Water and the Desert Dweller

(RIGHT) Bureau of Land Management engineer Vern Bloom examines expanding fissures in the desert east of Phoenix. The huge cracks increasingly appear in areas of severe groundwater depletion. (FAR RIGHT) Water conservationists point out that residential developments featuring artificial lakes, streams, and waterfalls account for the loss of millions of gallons of water each year through evaporation. Under the Groundwater Management Act, use of fresh water for such lakes may be banned after this year. At Highways' press time, Phoenix was considering its own restrictive ordinance.

Much of Arizona is arid landdusty tan and sunbaked, with little rainfall. Where concentrated greenery appears, at least in the southern desert sections, it usually is due to irrigation drawn from reservoirs or deep wells tapping underground water. As a result of heavy demands upon the ancient sources of deep-lying water, major cracks have opened in the ground in recent years, caused by land subsidencethe reproach of Nature for our careless overdrafting of this precious resource. Coincidentally, one of these areas in which earth cracks have appeared is only forty miles southeast of Phoenix's Pueblo Grande Museum, which encompasses a Hohokam ruin thought to have been occupied from 200 B.C. to A.D. 1400. The Hohokam people's disappearance, scientists infer from tree-ring data, came about after a drought that may have lasted fifty years-one of many fairly severe drought cycles that have occurred in Arizona's past. It is this record that nags scientists and responsible public officials. There were at most only a few thousand Hohokam Indians living in the Salt River Valley, while today the population of Phoenix and its burgeoning suburbs totals more than two million. "As a boy growing up in northern Arizona," Congressman Morris K. Udall has written, "I remember older men [saying that] Arizona probably would never run short of water, and even in the event that should happen, there was plenty in the Colorado River. If all else failed, we could always bring water in from Oregon and Washington. "Today, we see cracks in the earth because our underground water supplies are being used faster than they are being replenished. With the completion of the Central Arizona Project, the Colorado River will deliver about all the water it

(LEFT) The Phoenix area's water needs are largely provided by Verde and Salt river reservoirs. At Granite Reef Dam, the water is fed into canals leading to the cities and farms of the Valley of the Sun.

(BELOW) Farmers currently irrigating crops with groundwater will be affected by the new law which requires the Arizona Department of Water Resources to file a water management plan every ten years.

legislators alike. It prohibited cities and private companies from using groundwater to establish artificial lakes larger than 12,300 square feet-the size of an Olympic swimming pool-after 1987. As developers rushed to file for permits before the 1987 deadline, or got ready to file for extensions, it became apparent that something would have to be done. By early 1986, more than 2000 acres of lakes were planned or already constructed in the Phoenix area. Hydrologists estimated that each acre of lake loses about two million gallons of water to evaporation in a year. The loss from 2000 acres would supply the daily needs of some 70,000 people, they said.

A Prescott-area legislator, Senator John Hays, tried to bring a reasonable compromise to the lake picture by introducing a bill that would prohibit the use of any type of water except sewage-treatment plant effluent for filling lakes, ponds, lagoons, or swimming pools larger than Olympic size.

Real estate lobbyists descended on the legislature like a cloud of locusts, contending that water conservation was a moot point because the Central Arizona Project aqueduct would supply as much water as Arizona needed. The lobbyists also claimed artificial lakes would not waste water but instead be an appropriate method of water conservation as they evaporate less water than is used when the same amount of land is planted with cotton or alfalfa.

Adding irony to the whole concept of water-conscious construction was a feature in Professional Builder magazine in which a Chandler development, The Springs, was chosen one of the seventeen best new home projects in the nation. Editors focused on the water features, saying in their review: "The sound and sight of...water pervades the project, which is highlighted by illuminated waterfalls and bubbling streams."

Although Senator Hays offered several further compromises, his bill was defeated. Governor Bruce Babbitt mentioned the possibility of a special legislative session to deal specifically with the lakes bill. Senator Hays vowed to continue his fight, telling this writer, "I am going to push that bill, and if I'm not here, someone else will. This is a bill whose time has definitely come."

Meanwhile, an effort to make treated sewage effluent more widely available was undertaken by home builder John F. Long. He sued Phoenix and several other cities in the Salt River Valley for selling effluent illegally and too cheaply, he charged for the cooling system at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Plant west of Phoenix. If Long's suit should be successful, effluent could then become more comfortably can. Oregon and Washington will not likely come to our aid.

"...We know that today our water supply is limited, that we must care for what we have, that there are no easy or simple solutions to our water problems.

"At the same time," Udall concluded, "we have made huge progress in the way we think about water, in our efforts to conserve it [and] manage it, and in our Care not to pollute it. We have made enormous steps in the right direction."

One of those "enormous steps" was the Arizona Legislature's passage of the Groundwater Management Act of 1980, requiring all groundwater users-municipalities, irrigation districts, farmers, and industries to conserve. Every ten years, the Arizona Department of Water Resources must adopt increasingly stringent conservation requirements contained in management plans. Although well accepted overall, the initial management plan contained one provision that promptly developed into a headache for water conservationists and

(LEFT) The master-planned community of La Paloma on Tucson's north side uses treated effluent purchased from the city to irrigate its 790-acre complex and golf course. (BELOW) La Paloma's agronomist, Kent Berry, oversees a complicated computerrun system of sprinkler and drip irrigation to keep the grounds and golf course green.

available for use at parks and golf courses. But presumably that would also mean higher electric rates to offset an estimated ten-fold increase in the cost of effluent to the plant. One of the primary goals of Arizona's new groundwater code is to control the severe overdraft of groundwater currently taking place in many parts of the state. Water conservation will play an important role in Arizona's effort to reduce dependence on groundwater. Many Arizona communities are in the process of developing programs to comply with mandatory conservation requirements established under the groundwater law. These conservation programs have resulted in some examples of downright ingenuity-especially in Tucson, where officials long have been concerned about future water supplies. Tucson, a community of nearly half a million people (including the suburbs), is one of the few metropolises in the United States that depends entirely on underground sources for water. Tucson officials literally started at the grass roots with their conservation program. County ordinances put commercial and industrial property owners on notice to reduce the size of lawn plantings and restrict lawns to areas close enough to the buildings to help keep them cool. Other less thirsty ground covers were to be planted farther away. Trees, too, received attention. They were to be positioned to provide shade and watered with drip irrigation only. Tucson homeowners also are urged to follow these landscape guidelines and take other conservation actions from plans developed by the Southern Arizona Water Resources Association (SAWARA).

To help promote public understanding and cooperation, a water conservation demonstration home was retrofitted from a city-owned house in northwest-central Tucson called Casa del Agua (House of the Water). It was built with in-kind services provided through the Southern Arizona Homebuilders Association and SAWARA and financial support from the City of Tucson, Pima County, Metropolitan Energy Commission, and the Arizona Department of Water Resources.

The Casa illustrates how to capture rainwater with roof gutters and channel it into cisterns or ponds where it is pumped to the evaporative cooler and toilets.

The demonstration house also diverts "gray water" from basins, showers, dishwashers, and washing machines into special holding tanks containing water hyacinths. The water is filtered through the plants and sand and pumped out to drip-irrigate grass and shrubs. An attached solar greenhouse, designed by plant scientists at the University of Arizona, can be used to grow food with wastewater.

The per capita water use is forty gallons per day, less than one-third that of the typical Tucson residence. Along with its provisions for experimental reuse of gray water and rainwater, it is equipped with see-through Plexiglas plumbing, low-flow toilets, and other appliances and devices.

That's not the end of it. Tucson also is planning for effective use of sewage effluent. Marybeth Carlile, executive director of SAWARA, said the city has put all four municipal golf courses on effluent and even has a pilot project to store some in a closed aquifer.

Someday, said Carlile, effluent could be used for drinking. As a matter of fact, it can be purified to that quality at this time. "But it wouldn't be politically palatable now," she said.To bring effluent to the city's northeast area, Tucson has built a ten-mile delivery system to its principal customer, La Paloma, a 790-acre master-planned community with luxury resort, golf course, and garden office complex in the Catalina Mountain foothills. With La Paloma's financial aid in the form of payment in full for its share of costs of treated effluent, the line was designed and built within a year's time. Cottonwood Properties, owner of La Paloma, was instrumental in creating an agreement with the City of Tucson and Pima County that will enable other major water users-golf courses, parks, and cemeteries-to switch to effluent. This, say Tucson's city fathers, may save twenty million gallons of potable water per day. Included in the system is a tertiary treatment plant and a two-million-gallon reservoir, in addition to the ten miles of line. Completion of the system coincided with the construction of the community's centerpiece: a twenty-seven hole championship golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus.

To avoid overuse of effluent at La Paloma, only about half the amount of grass used on traditional golf courses has been planted. Native low-water-use vegetation frames the fairways.

Kent L. Berry, agronomist and golf course superintendent, reports that drip irrigation, which is being used extensively on plantings at the resort, allows plants to acclimate within a year to the natural cycle of rainfall and become desert plants. Effluent usage also provides a fertilizer effect with its nitrogen content. The turbidity of the effluent has been reduced to the level just below the clarity and quality of drinking water.

In 1991, when Tucson expects to receive its share of Colorado River water via the Central Arizona Project canal (the project already is delivering water to the Phoenix area), the city expects to reduce its use of well water by about forty-eight percent.

To carry the vital message of water conservation into the minds of today's schoolchildren, the next generation of water users, Tucson teachers have begun courses in elementary and secondary schools that encompass the entire mechanism of water generation from weather cycles to underground aquifers. It's an echo of driver-safety training, which develops a reflective behavior that endures for a lifetime, Carlile points out.

Two hundred miles to the north, mile-high Prescott has adopted water conserving methods. The city obtains ninety percent of its water from wells twenty miles away in Chino Valley, and the rest from reservoirs. In 1982 the city's conservation code reduced the size of toilet tanks and the flow rate of shower heads and faucets. The city also gave out water conservation kits that included dye to detect toilet leaks. Prescott long has been concerned about water conservation because its reservoir capacity has been down to the emergency level several times in past years.

At Phoenix, ninety-five miles away and 1080 feet above sea level, water arrives by canal from the Salt and Verde rivers' reservoirs to the northeast. This system supplies about two-thirds of the water used in the area. The rest is drawn from underground wells. Even though, when compared with other desert cities, Phoenix today has an adequate water supply, municipal officials nevertheless are trying to discourage profligate attitudes.

Recently, Phoenix Mayor Terry Goddard brought industrial executives to a breakfast meeting during which no water was served-as a promotional device to help in urging them to join a program of water conservation.

Industries use four percent of the water consumed each year in Phoenix-3.2 billion gallons. "If we can conserve on a voluntary basis, this will have an important effect on our future," the mayor said. Then he added, "I shudder to think we would have to go to mandatory conservation at some point."

Presently under way is another program designed to reduce Phoenix water consumption, which now averages 267 gal lons per person per day-compared with 148 gallons in Tucson. James P. Burke, water conservation analyst for the City of Phoenix Water and Wastewater Department, said the most prevalent misuse is overwatering of lawns and plants. Many Phoenix residents are quite careless about turning off hoses or underground sprinkler systems. Others, who utilize flood irrigation, sometimes let the water flow in their yards until it spills over into the streets and is lost down the drains.

Several nurserymen joined Burke in his estimate that lawn grass usually needs to be watered only about fifteen minutes twice a week, rather than half an hour to an hour, depending upon the irrigation system used. Experiments also show that saturating the earth around ground cover plants is wasteful.

Another step in the program has been enlistment of aid from the Arizona Nurserymen's Association to encourage landscaping with native plants that are hardy, drought-resistant, and require little maintenance. At most Arizona nurseries these are identified with blue tags.

Conservation reminders are mailed to Phoenix homeowners with their water bills. The city also is launching watersaving training of children at grade-school level, and will encourage industries to schedule conservation seminars for employees.

Conservation of water resources extends to the Arizona State Parks System, which is joining the drip-irrigation movement. Tim Brand, an area planner for the State Parks System, said the agency's intention "is to get away from two-gallon-perminute bubblers in favor of drip emitters. "You can let drip emitters run all night without having someone present. They only release about one gallon an hour. That's literally a drop in the bucket compared with bubbler systems, and it cuts down on the need for personnel, too. If a bubbler went bad, it could waste a lot of water in only thirty or forty minutes."

Brand said park officials hope to utilize more and more effluent, but that many of the smaller parks would not use enough to make it worthwhile. Effluent is being used at Pittsburg Point near Lake Havasu City, however, for watering a golfcourse there.

Although municipalities and other political subdivisions are getting into the water conservation act, albeit slowly in some cases, the private sector generally seems to be following at a slower pace.

One exception, however, is Desert Highlands, an 850-acre master-planned development in northeast Scottsdale, on the south slope of Pinnacle Peak. Here, the natural desert vegetation is disturbed as little as possible, and water-loving imported plants are banned.

Although the development will use some water from the City of Scottsdale, a wastewater treatment plant on the premises already supplies effluent for much of the irrigation for the eighty acres of fairways. Eventually, when home construction is completed, effluent is expected to fulfill all irrigation needs.

The economy in water use on the Desert Highlands fairways has resulted in new golf course regulations in Scottsdale. When officials learned that the course uses only about 600,000 gallons per year-about half that needed for a standard 120-acre links-a size limit of eighty acres was set on fairways for future golf courses in the area.

Lowell True, Maricopa County director for the University of Arizona Extension Service, reports a "definite trend" toward desert-type plantings among homeowners, but less so in industrial parks.

(FAR LEFT) The Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix offers popular classes on gardening with drip irrigation systems. (LEFT) The University of Arizona's Arid Land Studies program is experimenting with the use of trapped rainwater to irrigate a parched land. JACK DYKINGA (BELOW) Arizona municipalities are increasingly turning to natural desert landscaping for street medians in an effort to cut down on water consumption and maintenance.

Information picture is new legislation aimed at recharging aquifers with surplus water. Although further steps are needed to authorize and fund specific projects, counties and flood control districts (for example) can recharge underground water sources in various ways. Generally, it means simply diverting the water over aquifers in streambeds or large shallow basins. More sophisticated methods in clude using recharge pits and putting water back into wells by injection as well as by gravity. The biggest project planned so far is in the Butler Valley southeast of Parker. There, more than three billion gallons of surplus Colorado River water would be recharged into a closed aquifer. This water would be stored by the Cen tral Arizona Water Conservation District against a time when a devastating drought might dry up other sources such as snow and rain. The water could then be pumped back into the Central Arizona Project canal and sent to Phoenix and Tucson. For the last two years, flow along the Colorado River has been the highest in forty years, because of unusually heavy snows in the Rocky Mountains. Moreover, Arizona's full allocation from the river is not yet being used because the aqueduct to Tucson will not be completed until the year 1991. Says Bill Wheeler, executive director of the Central Arizona Project Association, “It makes me nervous to think of all that surplus floodwater from the Colorado pouring out into the Sea of Cortes.” Recharging also is planned for several streambeds in central Arizona, from the 1.5 million acre-feet allotted per year to Maricopa, Pinal, and Pima counties. It took the Great Petroleum Manipulation of 1973 to teach Americans to conserve on gasoline and build more fuel-efficient cars. Now public officials and scientists are hoping Mother Nature won't have to pull off a Great Water Manip ulation to convince Arizonans to conserve that precious resource. True said gardeners are choosing more and more native Arizona plants and also many from Australia, much of which has a similar climate. Eucalyptus trees-Austra lian natives and longtime favorites in the desert portions of Arizona-are becoming even more popular, he said. Other low-water-use plants increasingly selected are cassia shrubs, Mexican bird of para dise, sage, and dwarf oleander. Meanwhile, horticulturists are carefully observing experimental plantings at Boyce Thomp son Southwestern Arboretum near Super ior, the Desert Botanical Garden at Phoenix, and the University of Arizona at Tucson. William R. Feldman, managing director at Boyce Thompson, is skeptical about any major moves toward water conserva tion among the general public. “I don't see any widespread organized effort at conservation. People will conserve water when they find it is economical to do so-when the water gets more expensive. “I don't think we will get people to conserve water just because it's the right thing to do. You can waste a lot of water even on desert plants. And though de mand in Phoenix is biggest for desert plants, esthetic vogue has much to do with it,” Feldman added. One of the most hopeful and innovative developments in the water conservation science and medical writer for The Phoenix Gazette, Dennis Farrell now free-lances full-time in Phoenix.

Selected Reading

Killing the Hidden Waters, by Charles Bowden. University of Texas Press, Austin, 1977. Saving Water in a Desert City, by William E. Martin. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1984. Water Conservation in Landscape Design and Management, by Gary O. Robinette. Van Nostrand and Reinhold, New York, 1984.