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.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Hit the high points
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.
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.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
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.
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
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.
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.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Recent Recognition
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
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?
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?
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Training in Urban Stream Restoration
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.
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