Water and the Desert Dweller, Part Two

From time to time, Arizona Highways focuses on a subject of perennial interest to the people of our generally arid state: our present and future supply of water. In January, 1987, we published an article titled "Water and the Desert Dweller." Here is a sequel to that report. - M.W.

In New England in 1897, wrote an editor of The Hartford Courant, "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it."

In Arizona in 1988, everybody talks about water. Fortunately, a good many people are also doing something about it. For much of Arizona is a desert, and (said a Phoenix native to me recently) "We ought to live as if we know that. Water is our most valuable resource, and we are wasting it."

She is right, of course-about our desert environment and about waste, especially in the "oasis" communities of Maricopa County long accustomed to the seemingly abundant water visible in the Salt River Project's reservoirs and canals. Actually, that supply of surface water is heavily supplemented by pumping from wells, and has been for many years. It was the alarm-ing overdraft of underground reserves that Finally led to the passage of a comprehensive groundwater code by the Arizona Legislature in June, 1980.

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(PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 38 AND 39) At the southern edge of the Phoenix metropolitan area, the residential development of Sun Lakes contrasts sharply with adjacent farmland still under cultivation. Such transformation of the Salt River Valley landscape is an ongoing reality as thousands of new residents continue to stream into Arizona. (INSET, PAGE 38) At the Planet Ranch in western Arizona, pumped groundwater irrigates 4,000 acres of alfalfa. The ranch has been purchased by the City of Scottsdale, about 150 miles away, for its water rights; but the city must maintain the ranch's production in order to protect those rights for the future. (ABOVE) Rep. Sterling Ridge sponsored legislation promoting the recharging of underground aquifers. FRED GRIFFIN (OPPOSITE PAGE) Sen. John Hays has pursued state regulation of developers' installation of artificial lakes.

Public officials and others concerned with planning for Arizona's water future are acutely conscious of these three factors:

In light of these and such related considerations as an economy largely dependent on growth and development, prudence obviously dictates improved management of our water supply and consumption if we are not to face critical shortages in the future. Planners, therefore, are attempting to look 50 to 100 years ahead and anticipate both supply and demand.

Passage of the Groundwater Management Act of 1980 was a major achievement in response to that challenge. Additional legislative decisions to undertake a program of recharging of underground aquifers, sponsored by Rep. Sterling Ridge, and to regulate installation of artificial lakes by real estate developers, sponsored by Sen. John Hays, have been more recent steps.

In 1986 the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association told Hays and Ridge, then cochairmen of the Legislature's Joint Regional Water Planning Study Committee, that the state can significantly improve both "supply management" (through augmentation) and "demand management" (through more effective conservation). Augmentation proposals include artificial groundwater recharge, underground storage, increased use of treated effluent, reregulation of dams, weather modification, and watershed management. Conservation methods could include not only intensified educational campaigns and household water-saving systems but also much more stringent measures. Tucson, for example-at present still entirely dependent on underground sources for its water supply-continues to set an impressive example for the rest of Arizona with a vigorous and effective conservation program that has included steep rate hikes for municipal water, banning of high-wateruse plants in landscaping, and other measures.

Tucson, Phoenix, and several other Arizona communities have embraced the concept of "xeriscaping," i.e., landscaping with low-water-use plants. This does not mean desert landscaping limited to cactus and rock. The cities' examples show quite verdant landscape designs that nevertheless use little water; many of the suggested plants are natives of Australia, including several varieties of eucalyptus.

Arizona's major sources of water are the Verde, Salt, Gila, and Colorado rivers and the state's vast subterranean aquifers. An extensive system of dams, reservoirs, and canals collects and distributes the surface water; wells, some very deep, tap the underground supplies.

As indicated before, there has been a general lowering of groundwater levels because of heavy pumping. A popular conception, however, of a single statewide subsurface water table whose level has been steadily falling is an oversimplification. Arizona's underground structure is highly compartmentalized; various geological formations act as obstructions that can limit both lateral and vertical flow of water, so great differences exist from one locale to another in the depth to the underground water level.

One dramatic example lies within the Salt River Valley itself. Southeast of Phoenix, withdrawal of groundwater has caused noticeable subsidence at certain places, marked by fissures and cracks in the valley floor. Yet not far downstream, just west of Phoenix, the land has been waterlogged off and on for the last 60 years, and excess subsurface water is now being pumped and discharged into the Gila River below its confluence with the Salt to permit crops to grow properly.

The main supplier of water for the Phoenix metropolitan area is the Salt River Project, with its reservoirs on the Salt and Verde rivers. This system is increasingly supplemented by recycled water: treated effluent from both public and private wastewater treatment plants, suitable for non-potable requirements such as irrigation of golf courses and certain agricultural crops as well as cooling of the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Plant.

A new major supply of surface water became available in 1986 with the arrival in the Phoenix area of the long-awaited Central Arizona Project deliveries from the Colorado River. The project is now operating at about 20 percent capacity, bringing water to seven agricultural districts and four cities (Glendale, Phoenix, Scottsdale, and Mesa). The deliveries will increase as additional users complete their distribution facilities. Extension of the CAP aqueduct to Tucson is expected to be completed in 1991.

The Phoenix metropolitan area's total surface water supply from these several sources-SRP reservoirs, CAP aqueduct, and effluent-treatment plants, and exclud-ing underground aquifers is anticipated to reach approximately 1.8 million acre-feet of water a year by the mid-1990s, according to attorney Bill Stephens, a former majority leader of the state House of Representatives and a member of the study commission that drafted the state's groundwater code. That's enough water to supply an urban population of more than eight million people at a rate of 200 gallons per person a day.

The present population of Maricopa County is slightly more than two million.

At present, Stephens points out, 70 per cent of Arizona's water goes to agricultural use. True, each year more and more farm-land near cities is transformed into residential subdivisions, shopping centers, and administrative or industrial parks. Elsewhere, however, new farmland continues to be developed. The Agricultural Statistics Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that the amount of irrigated

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(ABOVE) Billed as the home of the world's tallest fountain, the development of Fountain Hills on the northeastern fringe of the Phoenix area advertised a lakeshore environment in the midst of the desert. Recent legislation now regulates creation of such artificial lakes.

(OPPOSITE PAGE) Theodore Roosevelt Dam and Lake (pictured) and a series of smaller reservoirs of the Salt River Project store surface water from Arizona highlands for channeling to Phoenix (INSET) and its suburbs. SRP water is supplemented by wells and only recently by the Central Arizona Project aqueduct from the Colorado River.

But farmland in Arizona has remained stable at approximately 1.1 million acres for the last 30 years.

But because of selective planting and technological advances, the areas of new cultivation often use comparatively less water. In many cases the fields being taken out of farming had been planted to highwater-demand crops such as cotton and alfalfa. That change-combined with the fact that some urban areas require less water after development than they did as farmland-can result in a reduction in the aggregate water demand.

Despite increasing urbanization, no one expects Arizona agriculture to phase out entirely, even in the 50to 100-year scenario planners project. It will certainly continue to change as irrigation practices are improved and water use becomes more efficient. As this happens, more water will be released for urban purposes.

Since our last water report in January, 1987, there have been several significant developments.

In 1987 the Arizona Legislature enacted a law regulating the installation of artificial lakes by developers. The previous year a bill addressing the same subject was defeated. When Senator Hays reintroduced his bill, he negotiated amendments to resolve specific misgivings of earlier opponents including Representative Ridgeand the bill passed easily.

Under the provisions of the 1987 law, most new artificial bodies of water in four geographical areas the vicinities of Phoenix, Tucson, Casa Grande, and Prescottwill be limited in size to that of an Olympic-scale swimming pool, unless filled with treated effluent, storm run-off, poor-quality water, water decontaminated of toxic chemicals, or water pumped out of a waterlogged area. Exempt are golf course and public recreation lakes, one-acre centerpiece pools at resorts, and lakes scheduled to be filled with effluent within five years after construction. (Golf course water use was already restricted under the Groundwater Management Plan for 1980-90.) In the realm of underground recharge, a project on the Rillito River at Tucson is now under construction. It involves installation of floodgates on the Rillito to be activated by sensors along the river's tributaries that will detect rainfall, read water levels, and recognize pollutants. The sensors will provide information to computers, which will decide when to close the floodgates and trap water so that it can be absorbed into the highly permeable riverbed. The riverbanks and channel will be improved for recreational use during those times actually most of the year-when the river is dry.

In Maricopa County, the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association has identified 13 sites for possible recharge projects. Some are gravity settling basins; some involve injection wells where water can be forced into aquifers below ground. Mesa, among other cities, is actively pursuing a recharge project. Meanwhile, feasibility studies and other research into techniques, rates of recharge, suitability of terrain, and cost effectiveness are increasing. Progress has been made, too, in various water-saving technologies and in their

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application. Drip irrigation, for example, has been highly refined and not only saves significant amounts of water but also can result in some improvement in crop yield. In many cases, however, savings in water costs are not sufficient to justify the instal-lation costs, and crop yield increase is usu-ally not enough to make the difference.

Laser leveling of fields, however, is another matter. Its cost is relatively modest, and it can reduce water use by 30 percent.

Better yet, it tends to improve crop yield as well, particularly at the ends of rows.

One of the most significant aspects of technology in terms of future water supply is efficient wastewater treatment. Of the several anticipated future supplies of usable water, treated effluent is the only one that will automatically increase in quantity as population increases.

Tucson plans to use treated effluent as one of its primary sources to meet non-potable water needs over the next century. In 1990, its planners expect the city to use about 50,000 acre-feet of effluent; in 2090, five times that much, or 250,000. By comparison, Tucson's CAP allotment is 159,795 acre-feet a year; and the city counts on obtaining about 70,000 to 90,000 acre-feet through natural recharge. Thus effluent will eventually become Tucson's major source of water.

Two imponderables, the ultimate effects of which cannot even be guessed at this point, plague Arizona water planners.

One is the Gila River Adjudication, a court procedure mandated by the Legislature in 1979 to establish the surface water rights of every landowner in the state. Without question the longest and most complex action ever undertaken in an Arizona court, the tedious and time-consuming process may not be completed until the end of the century. Its potential impact is very great because of the possible changes that may occur in priorities of water allocations among the major users.

The other complication is a new rivalry rapidly developing between the state's metropolitan cities and rural communities as a result of the recent trend of cities to buy large ranches or other rural tracts for the water rights that attach to that land. The cities intend, of course, to import the water at some future time when it will be need-ed. Seeing their own development threat-ened by this procedure, rural communi-ties are looking for ways to block the cities' efforts.

Thus the subject of water continues to give Arizonans plenty to think about and talk about. On some points the experts disagree. But on several essentials they are in solid accord: Disciplined conservation of our limited water resources.

Careful statewide management of those resources.

Full utilization of our one increasing water resource treated effluent Resolution of legal issues-notably the Gila adjudication and the urban vs. rural water-rights-transfer dispute-as prompt-ly and equitably as possible.

Careful planning of water strategy-not only for the coming decades but for the next century.