of existing water supplies and drought planning
2) Comprehensive planning - matching land use planning with water resources planning, incorporating environmental uses of water in planning process, applying planning principles across jurisdictions in the area
3) Water resources and environment - development and/or acquisition of new renewable water supplies and (again) bringing the environment into the discussion of planning and water resources

As the report notes, they cribbed the term adaptive management from climate change discourse, which stresses the need to develop policies that permit adaptation to changing climate conditions. They seem to be stressing policy and regulatory strategies that will allow us to use our available water resources more efficiently, especially in the face of prolonged drought when supply options diminish. I like the fact that they address the issue of conserving for a purpose other than to permit continued growth - this is a complaint often made when people are asked to conserve - why sacrifice simply so more people can move here and impact our quality of life. The reality, as always, is far more complicated than that but it makes for a good soundbite. And it's an issue that has to be answered for more people to truly buy into the concept of conservation.

But, as they mention, the adaptation strategies discussed in this report are things many in the region are already looking at and trying to implement with varying success. I think the issue of adaptive management needs to be pretty open-ended. We may have strategies in place that will allow us to cope with shortages, or we may need an entirely new set of tools in the toolbox - adaptation includes recognizing when the existing models are not working and need to be altered or replaced.

Comprehensive planning is the monster task that lies ahead. We don't even know what it will take to do the kind of planning that is required. There are a few models out there (Envision Utah?) but we don't know how well they will work for us until we start trying things out. The issues the committee proposes to address in this context are focused on linking land use decision-making to water supply availability and guiding growth to the areas of the region best suited to accommodate that growth. I agree that land use decisions need to be made with an understanding of what is supported by available water supplies and infrastructure, but the issue of guiding growth to appropriate areas needs to be handled delicately. Mandating certain types or amounts of growth in given areas is a nice idea but always seems to result in unintended consequences and ends up being weakened by exceptions to avoid inequitable situations. Establishing policies that subtly effect the economic incentives associated with the where and the how of growth, while still not perfect, I think tends to produce more desirable results. Allow flexibility in the process and permit negotiation with developers to encourage them to think creatively in order to get their projects approved and built. This will produce quality growth in the community that hopefully should also be sustainable.

The final discussion area - Water Resources and Environment - feels to me largely a restatement of ideas covered in the two previous areas. Augmentation of water supplies fits in nicely with the regional planning approach discussed above and water for the environment was explicitly noted under issue two as a requirement for sustainable water supply planning. I think some committee members just felt really strongly about incorporating water for the environment in the discussion that they wanted it included in a discussion heading.

The format for Phase II is similar to Phase I (there will be a series of open public meetings where the committee will be presented technical information from various experts), but because the inventory aspect is over this phase will involve much more discussion of policy and less numbers, facts, and statistics. They are also planning to complete the meetings as fewer, longer sessions than occurred in Phase I. This should permit more in depth discussion of the issues involved, both among the committee members and with the public.

The meetings start in two weeks, so I'll follow up on this as they occur.

Interesting new commercial building project in Tucson

2009-02-27T15:08:00.002-07:00

I stumbled across this article in a local paper here in Tucson and found it pretty surprising. Using heat exchange wells for heating and cooling buildings is not that new and I believe they are fairly common back east, but I hadn't heard of it around here before now. The most likely reason is that it's a long way to groundwater in these parts. The systems don't rely on groundwater being present to permit the heat transfer process to occur (I think ... this is a bit out of my expertise but the Wikipedia page linked above gives a good overview) but it seems like water is a better heat transfer medium than clay, sand, and gravel, which make up our local aquifers.

Nonetheless, I think it's great to see projects involving this kind of innovative thinking occurring in our community. Hopefully by the time they are done building it the economy will be in recovery and the project will easily lease out. Also, because they are simply evaluating the feasibility of the geothermal aspect of the project at this point, it will turn out to be a workable solution at this location.

Water & Wastewater Infrastructure, Supply, and Planning Study - Phase I report, part 3

2009-02-25T14:11:00.002-07:00

Chapter 3 of the main body of the report is titled "Sustainable Water Future." The first question that pops into my mind - What is meant by "sustainable water future"? The term sustainable is imbued with so many value judgments that it really can have no fixed meaning. In fact this was a question that the committee wrestled with pretty extensively during the final set of meetings. This point was discussed at some length in the Executive Summary, specifically mentioning that while there was some agreement among the committee as to the facts associated with the "data" considered and condensed within Phase I of the study and how they are applied in the context of sustainability, some of the harder-to-define aspects of sustainability (i.e. what is a sustainable population for the region) that rely heavily on various assumptions about shared values produced varying opinions among the committee, which will be explored further in Phase II.

As for this Chapter of the report, it starts with a discussion of a scenario-building exercise conducted by the Water Resources Research Center that attempted to determine the total population that could be supported by the known, existing water supplies available in the Tucson region, in the year 2030 (they looked at the county as a whole, not just Tucson or the Tucson Water service area). These population predictions necessarily involved numerous assumptions about availability of water sources (such as Colorado River water), per capita water usage, and future use of effluent to supplement water supplies. Because of these assumptions it is not a crystal ball - it merely considers several possible future outcomes. This exercise, along with the Tucson Water 50 year plan, forms the basis of much of what the committee looked at in this portion of the report.

The 50 year plan (also updated last year) explores various scenarios for future population growth and looks at the various management options for Tucson Water to supply that population with water and retain its Assured Water Supply (pdf document) designation. These scenarios involve permutations of maximum CAP allocation usage, increased effluent reuse (either directly or indirectly), and conservation programs to reduce per capita use. Essentially they are asking - How far will our existing supplies take us under these different scenarios? The upshot of this being, that unless we either find new supplies, make greater use of effluent, or further reduce per capita usage (or some combination of those) we will be hitting some limits with our supplies around 2020, which is not that far off. This is with a potential population in the Tucson Water service area of slightly under 1 million people (the current number is around 650,000 - I think, while total population in the region is about 1 million currently).

So, even assuming our Colorado River supplies remain intact through that time (probably a pretty safe assumption, but maybe not), this community has some tough choices to make in the near future. Oh, and I have been completely forgetting about water for the environment, which was noted by the committee as an important aspect of a sustainable water future. I'm definitely in favor of using some water to restore riparian ecosystems in the area, but I suspect that what will actually happen and what some of the more vocal proponents of water for the environment would like to see are some considerable distance from each other. Talking to some people of the "slow to no growth and much more water for the environment" persuasion I get the impression that they want to see flowing rivers in Tucson at some point in the future. I'm afraid that discussion needed to happen a long time ago, unless they're perfectly content with effluent-dependent waterways below sewage treatment facilities (that's very do-able). This is a key value judgment that needs to be made by this community with a lot of good data about economic trade-offs and realistic expectations of what can be achieved. Not an easy task by any means.

Finally, as what I perceive to be a prelude to Phase II of the study, the report discussed the issue of land use planning and the need that it be informed by realistic water supply information. This section was in some respects a re-hash of previously discussed data on water and wastewater infrastructure but put in the context of land use decision-making. It was a very matter-of-fact discussion outlining the need for greater regional cooperation on planning and discussions on community values that should be involved in future growth planning (see my previous posts on this topic here and here). Both of those ideas are essential, I believe, to a meaningful discussion during Phase II of the study. And that segues nicely to where my next post on the report will pick up - Vol. 2, Section 4 - Recommendations for Phase II of the study. I haven't looked at that section at all yet, so I'll have to see how my comments regarding Phase II sync with those of the committee.

I think that will be my final post on the report. The public comment period on the draft ended last week, so I blew that deadline, but it sounds like the final report won't be submitted to mayor and council until April so there may be additional opportunities for comment between now and then.

Water & Wastewater Infrastructure, Supply, and Planning Study - Phase I report, part 2

2009-02-13T12:26:00.005-07:00

I have moved on to Chapter 2 of the report - the Water Resource Assessment.
This is the real meat of what the committee was looking at in Phase I. It includes a lot of numbers, graphs, and charts used to summarize things like miles of pipe (water and sewer), number of connections, and how much water and waste is moving through those pipes. An inventory, for the most part.

I won't go through all the boring details by trying to summarize what those numbers say. I'm going to offer a few criticisms and my suggestions for what should have been in this section of the report. But let me start by saying what I thought was good about this section.

They do a very good job of summarizing what has been compiled by Tucson Water (in their recent 50 year planning effort, available here) and the staff of the Tucson AMA (in their planning water budgets and the 3rd Management Plan, both can be found here). They also do a good job of taking the statutory assured water supply (AWS) requirements and explaining them in plain English. They clearly discuss the different elements of Tucson's water supply portfolio and how they fit into the AWS context. Overall, I thought it was a pretty good introduction to the management of water supplies in the Tucson region that can sufficiently educate the average layperson on the topic. For that reason alone I highly recommend reading this chapter.

One point that comes up several times and made me cringe slightly was the claim that Tucson Water was expecting to fully utilize Tucson's CAP allotment this year, as a means of securing our rights to the full amount in the event of cutbacks on Colorado River deliveries in the near future. If you have been following the news here, you would have noticed that the Tucson city council has just voted to approve efforts by Tucson Water to sell 50,000 ac-ft of our allotment this year and perhaps next year in order to make up a budget shortfall the water utility is experiencing due to water sales that didn't meet expectations during the past year and a lack of water connection fees because of the economic slowdown. There is no guarantee they will succeed in selling the water (at least at the prices they are hoping for) but it shows how desperate things are right now financially for a city department like Tucson Water which must meets its entire budget through fees for the services it provides.

The following are some more specific comments/criticisms that I noted while reading the report (with page numbers where applicable):
- in the discussion of recharge projects (pp. 10-11) there was very little discussion of the difference between long-term storage and annual storage and recovery, and how much of each is occurring; how these different strategies are used by Tucson Water; how their use is likely to change over the course of the 50 year planning period -- this is important info for long-term supply reliability planning and requires delicate balancing of present vs. future needs, which come to think of it may just be too complicated and esoteric for this type of report
- their discussion of use of effluent resources (pp. 17-18) failed to adequately discuss the different strategies for using this resource, i.e. recharge, managed vs. constructed (different accrual of recharge credits for each), long-term storage vs. annual storage and recovery; how these different options fit in with Tucson Water's long range planning objectives
- their discussion of available water sources and how they are being managed was generally pretty good, but I thought they could have specifically emphasized the importance of having a diversified water supply portfolio so that long-term drought doesn't have as great an effect on overall water supplies
- following up on the previous point, their discussion of water supply characteristics in the context of conservation programs (p. 30), is overly focused on effects of Colorado River cutbacks, pointing to the crucial weakness in our current supply portfolio; this points to the need to seek alternative supplies to make up for shortfalls from the River, but should also discuss relative costs of seeking those new supplies vs. imposing greater conservation measures in order to make available supplies go farther
- then where they discuss different aspects of conservation programs on pp. 35-37, they give a good general overview of what has been implemented or has been considered for implementation, but there is a glaring absence - use of price to mitigate demand; this option has to be on the table, both to curb demand and to fund conservation measures --- there is also an error in this section where they refer to city ordinances mandating expanded use of gray water and rainwater harvesting, saying that the “ordinances mandate the use of these alternative supplies for new construction beginning in 2010.” My understanding of the new rules is that they require all new commercial development to meet at least 50% of outdoor water needs with rainwater harvesting and require installation of stub-outs for gray water on all new residential construction, but no mandate that gray water actually be used on-site
- their discussion of rainwater harvesting and gray water reuse (p. 37) was pretty skimpy; they presented some case studies to show that the possibility exists, but did not explore in more detail what could be achieved by more widespread adoption of these measures; hopefully this is a topic that will be looked at in detail during Phase II of the study
- on p. 39, the report included a tidbit of information that surprised me because I had never heard of it before (although it shouldn't have been surprising) - they note that the Groundwater Management Act includes provisions to permit pumping of groundwater in AMAs without use of long-term GW credits in the event of shortages on the River. I haven't figured out yet if this provision is time-limited
- they include a long, detailed discussion of climate variability (pp. 40-43) associated with global warming and its potential effect on water supplies in the Southwest; I thought they spent way too much time on the climate change stuff and not nearly enough time on strategies water managers must consider to adapt to new climate realities; the climate change stuff is interesting but instead of spending 3 pages on the science and 1/2 page on adaption, they should have done the reverse
- in their discussion of other potential water sources (p. 46) they characterize importation of groundwater from other basins outside AMAs as a "one time shot"; while the amount of water that could be added to supplies from these basins on a yearly basis might not be that significant, the rules governing this permit essentially a fixed volume of water to be pumped each year (with limits on permissible water level declines) to augment CAP supplies; this could be very useful if managed properly
- the section on other potential water sources was also another opportunity to further discuss the possibilities from rainwater harvesting (either on individual properties or on a larger scale with floodwater retention) and gray water reuse that was not seized; only a very brief mention
- the final section of the report was a discussion of the ADD Water process that the Central Arizona Water Conservation District (CAWCD, the folks who run the CAP) recently initiated to attempt to identify other, available sources of water that could be used to supplement existing supplies within the Tucson and Phoenix areas; they didn't really say much here beyond acknowledging that this process is ongoing, it is more cost-effective for different jurisdictions to work together to secure additional supplies than to fight over the scraps, and how those supplies might be transported and utilized within the existing CAP system; what they did not discuss was where those supplies might come from or how they would be allocated, kind of important issues, but not necessary to resolve now

Next I will work through Chapter 3, Sustainable Water Future. This section looks like a lot of fun and is likely a prelude to Phase II of the study. I'll probably post something on that in about a week.

Also fyi, the public comment period ends on February 18th, which is right around the corner. So get out there and make your voice heard. Also, the first meeting in Phase II occurs on March 19.

The fight over Prescott's Assured Water Supply Designation

2009-02-13T12:20:00.006-07:00

Earlier this week, an administrative hearing was conducted in Prescott to address challenges to the recent AZ Dept. of Water Resources (ADWR) ruling that gave Prescott permission to pump just over 8,000 acre-feet per year from the Big Chino basin to supplement water use in Prescott and Prescott Valley.

The local paper up there covered the hearing with daily reports that can be found here, here, and here. I wasn't at the hearing myself so this post is based on those reports plus my own knowledge of the situation up there.

ADWR's decision effectively increases the amount of the Prescott area's Assured Water Supply designation, permitting increased development in the area. One of the big complaints presented by objectors was that the Prescott Active Management Area (AMA) that includes Prescott, Prescott Valley, and some of Chino Valley is currently overdrafted and most knowledgeable people will admit that they have almost no real chance of getting to safe yield (where water going into the aquifer equals water going out), which is the eventual management goal for the AMA. Therefore, why should Prescott be permitted to use this water to support future growth - they should be using it to achieve safe yield by putting it into the aquifer. The fact that they would be mining a nearby aquifer in order to put the water into their own aquifer is irrelevant on this issue - this is Arizona groundwater law after all.

But the big issue in this hearing is basically whether Prescott should be permitted to pump water from the Big Chino aquifer, which is widely considered to be the main source of baseflow for the upper reaches of the Verde River. The upper Verde is a beautiful and bountiful,free-flowing desert river system that elicits strong emotions from its supporters. The Verde River also happens to be one of the main surface water sources for Salt River Project (SRP). SRP is kind of the 800 lb gorilla of water disputes in Arizona. They possess rights to a significant percentage of the surface water found in the state and they do not take kindly to any action within the watershed that could be seen as threatening those rights. Under Arizona law, the connection between groundwater and surface water is tenuous at best, governed by the concept of "subflow." The basic idea behind subflow is that only groundwater found immediately adjacent to a stream (i.e. the streambed itself) has any connection to surface water. All other groundwater in aquifers near a stream and likely providing some contribution to baseflow, but in a more tenuous and hard-to-define manner, is legally distinct from surface water. So a groundwater pumper might dry up a river - as they have with many of Arizona's rivers - and have no liability to surface water right holders who can no longer divert from the river.

The parties have been arguing whether the pumping by Prescott will impact flows in the upper Verde, with one side saying "yes it definitely will" and the other saying "no chance of impact from this pumping." If you ask any decent hydrogeologist (who isn't working for a party in this case) about it they will tell you: it's not a question of "if" the pumping will affect the river, but a question of "when" and "how much." Just take a look at John Bredehoeft's paper, "The Water Budget Myth" and tell me how you balance out inputs and outputs when one side of the equation changes. Prescott is proposing to pump from the aquifer 20 miles from the springs that feed the headwaters to the Verde. So it will probably take some time before effects are seen from their pumping, and those effects might be very small initially. There is a lot of hydrologic uncertainty to the "when" and "how much" questions - the role of geologic structures and heterogeneity in the aquifer to start with - but the "if" question is an easy one.

Prescott has complained loudly in the administrative hearing that some of the local objectors who presented evidence against permitting the pumping are simply straw men for SRP, which was denied the right to participate directly in the hearing because they do not "reside" within the AMA - only entities within the AMA boundaries are permitted to challenge the ruling under state law.

There is going to be more on this process, as the hearing was not completed this week (as noted in the last article), so it will be continued at a later date. Also, once the administrative law judge issues his ruling after this hearing, it can be appealed and moved to the regular court system. And it surely will as long as SRP has a stake in it.

2/17/09: came across this today. If you are interested in more info about the property in Big Chino Valley from which Prescott plans to pump the water, the City of Prescott provides a very basic overview here.

2/27/09: One of the attorneys for SRP told me the hearing is scheduled to continue in April with 3 more days of testimony. Also, it sounds pretty certain that if Prescott gets a favorable ruling from the ALJ (which becomes a recommendation to the director of ADWR to affirm his initial ruling) there will be an appeal in Superior Court. This process will be going on for several years, in other words.

Update on using water policy to manage growth - Nevada edition

2009-02-13T11:56:00.002-07:00

A member of the Nevada state assembly is working on a bill that addresses some of the same issues covered by the voter initiative passed on Washoe County, Nevada last fall, according to this article from the Reno Gazette-Journal.

Opponents of the bill are painting it as likely to stifle growth - a contention the bill's author insists is unwarranted. Although she appears to concede that the draft version of the bill leaked last month might go too far, it is being amended to reflect some of the concerns.

The current text of the bill can be read here. It appears to have been crafted to cover only Washoe County (using population restrictions) with provisions designed to flesh out the bare bones initiative described in a previous post.