THE VERDE

Sometimes, when Doug Von Gausig kayaks down the Verde River near the town of Clarkdale, he thinks about what could soon be lost. Then he pushes the thought out of his mind, taking solace in the sound of flowing water, the scent of wet sand, the sight of a river otter gliding through shallows.

Von Gausig is 65 years old, the mayor of Clarkdale and the president of the League of Arizona Cities and Towns. A tall man with serious eyes and a measured tone, he tells me he’s been drawn to the Verde River all his life — first as a kid growing up in nearby Prescott, then as a Yavapai County merchant, craftsman, photographer, sound recorder, biologist, environmental consultant and politician. He’s long taken note of the scientific documents, population projections and hydrology studies that indicate that unless widespread and significant remedial steps are taken, parts of the Verde River are projected to go dry in less than two decades.

Today, the Verde River is one of Arizona’s last surviving perennial streams, a verdant waterway coursing for about 195 scenic miles from its Yavapai County headwaters to its confluence with the Salt River, in the Sonoran Desert near Phoenix. With its reliable flows, swimming holes and canopies of cottonwood and willow trees, the Verde has always been the life-giving oasis that defines Central Arizona. After it ambles out of the Verde Valley, the river becomes a federally designated National Wild and Scenic River, surrounded by the Mazatzal Wilderness. Closer to Phoenix, the Verde fills two lakes (Horseshoe and Bartlett) before it couples with the Salt River and helps quench the thirst of metropolitan Phoenix.

The Verde has long been a “working river,” watering the crops of prehistoric people and providing sustenance to later generations of Native Americans, as well as miners, farmers, ranchers, recreationists and thirsty city dwellers. For centuries, the Verde was replenished with groundwater cached beneath high-desert grasslands.

But now, population increases, overuse of groundwater, long-term drought, contradictory water policy, unresolved water rights and climate change all threaten the Verde’s fragile watershed, which is now in a state of “overdraft,” meaning that more water is extracted from the watershed by humans than is replenished by nature.

The overdraft is especially critical in the first stretch — from the headwaters through the Verde Valley — where the river may soon dry up in spots.
 

Even so, the number of people who will take water from the Verde watershed is expected to soar. By 2050, the population of the watershed is expected to reach 600,000, nearly triple the area’s 2006 population, according to a 2013 report by the Central Yavapai Highlands Water Resources Management Study, which is funded by federal, state and local governments.

In 2011, Von Gausig and several colleagues discovered a hidden problem that scientists and economists didn’t catch: The people who live near the river are often unaware of its plight. “Perhaps the biggest problem the Verde River faces today is the lack of engagement of the people who live near it and whose livelihoods depend to some extent on it,” the Clarkdale mayor and colleagues reported in a 2011 economic-development study.

Still, this is not a story about despair. It’s a story about grit, hope and collaboration spurred by a new sense of urgency. Today, at least 30 publicly and privately funded groups, some of whom collaborate with small businesses, industry and government, are taking steps to create a sustainable Verde River. The Verde River’s advocates know they’re up against daunting odds, but that’s not stopping them.

The town of Clarkdale, for instance, hopes to do its part to keep the river flowing by becoming an eco-tourism destination, creating a sustainable economy out of the river itself. Later this year, the town will open 4.5 miles of the Verde to kayakers, hikers, photographers, birders, anglers, picnickers and other recreationists, including those with disabilities, via an eco-friendly project called Verde River @ Clarkdale. There will be two river access points: Kayakers can park their vehicles at the downstream access point, then shuttle upstream to begin their 4.5-mile ride.

Town fathers hope Verde River @ Clarkdale will attract eco-tourists, from oldsters to Millennials, who will enjoy the river and spend money in Clarkdale — by hiring guides, for instance, or dining, or buying curios.

But there’s also a hope for an even greater good. By opening the river to people who will love it or understand its economic value (or both), the town will engage people who otherwise would not be engaged.

An engaged public is critical to the Verde River’s survival. An engaged public will likely be more willing to conserve water and advocate for the Verde River.

“When you ask people to change their lives, you have to have a good reason to do it,” Von Gausig explains. “So if the river isn’t part of their lives, that’s not a good reason for them to change their lives. But if they believe that the quality of their lives will be affected by a healthy Verde River, they will take the steps to save it.

“There’s a very rapidly growing understanding that if we don’t draw economic argument to what we’re trying to do, it will have very little impact,” the mayor adds. “To many, the beauty of river is an abstraction.”
 

If Clarkdale succeeds, it will be “a trailblazer” for other Southwestern river communities facing similar stresses, Matt Niemerski, the director of Western water policy for American Rivers, tells me. (American Rivers is one of the main funders of Verde River @ Clarkdale.) The nonprofit conservation group, known for its river-restoration and -protection projects, recently designated a portion of the Verde River a “Blue Trail,” a status aimed to connect communities with their rivers just as hiking trails connect people with landscapes.

For a century or so, Clarkdale has been disconnected from the Verde River, even though the river runs by the town. Clarkdale is less than 50 miles downstream from the Verde River’s headwaters and is the first major town the river encounters as it travels toward metropolitan Phoenix.

The town was built in 1912 by a miner-turned-copper-baron named W.A. Clark. He built the town on the banks of the Verde River just so he could smelt copper ore shipped via railroad from his mine in Jerome. Clark had many mineral companies; he’d be a billionaire today. He had a mansion in New York, called Clark’s Folly, and several other mansions scattered across the country; and he bought himself a seat in the U.S. Senate, representing Montana. When he died, he left much of his vast Gilded Age fortune to his weird, reclusive daughter, Huguette. (The New York Times bestseller Empty Mansions, by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell, tells the story of Huguette’s bizarre, indulged life. You can buy the book, of course, at the Clarkdale Historical Society Museum.)

You can bet Huguette didn’t come to Clarkdale much. The smoke was so toxic it killed fruit-tree orchards.

Clark built the smelter close to the Verde River, which he dammed so he’d have ample water for his smelter. He funneled some of the dammed river water through a tunnel into an oxbow lake, where he built a golf course and clubhouse for privileged workers. Clarkdale was a segregated town: Whites lived in “Upper Town,” a bluff overlooking the smelter; Mexicans lived in “Patio Town,” down by the river and much closer to the smelter.

The town changed forever when the smelter was shuttered in 1953 by its then-owner, Phelps Dodge. After that, Clarkdale, which sits a few miles northwest of Cottonwood, was more or less forgotten.

Today, Clarkdale is home to about 4,000 people, and it’s best known as the home of the Verde Canyon Railroad depot and the gateway to Tuzigoot National Monument, a large prehistoric ruin near the Verde River. But quirky Clarkdale proper hasn’t caught on as much of a tourist draw, even though the old townsite and its 386 structures are collectively listed on the National Register of Historic Places. On a recent stroll through downtown, I spotted a giant historic clubhouse built in Clark’s honor, a couple of churches, a copper museum housed in an ancient high school, the Clarkdale Historical Society Museum, a couple of bars, a kitchen-design company, a wine co-op, a chiropractor, a Mexican restaurant, an art gallery, a post office and a retro gas station.

Many of the old buildings are constructed of soft yellowish bricks, which were apparently defaced by yesteryear’s lovers. Presumably with the aid of roofing nails, screwdrivers, pocketknives, corkscrews or other sharp devices, they scrawled their names, along with the monikers of girlfriends and boyfriends, onto the historic bricks. Some names were scratched out with angry X marks, hints of love gone sour.

There’s a small town park, where a sign pays homage to Antonio de Espejo, a Spanish explorer who passed through the Verde Valley in 1583. The Spaniard, who earned a place in history because he was the first white guy to set foot in the area, dubbed the Verde the “King’s River.” Native Americans, though, had a different name for their river. They called it “Green River.” At some point, the prevailing name became Verde River, because the Spanish word verde means “green.” What’s key is that all of these names share the same context: The Verde River was a treasure, a life-giving oasis in a vast, arid landscape.

That’s a mindset Clarkdale hopes to revive, while making money at the same time, with Verde River @ Clarkdale.

Trying to save the Verde River is “an uphill battle all the way,” Bill Regner, a member of the Clarkdale Town Council, tells me. “To be highly optimistic is risky, but I’m happy with the direction we’re going. We’re trying to get out in front of the problem, and maybe, against all odds, we can be successful.”
 

On a recent day, Regner and Von Gausig climb into a white Ford truck with a front license plate that reads, “Clarkdale, Arizona.” With Von Gausig at the wheel, I sit in the front seat as the truck gallops over a primitive dirt road. In the distance, an antique smokestack towers over an abandoned coal-power plant that once provided electricity to Clarkdale. The Ford lurches past green mesquite thickets until it reaches a grassy clearing. Here, a white sign with blue letters proclaims: “Public Boat Launch: TAPCO River Access Point (TAPCO RAP).”

This is the starting point of Verde River @ Clarkdale. The banks are flat, and the shallows provide an easy launch for even beginning kayakers. The fastest part of the river rolls along today at about 80 cubic feet per second, its waters tinted umber by the silts of recent monsoon storms.

I’m an inexperienced kayaker, but the river here is manageable, even for me. A couple of times, my kayak gets stuck on river rocks, and a couple of times, I float down the little riffles backward, and once, the river plops me and my kayak in an eddy beneath an overhang of spider-flecked branches. But mostly, I paddle easily.

In the 1930s and ’40s, the smelter was such a polluter that its owners bought up several miles of riverfront and surrounding land. Next, they placed a “smoke easement” on the property. Since the public was barred from trespassing, the cloud of smelter smoke overhead killed vegetation and probably animals, but it couldn’t make people sick.

The counterintuitive result, a half-century after the smelter closed, is a relatively healthy riparian area that shelters migratory and native birds, a variety of mammals and fish.

The current owner of this remarkable property, Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc., has leased this prime riverfront land to Clarkdale for $10 a year so that it can open the 4.5-mile Verde River @ Clarkdale. The project is, in fact, a collaborative effort between private funders (American Rivers and the Walton Family Foundation), Clarkdale, the mining company, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Arizona Game and Fish Department and Arizona State Parks. This sort of collaboration is emblematic of a new trend in conservationism: The more people at the table these days, the better.
 

I’m enjoying the fruits of the collaboration. As I kayak down a riffle, an otter glides ahead of me. The river jigs over rocks. We pass eggshell-white and pink bluffs, big tufts of grass, and healthy native cottonwood and willow forests. Von Gausig says only 328,000 acres of this forest survive in the world, all of them along the desert rivers of the Southwest. The Verde River riparian area is home to 240 species of birds, including common black-hawks, eagles, rare yellow-billed cuckoos, spotted sandpipers, belted kingfishers and wood ducks. It’s the habitat of river otters, muskrats, beavers, mountain lions, bobcats, foxes, raccoons, deer and fish.

We rest beneath a towering black mountain that meets the river — the slag heap from the Clarkdale smelter. The river is deep here, and the current slows. When we arrive at the ancient diversion dam Clark built a hundred years ago, we portage our kayaks up and down a hill.

The diversion dam is an anachronism, a relic of Gilded Age thinking. It prevents kayakers from kayaking and native fish from spawning. It diverts the Verde’s waters through a tunnel to feed Pecks Lake, which has been closed since 2004. Verde River conservationists and Freeport-McMoRan, which now owns the lake and the dam, are trying to figure out how to sustain Pecks Lake in a more modern, eco-friendly way, perhaps using solar-powered pumps and removing the dam entirely.

After portaging Clark’s old dam, we kayak down the (smaller) river for a short while until we reach Clarkdale’s Tuzigoot River Access Point — the end point of Verde River @ Clarkdale.

Von Gausig and his wife, Becky, live on a hill in Clarkdale overlooking the Verde River. Their house is landscaped with lush, pleasantly scented, drought-tolerant desert plants, and there’s a goldfish pond with water lilies. It’s a breezy spot; wind chimes clang often.

“Environmentalists are now embracing the fact that they have to do things that benefit people,” Von Gausig tells me. “It’s important to draw up sound economic arguments for the river as the driver of a sustainable economy.”

He knows that if Clarkdale fails, and if other efforts to sustain the Verde fail, the river will begin to go dry. In fact, he might have to witness the river’s demise from his hilltop garden. But he won’t let himself think of it. Instead, he’s buoyed by “all this collaboration.”
 

Collaborative Efforts

I think, when I meet Kim Schonek, that she doesn’t have a care in the world — she hides it that well. She’s a brown-haired, brown-eyed, ebullient, gregarious 32-year-old mom, wife and farmer. She and her husband, Nick, grow vegetables on their acre of land in Chino Valley. They want their toddler son, Cade, to understand that food doesn’t originate at Safeway.

That maternal instinct is part of what drives Schonek, the Verde River projects manager for The Nature Conservancy, to keep the Verde River flowing. She’s not alone. “The story that hasn’t been told,” Schonek tells me, “is that there is a whole community coming together to save this river.”

Several conservation groups have taken an interest in the Verde Valley, and each group focuses on a different self-appointed river-restoration task.

The Nature Conservancy’s role in the Verde Valley is to create a collaboration of scientists, ranchers, farmers, community members and irrigation-company officials to improve flows in the Verde River. Such collaboration isn’t easy — it takes a special kind of person to bring stakeholders with opposing needs together. You can’t take sides.

After five years on the job, though, Schonek is beginning to see results.

At a TNC ranch on the Verde River, farmers use modern irrigation practices that reduce water use. They experiment with replacing thirsty crops, such as alfalfa, with low-water-use crops, such as drought-resistant native-grass hay.

Century-old irrigation practices present more of a challenge for Schonek. Irrigation keeps the Verde Valley green, but some irrigation companies have historically sucked more water out of the Verde River than local customers need.

Many water rights in the Verde Valley have yet to be adjudicated in the courts, and there’s a sense among some water users that if you take a lot of irrigation water out of the river, even if you don’t need it, you can claim rights to it later in court. Today, unused irrigation water is needlessly siphoned from the river and travels through ditches until it’s dumped back into the river downstream. This practice can render the upstream stretch of the river — the siphoned part — almost dry.

After Schonek began TNC’s project in 2008, she began measuring the river flow. In some stretches of the river, the natural flow should have been 100 cubic feet per second. But irrigation had reduced the flow to less than 5 cubic feet per second. (A cubic foot of water would fill a basketball.)

“ ‘Camp Brown’ isn’t going to sound as great as ‘Camp Verde,’ ” Steve Goetting, the chairman of the Camp Verde Chamber of Commerce, explains to me.

Goetting is the vice president of the Diamond S Ditch, a 5-mile-long irrigation ditch that has about 60 users. “Slowly but surely,” says Goetting, the ditch users warmed to Schonek and understood that TNC “wasn’t out to steal anyone’s water.”

The users agreed to install two solar-powered “smart gates” with sensors that accurately control the amount of water flowing from the river into the Diamond S Ditch. Users got the water they needed, but the smart gates doubled the river flow to 10 cubic feet per second in the driest stretches during the driest time of the year.

The users also signed a “flow agreement” with TNC that will reap them cash rewards if they continue to return 5 cubic feet per second to the river.

Goetting hopes the Diamond S will be a “model” for the 41 other ditch companies in the Verde Valley. Ditch companies can help TNC reach its short-term goal of installing infrastructure to prevent water waste, and its 10- to 15-year goal of restoring 30 cubic feet per second to the river, thus keeping parts of the river from drying up.

One day, Schonek stands on a hill looking down at the fragile river. You can’t hear the water this far up, just the wind slicing through dry desert grasses.

She knows she’s fighting to save a river even as groundwater pumping and increasing populations in a time of drought and climate change diminish it. But she hopes that as multiple conservation groups “leave regulatory talk behind” and focus on doing their parts to save the river, more will take up the river’s cause.

— Terry Greene Sterling