5/27/2009 11:14:00 AM PV fighting for its own share of water
The Town of Prescott Valley and the City of Prescott will host a bus tour to inform and educate citizens on the Big Chino Water Ranch Project on Monday, June 1, from 7:30 a.m. to noon. The ticket cost is $20 and covers the tour bus administration fees and fuel.
Purchase tickets at the Prescott Valley Civic Center, 7501 E. Civic Circle at the second floor cashier's desk, or at the Prescott City Hall, 201 S. Cortez, by Wednesday, May 27, to ensure a seat. Future tours will be scheduled based on demand.
Participants will ride in air-conditioned comfort aboard a Prescott Transit Authority bus complete with ADA compatible facilities. The tour will include several stops along the way to the ranch located about 18 miles northwest of Paulden.
Please bring water, sunscreen and a hat. Extra water and light refreshments will be available. Feel free to bring binoculars and your questions.
By Cheryl Hartz Reporter
An old adage states: you never want to drink the water until the well runs dry.
But for years, officials in Prescott Valley and Prescott have planned for an assured water supply so quad-city area residents never go thirsty in this desert state.
"Every community in the State of Arizona constantly is seeking to expand its water portfolio," said Prescott Valley Town Manager Larry Tarkowski. "It is a full-time job and goes back to the 1860s. It is our responsibility to make sure we are getting water for future generations. Their choices shouldn't be driven by a lack of that resource."
Water Resources Manager John Munderloh added, "It takes decades of lead time to create resources. We're doing no less."
Unfortunately, the Salt River Project people seem to want the elixir of life for Maricopa County alone, and are going to great lengths - and expense - by suing Prescott and Prescott Valley to prevent the two communities' legal access to groundwater.
The story for the fight for water actually begins in 1980, when the Arizona Legislature passed laws to create sustainable water supplies using surface and groundwater as well as water from the Colorado River, and created Active Management Areas. Central Yavapai County, including Prescott Valley and Prescott, could benefit from the Central Arizona Project (CAP), but had no practical way to access the Colorado River through the CAP canal. The legislation limited those who relied on groundwater, and in 1991 the State Legislature gave the City of Prescott the right to groundwater in the Big Chino Sub-basin in exchange for CAP water.
In 1999, the Arizona Department of Water Resources said the Prescott Active Management Area was not in "safe yield" to continue groundwater mining, and the city looked to the Big Chino aquifer to reach the mandated safe yield by 2025.
Prescott and Prescott Valley entered an intergovernmental agreement (IGA) to share costs of purchasing the Big Chino Water Ranch, 18 miles northwest of Paulden, in the Big Chino Sub-basin. They also negotiated a water rights agreement with the Yavapai Indian Tribe.
That's the extremely condensed version and also where the dispute originates.
Basically, Munderloh said, now that SRP has received its benefits, including a Yavapai Indian Water Rights settlement and Prescott's CAP allocation to one of SRP's customers, its powers-that-be don't want to live up to their part of the deal.
SRP filed a preliminary injunction in Maricopa County to block Prescott's right to transport 8,000 acre-feet into the PrAMA. When that failed because of a State statute prohibiting an entity that's not part of the PrAMA from objecting, SRP recruited three individuals residing within the PrAMA to file suit for them.
SRP also partnered with the Center for Biological Diversity. The lawsuit's claim is that pumping from the Big Chino aquifer will threaten the Verde River.
That is patently false, Munderloh indicated. The project, he said, is 20 miles away from the Upper Verde headwaters, closely monitored, can use water retired from agriculture, and more importantly, is located on the far side of a natural restriction a fine-grained playa (clay) plug forms - in effect a natural dam that controls the water level through a restricted outlet.
Because of this hydrologic characteristic, groundwater development will have little impact on the Verde River, Munderloh and other experts believe.
SRP, "a water-hoarding giant," is playing the environmental card to "win the hearts and minds of local residents," said Prescott Valley's deputy town attorney, Colleen Auer, noting that SRP has thrown in a series of topics such as climate change and endangered species that don't pertain to the water issue itself.
SRP also is challenging the constitutionality of ARS 45-555(E) giving Prescott the water rights in the first place.
"They are taking the position the groundwater we pump from 20 miles away from the upper Verde somehow contributes to their (surface) water flow," Auer said.
She noted taking a radius of 20 miles (from any water source) would cover 90 percent of the state.
Tarkowski said, "The issue that incenses me is the concept we're doing something illegal or wrong."
Auer said SRP is fighting the issue in front of Superior Court judges who have not been dealing with water issues, rather than in adjudication court, because its legal counsel can't possibly meet the standards of "clear and convincing evidence" the groundwater pumping would have any impact on surface water.
"No way on God's green earth," Auer said.
"They fully understand that State law as written would find we're 100 percent in the light," Munderloh said. "Because they can't stand the light of day, they're doing all this in the shadows. It's embarrassing to see one of the state's leading corporations engaged in this kind of activity with small-town Arizona."
Already, hearings have taken six days when they should have taken three, with two more scheduled, for June 15 and 16. Auer said she wouldn't be surprised if even more days are needed.
This court fight is much more complicated than a single article can encompass, and the Tribune will publish more information in the coming weeks.
To help local folks understand the issue, Prescott and Prescott Valley have scheduled an initial bus tour of the Big Chino Water Ranch for June 1. (See sidebar.)
Residents concerned about the water issue can contact their state legislators. See page 4 for information.
For an in-depth look at the Big Chino Water Ranch Project, visit www.protecting our waterresources.com.
Reader Comments
Posted: Saturday, May 30, 2009
Article comment by:
Future Law should err on side of common good
The current debate over the legality of the Big Chino Pipeline is rooted in contradictory water law that originated back in the 1870's, when the relationship between "surface" water and "ground" water was not adequately understood. Basically, those laws stated the following: 1. The water from springs, creeks, and rivers ("surface" water) is the property of downstream settlement that establishes first use measured by quantity of units. 2. All water under a property accessible by wells ("ground" water)is the property right of that owner. ...Therefore 1870 law, based on a lack of understanding of aquifers, created the current legal conundrum and battle between the Prescott-area cities and Salt River Project. If, as independent hydrologists describe, the Big Chino Aquifer is like a giant overflowing bathtub, and that overflow comes out as the wellspring of the Upper Verde River, then pumping 8,000 acre feet per year(?) (for starters?) will deprive SRP (who was not involved in the CAP-Big Chino Legislative water swap of 1980) of its property. Was the Arizona Legislature in violation of the law (giving someone else's water away) when it made this agreement? On the other hand, if the cities own the Big Chino Water Ranch, then they have the right to pump the water beneath it. ...So, we reach an impasse that will go to court, and in so doing will fundamentally change water law in the future. I do hope that legal and moral minds will prevail over greedy self interests in the interest of sustainability and the common good. People in Prescott, Chino Valley, and Prescott Valley need to realize that it is in our communities' best long-term interest to keep the entire Verde River ecosystem healthy and vibrant by finding other, more creative and sustainable solutions to our impending water shortages. This is not just a battle between "the little people" of the Tri-City Area and a "water-hogging" giant "corporation" SRP. This is a battle between a rare desert river ecosystem, all the communities and recreationists that enjoy it downstream, and a non-profit corporation SRP that was established over a century ago to provide then farmers and now people with water vs. for-profit land development corporations who ignore the massive and irrevocable human and environmental cost that their proposed development of the area will fabricate.
Posted: Saturday, May 30, 2009
Article comment by:
Save the Upper Verde, Save Our Community
Our area water deficit is just a local example of a global crisis: too many people and not enough water. Right now all over the world, people are fighting and in many cases killing each other for finite supplies of potable water for ever expanding populations. This siphoning and channeling of every available source does not even take into account the death it causes in the natural environment. The Big Chino pipeline is a thoroughly unimaginative, conventional, and unsustainable band-aid that will only cause future generations to suffer not only water shortages but the sub-urbanization of the area's formerly beautiful landscape. Imagine our valleys covered with houses, our air full of smog and noise pollution, an increased crime rate, and still not enough water. Then imagine all of this without the rare jewell of the Upper Verde River flowing as it once did. These claims of a clay plug protecting the Verde aquifer are new to me and I suspect fabrications of "experts" in the back pocket of the developers who are so single minded in their quest to develop and thus make a huge profit at the community's expense.
Were other options: rain water storage, xeriscaping, and distillation of reclaimed wastewater ever discussed by our elected officials? Do we really want 100,000 or 200,000 people living in a severely degraded community?? Do we have the right to kill an entire ecosystem so that land developers can make a fortune on top of the one they've already made???
Posted: Thursday, May 28, 2009
Article comment by:
Paul F Miller
Divide and conquer ... a ploy as old as time and it appears equally as effective today as when it was first employed in ancient times. SRP and its minions have all of you in the Verde River water shed arguing among yourselves while SRP sharpens its axe just waiting for the next round. I invite you to find COMMON GROUND and find it fast and speak with one UNIFIED voice and you will be heard. As it is currently, you are headed for certain defeat.
