Update to Arizona Legislature Is Failing To Address Arizona’s Looming Water Crisis (Updated):
The Arizona legislature really only had two priorities to deal with in this legislative session: (1) the school funding cliff that they created last session, and (2) the looming water crisis Arizona faces from a prolonged megadrought due to climate change.
[W]hat about that second priority, dealing with the looming water crisis Arizona faces from a prolonged megadrought due to climate change? U.S. megadrought worst in at least 1,200 years, researchers say. There has been no serious action by the legislature, and the month of May and our long summer heat season is upon us.
The Arizona Mirror reports, Federal agency warns Colorado River Basin water usage could be cut as drought worsens:
The federal agency in charge of managing much of the West’s water warned Tuesday that it will act unilaterally to reduce water usage in the Colorado River Basin if state and tribal leaders can’t reach an agreement this summer.
Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille C. Touton told a U.S. Senate committee that states within the region will need to cut usage between 2 and 4 million acre feet in 2023 to protect the Lake Mead and Lake Powell reservoirs.
Joanna Allands of The Republic explains:
If we were to carry out every cut contemplated in the Lower Basin Drought Contingency Plan, which applies to Arizona, California and Nevada, that would amount to 1.1 million acre-feet of water.
That means the full basin would need to conserve at least twice as much as the deepest levels of shortage for which our three states have planned. In the best-case scenario.
And we’ll need to agree on a plan to do so in about eight weeks – or else, the feds will act for us.
For now, Touton said, the bureau is “pursuing a path of partnership,” though she noted the agency has the authority “to act unilaterally to protect the system.”
“There is so much to this that is unprecedented and that is true. But unprecedented is now the reality and the normal in which Reclamation must manage our systems,” she testified. “A warmer, drier West is what we are seeing today.”
Touton said the Bureau of Reclamation is currently prioritizing short-term actions to prevent Lakes Mead and Powell from reaching dead pool, a condition where water levels get so low they can’t flow past a dam.
“This is the priority for us, between the next 60 days to figure out a plan to close that gap,” she said.
The Colorado River Basin covers more than 250,000 square miles and provides water to Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
Extreme drought
The hearing in front of the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee gathered together officials from the Environmental Defense Fund, the Family Farm Alliance and the Southern Nevada Water Authority to look at short- and long-term solutions for extreme drought.
John J. Entsminger, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, told panel members that while the situation is bleak, it’s not unsolvable.
“I can assure you from on the ground that the ominous tenor of recent media reports is warranted,” Entsminger said. “What has been a slow motion train wreck for 20 years is accelerating and the moment of reckoning is near.”
The solution, he said, is working toward “a degree of demand management previously considered unattainable.”
Entsminger pointed to his home state of Nevada as an example for others in the region to follow, noting that while the state’s population has increased by 800,000 people during the last two decades, its water consumption dropped by 26%.
Nevada, which gets 1.8% of the Colorado River Basin’s water allocation, has paid residents to remove grass, set a mandatory irrigation schedule and enforced water waste rules.
He said that long-term solutions cannot just focus on residential and urban water use, but must include changes to how farms operate in the region.
Eighty percent of the Colorado River’s water allocation is used for agriculture and 80% of that is used for forage crops like alfalfa, Entsminger testified.
“I’m not suggesting that farmers stop farming. But rather that they carefully consider crop selection and make the investments needed to optimize irrigation efficiency,” he said.
Patrick O’Toole, president of the Family Farm Alliance, told U.S. lawmakers that he believes water storage and improving forest health [???] are important steps to addressing severe, ongoing drought in the West.
The Alliance formed three decades ago to “ensure the availability of reliable, affordable irrigation water supplies to Western farmers and ranchers” in 17 states.
The first major forest fire this year is currently burning near Flagstaff, and there will be others with Monsoon lghtning season. The past two decades have seen Arizona’s worst series of forest fires. Climate change and warming are destroying our forests with the process of aridification. Relying on “improved forest health” is just climate denialism and a pipe dream.
O’Toole cautioned that taking water away from farms would increase the amount of food the United States needs to import from other countries.
80% of Arizona’s ag water is used for forage crops like alfalfa (for cattle). If you are truly concerned about food supplies, this water should go to California: California’s agricultural abundance includes more than 400 commodities. Over a third of the country’s vegetables and two-thirds of the country’s fruits and nuts are grown in California.
“We are about to do with agriculture what we did with manufacturing and let it go overseas,” O’Toole testified.
This climate denialist talks like this is a zero sum game, “If we don’t grow it, someone else will.” This is detached from reality. Climate change is a global phenonomenon and is impacting agriculture around the world. Third of global food production at risk from climate crisis:
A third of global food production will be at risk by the end of the century if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at their current rate, new research suggests.
Many of the world’s most important food-growing areas will see temperatures increase and rainfall patterns alter drastically if temperatures rise by about 3.7C, the forecast increase if emissions stay high.
Researchers at Aalto University in Finland have calculated that about 95% of current crop production takes place in areas they define as “safe climatic space”, or conditions where temperature, rainfall and aridity fall within certain bounds.
If temperatures were to rise by 3.7C or thereabouts by the century’s end, that safe area would shrink drastically, mostly affecting south and south-eastern Asia and Africa’s Sudano-Sahelian zone, according to a paper published in the journal One Earth on Friday.
‘Aridification’
New Mexico Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich, a member of the panel, pushed back against the committee using the term drought to refer to the situation in Western states, using aridification instead.
That word refers to a region gradually moving to a drier climate, whereas drought often refers to a shorter term reduction in water.
“This is not some random event, it’s frankly a direct result of the lack of action on climate that we have seen for more than 20 years,” Heinrich said. “And we all collectively own that.”
Again, Joanna Allands of The Republic explains:
Arizona has junior water rights on the river, which means technically, we are first in line for cuts. But Arizona’s annual appropriation is 2.8 million acre-feet, and this year we’re only using about 2 million acre-feet of it. The rest is already in Lake Mead, in the form of mandatory cuts and voluntary savings.
If the full basin is supposed to save up to 4 million acre-feet, relying on Arizona alone won’t get us there. And fully cutting the 2 million acre-feet we are using would have devastating consequences.
The Central Arizona Project would dry up; no water would flow through its canals to metro Phoenix and Tucson. That might not immediately shut off taps in cities like Phoenix and Tempe, but it certainly would put the other sources on which they rely – renewable supplies from the Salt and Verde rivers and a finite pool of groundwater – under considerably more stress.
Zeroing out Arizona’s Colorado River allocation also would severely impact Yuma farmers, which supply the nation with veggies and salad greens in the winter.
[It] must be noted that saving 2 million to 4 million acre-feet next year won’t rebuild Lake Mead or Lake Powell; it just keeps them from falling to the point where hydropower can no longer be generated.
This is not a solution. It’s not even a Band-Aid. It’s emergency surgery to stop the hemorrhaging, with the prognosis of the patient to be decided later.
Yes, maybe we should have heeded the warnings about our health decades ago, so we didn’t end up on the operating table. But we’re all here now, and we better make the most of it.
Arizona’s economic model since the end of World War II has always relied on rapid, uncontrolled (and unsustainable) growth. This economic model should now come to an end with our water crisis. Without a stable water supply, we cannot continue to bring even more people into the state. We may not even be able to sustain the population we currenty have.
Expect to hear “building moratorium” from the lips of longtime residents who want to slam the door shut to any new arrivals. We may even see Arizona residents become “climate refugees” and begin fleeing the state to other parts of the country with a more sustainable environment. This should force a reckoning with Arizona’s outdated and unsustainable economic model. We need to reimagine a new sustainable economic model based upon scarce resources and a declining population, as the Great Lake states have had to do for the past 40 years. (Maybe it’s time for you snowbird transplants from these states to consider moving back).
The Arizona Mirror adds, Water shortages threaten development throughout the West:
As the Western United States endures an ongoing megadrought that has spanned more than two decades, an increasing number of cities, towns and water districts are being forced to say no to new growth.
There’s just not enough water to go around.
[A] water district serving mountain communities in Arizona announced in March that it had issued a moratorium on new connections. Pine-Strawberry Water Improvement District has struggled with increasing demands from residential and vacation rental properties, The Arizona Republic reported. The water table has fallen below most of the district’s shallower wells, and much of the water that is pumped is lost to leaky infrastructure.
The district is seeking to drill deeper wells and fix its leaks, but it said the moratorium was necessary to buy time to address the problems.
In Utah, the city of St. George has expressed concern about its ability to grow if a pipeline to pump water from Lake Powell is not approved.
“We cannot afford to build beyond what our water supply will allow,” City Manager Adam Lenhard told the St. George News.
Lenhard said the city could ban new building permits, but such a restriction could only last six months under state law. Several other communities in Utah have paused construction due to water shortages.
I do not expect any sustainable agreement to be reached among the Colorado Basin states. The Feds are going to step in as soon as August, and then the shit is going to hit the proverbial fan. Arizona residents had better wake up to our water crisis – the moment of reckoning is near.
The slaves to the Farm Bureau and large international investors are preventing ground water legislation to the detriment of their own constituents. Shame.
The Arizona Republic in an editorial is begging our governor and legislature, “For God’s sake do something!” “Why Arizona lawmakers must act now – and do something big – on water”, https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/editorial/2022/06/17/arizona-lawmakers-cannot-kick-can-water-authority/7639065001/
Arizona lawmakers have a chance to do something significant on water this year – something helpful and timely, given the massive cuts looming on the Colorado River.
Or they could waste a giant opportunity.
It all comes down to the next few weeks.
Some want to use the cash to import water
There is wide agreement to put $1 billion toward water projects.
The hang-up is over how to invest it and who should make those decisions. Gov. Doug Ducey has proposed creating a water authority to oversee the cash, but he faces opposition from Republicans who say that would create an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy that could delay distribution of the cash for years.
They have a point.
But there also seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding about where the money should go – one that has grown even more glaring, given the recent bomb drop that basin states must use 2 to 4 million acre-feet less water by next year just to keep Lake Mead and Lake Powell from tanking.
A fair number of lawmakers think most of that $1 billion should be earmarked for projects that import water from somewhere else – most likely, to help fund a potential desalination project in Mexico, a project that Gov. Ducey alluded to in his State of the State address.
But we’re missing the boat if that’s how this shakes out.
That’ll take decades. We need water ideas now
Any project that finds water in some other state or country – if it materializes – would be at least a decade away. And that’s in a best-case scenario.
We need to act now.
That doesn’t mean we should abandon efforts to study Mexico desalination as part of the larger, binational group that must be involved in any such deal. But it doesn’t make much sense to squirrel away most of that $1 billion for a long-term maybe.
Particularly if projects within Arizona, such as canal lining, drip irrigation conversion, stormwater capture and aquifer recharge, or water recycling for potable use, could produce measurable savings or amounts of water sooner.
Note: In a water emergency, mandatory water conservation is the only remedy. Look to California’s experience over the past few years.
These and many more ideas to save water or maximize supplies internal to the state also should be eligible for the funds.
Given the magnitude of cuts looming on the Colorado River, cities will be asked to absorb far deeper cuts than anyone had planned. Even on-river users with the most senior water rights are likely to be curtailed.
That will further strain the state’s water supplies, particularly groundwater, which especially in rural areas, was already under considerable stress.
A billion dollars won’t solve all those problems. Lawmakers also must address glaring loopholes in state water law that allow for glaring overuse.
Note: The powerful agriculture lobby has always prevented this.
But a comprehensive review is not likely to happen in the next few weeks. This funding could.
Whatever you do, don’t kick the can
Granted, this is the first session in a long time where lawmakers have been forced to work together, to make concessions with folks they might not agree with to get bills across the finish line.
The stalemate on the budget shows many lawmakers have forgotten how to do that.
But water authority proponents have genuinely listened to those with concerns and made good-faith, bipartisan efforts to address them. And while the draft legislation is certainly not perfect, it contains useful details about how we maximize the impact of this investment.
Some have pushed to include some form of rural groundwater rules, arguing that if we’re going to invest heavily in new water for these areas, the last thing we want is to have those with the deepest wells pump it all right back out.
That would be ideal.
But with time quickly running out on the session, others have proposed to park the money for a year, most of it in a fund to import water from who knows where, and figure out the details later.
That’s a mistake.
Whether the Legislature creates an authority or uses an existing board to disburse these funds, priority one should be to ensure the money can be distributed quickly, to a wide range of projects that can demonstrate actual water savings or water generated for the communities they’d serve.
Arizona has a rare opportunity to do something big on water.
Or we could kick the can.
Please, lawmakers, whatever you do, don’t kick the can.
-Even The Republic cannot bring itself to say the words “mandatory water conservation” until we can secure reliable, sustainable sources of water in this new era of global warming and aridification of the Southwest.