Arizona continues pressing its case for manageable Colorado River water supply cuts over the next two years even as it protests that a new federal framework for protecting the river unfairly targets the state
for unacceptable losses in the longer term.
U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Arizona, called the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s new 10-year river framework — one that allows for taking a large majority of the state’s river allocation if drought conditions worsen over the coming decade — “a total failure of leadership.” State officials remain hopeful that the agency will accept their offer of giving up a more modest 27% for at least the first two years plus voluntary conservation measures, but negotiations are ongoing.
The state’s preferred short-term plan reflects an offer it made with its Lower Basin partners in California and Nevada — the states that draw water from the troubled storage bank in Lake Mead — surrendering at least 1.6 million acre-feet of the 7.5 million acre-feet they used before drought imposed a ratcheting up of restrictions over the past decade.
The new federal framework includes that possibility, but also allows for up to 3 million in Lower Basin cuts when conditions require it. In any case, Arizona would be hit hardest because its Central Arizona Project has a relatively low legal priority, a condition that accompanied its congressional approval in 1968 when the river routinely flowed substantially more water.
Stanton and others who gathered at the Phoenix Zoo for an Arizona Forward-sponsored discussion of the state’s water future said burdening Arizona so dramatically would be unacceptable when the four states upstream of Arizona don’t face similar federally imposed cuts.
“Solving this water crisis for the long term demands a fair, workable, basin-wide solution where every state in the region has skin in the game,” Stanton said. “Instead, the federal government is taking aim at Arizona and the Lower Basin states.”
Will river cutbacks lead to lawsuits over water?
But Stanton and others who spoke at the forum said Arizona has arguably done the most to prepare, storing well over a year’s worth of the state’s former river allocation underground to be retrieved by central Arizona cities when needed. Salt River Project opened a 3.6-mile pipeline in July to help move some of that water where it’s needed and to allow its own system to draw on other wells when the Salt and Verde rivers experience dry years like this one.
Arizona and the Lower Basin will bear the only mandatory restrictions in the federal plan because that’s the region in which Reclamation and its boss, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, have explicit authority to reduce flows out of Glen Canyon and Hoover dams. The three states have tried for several years to persuade Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico to agree to mandatory cuts, but those states say they already suffer from poor snowpack and cannot conserve water that nature doesn’t provide them.
The conflict may yet lead to a lawsuit among the states or their water users and tribes, but for now the focus remains on minimizing the harm from the first of five two-year water-saving programs that Reclamation intends to impose under the new plan.
The bureau released its 10-year plan on July 15, effectively describing the range of cuts possible in the worst years during that decade. But at the time of Stanton’s appearance in Phoenix on Aug. 5, the government had yet to define the actual reductions it would impose on Arizona, California and Nevada during the first two years of the plan. State officials initially had expected that information by Aug. 3, but now said it could come any day. It's needed this summer to replace dam-operating guidelines that expire this fall.
Meanwhile, Arizona Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke said his team continued to negotiate with federal decision makers and the other six states in the watershed. He told The Arizona Republic that any effort to impose the plan’s largest allowable reduction of 3 million acre-feet would require consultation with the states and likely a renewed discussion with Arizona and its Lower Basin partners demanding cuts from the Upper Basin and the use of water from upstream reservoirs such as Flaming Gorge.
Given the relatively junior legal priority of much of Arizona’s share of the river, a cut of such a size could eliminate nearly 75% of the state’s entitlement, Buschatzke said. It could cut off Central Arizona Project deliveries to the Phoenix and Tucson areas and even “touch” farmers with older rights along the river near Yuma, he said.
“We’d certainly have to decide what legal avenues are open to us,” Buschatzke said. He would not say what circumstances might cause Arizona to sue, though the state has established a fund and hired a law firm for that possibility.
While that level of hardship seems unlikely during the first two years, the fact that the federal plan allows for it in future dry years has all Arizona water managers on high alert.
“If they wanted to unite Arizona, they certainly have,” CAP General Manager Brenda Burman said.
Buschatzke told reporters that the cuts the federal government seeks to impose over the next couple of years are unlikely to lead to urban rationing or skipping showers. The question is whether Reclamation really would reach for the larger cuts that it has signaled could be possible later in the decade-long framework it announced in July. The state and its cities should continue to diversify water sources, including with wastewater recycling projects, to prepare for that possibility, Buschatzke said.
Water projects will raise consumer costs
Arizona Forward, a nonpartisan environmental and economic sustainability cooperative, intended the breakfast meeting not just as an update on the river crisis but as a conversation about how Arizona is working to shore up its water future despite the prospect of a diminished supply from the Colorado.
Buschatzke joined partners from the Central Arizona Project, Salt River Project and Environmental Defense Fund in assuring Arizonans that they are forging new deals and new infrastructure to keep taps flowing.
It will cost residents on their monthly water bills, though, they warned.
Some cities have started importing water from the Harquahala Valley, a groundwater basin west of Phoenix that the Arizona Legislature set aside for the purpose decades ago, and more are expected to draw from it in the future.
Another upgrade that SRP and CAP are working on jointly is a connection between their canals, allowing either Colorado River or Salt-Verde water to move where it’s needed but hasn’t previously been available. And SRP is planning to build a new Bartlett Dam downstream of the existing one to increase storage north of Phoenix, a prospect that would allow cities to invest in larger local supplies to offset losses from the Colorado.
“At SRP, we right now are really busy tuning up our infrastructure so that we can do everything we can to wring every drop of water out of the systems, provide resiliency, reliability (and) flexibility with those systems,” said Leslie Meyers, the utility’s associate general manager and water resources chief.
Both Meyers and Burman cautioned that these investments aren’t as simple as they sound. For instance, the Colorado River water that CAP pumps to the cities is relatively clean and requires less purification in municipal treatment plants than what comes out of some groundwater basins or down the Salt River.
“We don’t call it the Salt River for nothing,” Meyers said.
Blending these waters might require cities to upgrade their treatment plants. Burman acknowledged that customers won't like it, but said she hopes they understand it is the price of continued water security.
The Environmental Defense Fund's Arizona water program director, Christopher Kuzdas, said Arizona communities need to protect their groundwater, in addition to the projects that the state is considering to import new water or recycle existing water. Much of the state's rural groundwater in particular is unprotected, and Kuzdas said researchers at Arizona State University have found that the Colorado River Basin has depleted enough groundwater over 20 years to fill Lake Mead.
The state can't expect the federal government to intervene on the scale that it did when it built the CAP, Kuzdas said.
"This time, the federal government is not coming to the rescue with a multibillion-dollar canal," he said.
Buschatzke said the state is looking to swap water with San Diego County, which has excess capacity because of a desalination plant it built on the coast. Arizona and others could pay San Diego to use that supply to its fullest and receive some of its Colorado River water in exchange. Other possibilities include a long-discussed desalination plant south of Arizona on the coast of Mexico’s Gulf of California.
“We do know that we are going to need to find new supplies,” Burman said. “Prices are going to go up. We know that.”
Brandon Loomis covers environmental and climate issues for The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. Reach him at brandon.loomis@arizonarepublic.com.
Environmental coverage on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona pushes for smaller Colorado River cuts as feds finalize plan
