The Power of Local

My fellow blogger (now retired) Wayne Bossert appears to have created quite a sensation with the Local Enhanced Management Area (LEMA) concept he implemented in the Northwest Kansas Groundwater Management District # 4.  The revolution underway in western Kansas that is attempting to preserve irrigated agriculture in the face of drought, aquifer depletion, and rising crop prices is a bold experiment in local resource management that has recently been highlighted on NPR (two times) and more recently in the Economist.  I'm a big fan of locally developed solutions to resource management problems so I really applaud the efforts that have been made by farmers and water managers in that area.  Their work would surely make Elinor Ostrom proud.  Although some of the problems with the High Plains aquifer are significantly larger than what a single Management District can successfully grapple with I think this model could be employed elsewhere and if implemented sufficiently broadly could actually make a difference for the broader future of farming on the high plains.

Enhancing the Management of Arizona's Aquifers - an Alternate Proposal to ADWR

Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) recently floated a proposal to change the formula is uses to grant groundwater credits to entities that artificially recharge renewable water into aquifers as a way to permit additional groundwater pumping.  The state recharge program is a somewhat complicated scheme that I can't explain in detail right here, but you can get lots of other information at ADWR's website here.  This proposal is being made as part of the 4th Management Plan process - a once-a-decade planning exercise that is intended to get Arizona's Active Management Areas to Safe Yield by 2025.

The gist of the proposal is that it would reward entities that locate their recharging activities closer to where they are actually pumping out groundwater.  A worthwhile endeavor to be sure. 

Update on ADWR NIA Reallocation Process

Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) has posted the comments received on their proposed process for reallocation of the 96,000 acre-feet of Non-Indian Ag (NIA) water in the CAP system.  Several of the comments echo my points (with additional elaboration) on some of the failings of the proposed process.  Unfortunately, no one else suggested that a market mechanism for allocation would be appropriate.  Of course all the other comments were from actual stakeholders who might want to be granted rights to some of this water.  I acknowledge that a market is probably not in their self-interest.  I think it's not inconceivable, though, that some of the industrial users (mining companies) might be willing to get behind the idea, as they would be likely to come out ahead of many of the municipal users - at least in the short-term.  But in strict dollar terms they are probably better off with an administrative allocation process. 

The one idea that no one seemed to get behind was the proposal by CAP to impose a reliability charge with this water to establish a fund that would attempt to firm up this somewhat unreliable supply.  That was certain to be a tough sell.  Seems like most users would rather deal with supply reliability issues on their own.  I'll try to update again when ADWR posts the responses to the comments received, but it will likely take a while.

Cato Article - Downsizing the Federal Govt. - BuRec

There's definitely some Cato Institute stuff that's just too far out there for me, but when they take on federal control of water resources in the West and advocate for more use of markets to allocate a scarce resource, they can probably reel me in.  I enjoyed this article, mostly for its advocacy of water markets.  I think it's easy to find examples of where the federal government has screwed up in their long-standing management of Western water and they do a good job of chronicling those in the article.  But they largely overlook much of the good that has resulted from those efforts - the Colorado being a prime example of both the good and bad of what the Bureau has done. 

We would not have the infrastructure that is needed to weather extremes of climate, like we have been experiencing the last couple of decades in the Colorado basin were it not for the extensive infrastructure built by the Bureau and that infrastructure could not have been built by any smaller unit of government.  We also could probably be figuring out better ways to manage the water of the basin if it weren't for ongoing federal control of the basin and all that infrastructure.  But the Southwest that we currently have - good and bad - clearly wouldn't be around today if not for what the Bureau did with the Colorado.

And the article clearly does a much better job of chronicling what's wrong than of proposing workable solutions.  That's think-tank work for you.  But still a pretty good article if you swing toward the free-market side on water management.

hat-tip to Marginal Revolution for the link that eventually led me to this article.

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

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.

New Funding Source for the Arizona Department of Water Resources

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.

Allocating Water for the Environment

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.

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

      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

How strong is the connection between price and water use?

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

More poorly managed groundwater resources

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.

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

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?

Groundwater Management in California

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.

Some numbers to look at

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.

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

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.

Some Thoughts on Water Allocation and Perceptions of Shortage

After listening to a discussion by candidates for the board of the Cental Arizona Water Conservation District (CAWCD - the folks who run the CAP) and presentations on the challenges posed by climate change to water resources planning during the past few days I feel like I have been bombarded by elaborate plans to exploit new sources of water in the future to meet the burgeoning needs of our arid state. Then I pause and think back to some of the earlier presentations from the City/County Water Study Committee that painted a fairly rosy picture of the water supply situation in the Tucson area - which I mostly agree with. The truth is - we have lots of water available in Arizona, at a reasonable cost, which is unlikely to run out in the near future. We don't need to find new sources of water and it's unlikely that we will find significant new sources of water (unless you take the position that price is irrelevant). The problem we have around here is that the water is not always put to the highest value uses. A lot of it is being used to grow low value crops, like cotton and alfalfa. I know, commodity prices are high right now, but in the long term it makes much more sense to grow those things elsewhere - where you don't have to use valuable water supplies for irrigation in order to do so.

I posed the question to the CAP board candidates that maybe we should be looking at reallocation of existing water supplies before we commit ourselves to building nuclear power plants in Mexico that will power massive desalting facilities. Of the four candidates present, one understood the question but deftly sidestepped the issue, two flatly stated that reallocation was a non-starter because of the mess it would create (but they were assuming that the question referred to simply taking away water rights from one party and giving them to another), and the fourth never even addressed the question in his rambling response. Anyway, the idea that reallocation of water should not even be on the table is pure bunk. There should be ample opportunity for cities or communities to enter agreements with agricultural users to free up irrigation water for municipal uses - all you need are two willing parties and agreement on price.

In a sense, this is what is already occuring in the cleverly named Groundwater Savings Facilities, where farmers agree to purchase subsidized CAP water, use it for irrigation in lieu of groundwater they are entitled to pump, while a nearby water provider (who provides the subsidy for CAP water) accumulates groundwater credits (that otherwise would go to the farmer) that can be used to permit future pumping. As was pointed out at the forum, this is a particularly good deal because it uses lower quality CAP water for irrigation, while permitting use of higher quality groundwater for residential uses.

It's quite possible there is not much excess water in the ag sector that could be moved to other uses through such agreements, but because so much water is used by ag a very small reduction in that sector could provide a very significant amount of water for the municipal sector - which should serve to minimize the economic disruption caused by decreased irrigation.

Additionally, the most likely scenario in which CAP would need to secure additional supplies to meet its obligations, would be in the event of long-term drought leading to cutbacks in Colorado deliveries, under the recently completed Shortage Sharing Agreement among the Colorado basin states. And what is the result when that agreement kicks in? Water deliveries to ag users are cut back first, so that CAP's municipal obligations are not threatened. This sounds like reallocation of water between use sectors to me. In a really major drought, where these shortages occur for several consecutive years, farmers will be going out of business in large numbers, resulting in permanent reallocation - which should eliminate the need for supply augmentation.

I know - talk of moving water from ag to municipal is a tough sell politically. But to simply ignore the possible need to do so in the future to meet changing water supply needs is not just short-sighted, it may be dishonest to the voters.