Rio Salado: All the Makings of a New Beginning

what it is today. Creative minds and a community did that." Planners predict Rio Salado will create 74,000 new jobs. Sixteen thousand new housing units will be built, with 4500 acres of park and open space. Private developers will improve 5000 acres of commercial, industrial, and recreational space. Desert plants will thrive in the arid region landscaping, making showplace canyons out of the excavations left from gravel mining and providing refuge for wildlife as well as recreation for people.

Urban geologist Troy Péwé heads an Arizona State University team analyzing the geological characteristics of the Rio Salado planning area.

"The first stone cannot be turned until a dam is built to keep the water flow in the river channel down to 50,000 cubic feet per second (cfs)," he says bluntly. A straightforward man who brooks little argument from the opposition, Péwé contends that the Salt River Valley histor-ically has been subject to flooding and will continue to be so until adequate flood control measures are taken.

"The dams we have now are not for flood control," says Péwé. "They have miti-gated the floods, but the Salt River is still capable of flooding the entire modern flood-plain. It can and will be flooded, someday."

The Central Arizona Project originally planned to build a flood-control structure called the Orme Dam on the Salt River below the confluence of the Verde River, but objections rose from the Indian community and conservationists. The U.S. Department of the Interior is now supporting "Plan 6" as the best water-storage proposal for the Central Arizona Project.

At a cost exceeding one billion dollars, Plan 6 calls for construction of a New Waddell Dam below Lake Pleasant on the Agua Fria River. Stewart Mountain Dam, below Saguaro Lake on the Salt, would be modified to improve its safety, and Roosevelt Dam would be raised seventy feet, more than doubling its storage capacity. The Plan provides for construction of a new structure, the Cliff Dam, on (LEFT) Over 4000 acres of the planned forty-mile-long Rio Salado Project are committed to recreation. There are plans for lakes and ponds, open fields and wooded groves, hiking trails and playing fields, golf courses and camping areas. Water-related sports are part of the mix. High-quality industrial, commercial, office, resort, and residential development will occupy an additional 4330 acres. Illustration courtesy Rio Salado Development District.

the Verde between the Bartlett and Horseshoe reservoirs.

So far, the government has approved Plan 6 except for the Cliff Dam, which awaits further environmental studies. Opponents of the Central Arizona Project fear the dam will interfere with breeding grounds of about twenty bald eagles that nest in the area. However, construction at the New Waddell, Stewart, and Roosevelt sites is scheduled to begin immediately upon the resolution of financing questions.

Plan 6 will reduce the flow of water in the Salt as it passes through Phoenix to a manageable rate. But once we have the water out of the riverbed, where will we get the water to put in the lakes and streams that form Rio Salado's backbone? The project will seek to use water that is not suitable for domestic needs. Poor-quality groundwater will be used in the early years of the project with a shift to treated wastewater in later years. Outspoken critic Carolina Butler, a leader of Concerned Citizens on the Rio Salado Project, regards an artificial river and the greening of the river bottom with bermuda grass as a costly waste of water. "What is wrong with a mesquite thicket?" she asks. "Grassy parks require water, mowing, and maintenance. This is a big rip-off dollar-wise."

The Rio Salado master plan, developed by the Massachusetts-based planning firm Carr, Lynch Associates, outlines combined use of unpotable groundwater, plus surface water released from upstream Central Arizona Project dams, treated effluent, and other groundwater. District Director Tim Bray says the lakes will serve as groundwater recharge basins, from which water will percolate back down to sub-surface supplies.

Bray admits Rio Salado's price tag, not including the dams, will come to 998 million dollars, conservatively estimated; but he insists the project will pay for itself. "Over the first fifty years," he says, "new public revenues from employment, sales, and property taxes will exceed five billion dollars."

The investment in the dams, he believes, will repay itself in bridges that do not have to be rebuilt every few years, airport runways that will not be inundated periodically, and property that will not be damaged every time substantial rains occur. A Valley National Bank study completed in June, 1983, forecasts total new property taxes will surpass two and two-tenths billion dollars over fifty years. Income tax from the new jobs will generate another one and four-tenths billion.

But there are still other costs to be considered...and some of them cannot be predicted.

The Rio Salado Development District proposes to underwrite the project with tax increment financing. By this system, which twenty-six other states are already using, the assessed value of property within the project is determined. Taxing agencies-cities and school districts, for example-would levy taxes based only on property values established at the project's beginning. Meanwhile, the Rio Salado Development District would sell bonds to finance the project, attracting new development that would improve land values and generate new property taxes. These additional taxes-beyond those based on the original valuation-would go to the District to pay off the bonds and finance the project's public parks, streams, lakes, and recreational facilities.

Tax increment financing will require a change in Arizona's constitution. Last spring, legislators delayed consideration of the plan until 1985 when unexpectedly strong opposition arose and legislators delayed consideration of an amendment until 1985.

A county-wide property tax levy of up to twenty-five cents per $100 assessed valuation has been proposed to pay for start-up costs during the early years of the project and until tax increment financing can begin to generate revenues.

Phoenix businessman Bill Schulz has worked on the project since 1972. Schulz proposes a land exchange program in place of tax increment financing. Simply, a private business run by businessmen for the public sets up a trust which acquires tracts of state land, then trades land of equal value for riverbed land. This plan, Schulz believes, would allow Rio Salado to acquire the land it needs in about five years without tax increases.

Complicated as financing problems are-and they get stickier than we have room to describe-the social and political ramifications make them look simple. South Phoenix residents, already the unhappy subjects of two enforced moves (once for a freeway and once again when the city decided an entire neighborhood should transfer itself away from the air-port), view Rio Salado plans with alarm and suspicion.

Rio Salado District Chairman Jim Pederson has asked for direct input from members of the community near the river to prevent severe impact on South Phoenix. Fernando Ruiz, a member of the South Phoenix Citizens Advisory Committee on Rio Salado, says "People want to be included in the process. We found five basic concerns: relocation, rehabilitation, jobs, representation, and taxation."