Heretical Questions of Water Use in the Southwest

Laws governing water use have evolved from a way of life that has all but disappeared in Arizona.  The current tangle of regulations, developed haphazardly over time (but earnestly enough at the time) is enough to keep attorneys busy for decades.

Agricultural interests, metropolitan interests, and mining/industrial interests are figuratively coming to blows with the intimation that the end of an unlimited water supply may be in sight.

People are beginning to realize, at least speculatively, that business as usual is about to end and water use will most likely have to be regulated, allocated or governed in some way.  Regulation and allocation are bitter concepts in a largely conservative state.

Let’s look at some issues and questions…

Should water be privately owned and should ownership be couched in terms of “rights” by special interest groups or corporate entities?  Stated differently, is water a public commodity to be held in trust by the state and dispensed equitably for the common good – or – is it owned, as is a mineral deposit, and mined for personal gain? 

Should water, controlled by public-private partnerships (PPPs), make profits by delivering water to the very people who may own it in the first place?

Should water be delivered by a public utility which would allow suppliers minimal profits to cover current costs and future investment?

Should water utilities be governed by a Public Utilities Commission that sets rates for consumers?  And profit levels for suppliers?

Is it necessary to grow cotton on thousands of acres of desert land that wouldn’t otherwise support this crop without irrigation? 

Would the irrigation used to supply plants be better spent in the Southwest by supplying people?  Not a foolish question.  Looked at differently, if you were packing in the back country with a few liters of water would you consume the limited water you had or would you feed the nearest mesquite tree? 

To continue this ridiculous analogy -- am I stealing water from the Salt River Project (SRP), for instance, if I filter a liter from the Verde River (or the Gila River, or Colorado River) and don’t replace it.


See also:http://verdenews.com/main.asp?SectionID=109&SubSectionID=1079&ArticleID=33524

I’D LIKE TO HEAR YOUR THOUGHTS  

Looking Out My Back Door

With apologies to CCR…

Currently there is talk in Arizona about sustained safe-use of water resources. Proposals are offered, solutions returned.  Most are merely hopeful, some just ridiculous.

If you want to know what the desert will naturally support, just look out your back door.  For a personal experience, pack into a wilderness area. Sycamore and Loy canyons are close. Legs of your trip will have to be planned carefully between springs, stock tanks, water holes. 

The desert doesn’t support an abundance of wildlife (human or otherwise) and the density of animal populations is typically low. In Arizona, for example, density of the deer population is estimated at 10 per sq. mi. -- in the most favorable habitat -- while in Wisconsin that number ranges from a high of 100 per sq mi. to an average for the state of 25 – 35 per sq. mi. 

Vegetation is scattered, also.  Monocultures such as lawns, vineyards and cotton farms don’t exist naturally because the water necessary to support them doesn’t exist.

Running counter to the scaled-back density of animals and vegetation, human population in Arizona has increased approximately 26% in the last in the last eight years.

The desert will not naturally support megaplexes like Phoenix or Tuscan with their monocultures of people. It is not an Iowa cornfield.

When we talk about pumping aquifers, constructing diversion dams and establishing reservoirs to support non-native agriculture and an overgrown population, it’s a conversation about debt…water debt.

Two water resources are particularly misleading:

1. Reservoirs, scattered about Arizona, look like lakes but are nothing but rivers with an enlarged surface area (and greater than normal evaporation) and. . .

2. Aquifers, being hidden, are only remotely connected to people’s awareness.

The perfect storm? . . .maybe it’s your choice. . . pump the rivers and aquifers and. . .take your chances.

For more on this subject please see   http://verdenews.com/main.asp?SectionID=109&subsectionID=1079&articleID=33135

When the River Becomes a Swamp -- Part 2

Idyllic, isn't it?


The Verde River is high...ducks, blue herons, kingfishers and other wildlife "use" its braided path all the way to the Salt River far to the South.  

People. . . also. . .use the river and that's where trouble begins. Some use it for pleasure, others for commerce.  Some more wisely than others.

One of the more perceptive observers is Doug Von Gausig, the mayor of Clarkdale, Arizona.  Maybe a birder, he's certainly observant. Von Gausig has seen 175 species of birds on his property in the 7 years he’s been here.

Talking to "High Country News" in 2007, Von Gausig said, "...the Verde is more than bird habitat. The river is a touchstone for people who live near it...a place to spend time in, something beautiful, something that brings peace to their lives.” (High Country News, "Battle for the Verde", May 14, 2007).


Today that sentiment may no longer be viable.  The river has changed.


Writing in the August 2009 Issue of The Noise, a monthly entertainment tabloid published in northern Arizona, Ellen Jo Roberts laments her aborted rafting trip on the Verde: "It's not an easy river"..."We never made it to (our destination)"..."Our plan was foiled by one portage too many...leaving us all sliced up with green reeds and weeds as sharp as paper cuts."


She explains, "...the river wasn't moving much...to get anywhere we had to vigorously kick...or risk circling in the same spot all day."


Although it likely wasn't within the article's scope, she fails to pose a simple question, "Why...?, Why doesn't  the river flow?"  That's what rivers do.


The answer lies with commercial interests and the fact that no consideration of the Verde River is complete without mention of diversion dams and the dams' affect on the environmental qualities of the river.


Questions are easy...solutions are complex and tangled in antiquated Arizona water laws.


Let's try the easy way . . .

• Diversion dams serve agricultural interests.  With limited supplies of water in Arizona, why are some land owners determined to grow what the environment won't support naturally?
• If commercial interests are at stake, what ethic permits these interests to take primacy over personal enjoyment?
• If water ownership is primal, does that owner have the right to take water until the very river is destroyed?
• Do water rights effectively mean river ownership?

High above the Verde River are the remains of the Anasazi dwelling, Tuzigoot.  Inhabited from about 1125 - 1400 AD, these ancients knew enough, even with water control structures of their own, not to destroy the river.