Phoenix using less water as drought lingers

As harsh drought persists in Arizona and the Southwest, water managers have their eyes on the Colorado River — making the most of its resources as dry conditions worsen and securing a regionwide Colorado River drought plan after agency gridlock made headlines.

But even as a historically dry winter and low snowpack numbers set reservoir levels back, officials say it isn’t all bad news.

Salt River Project announced in June

that water use among its users has decreased by one-third since 1980, even though the state’s population has doubled since then.

That’s due to conservation efforts such as recycling wastewater and recharging water underground for future use, SRP officials say. The agency manages and delivers water from the Salt and Verde rivers to users in Maricopa County.

“We benefited from a history where people made good decisions to set us up to be successful,” said Christa McJunkin, SRP’s director of water strategy. “But we can’t lose our vigilance.”

Much of the focus now is on Lake Mead, which is responsible for about 40 percent of Arizona’s water use and continues to flirt with shortage. The first tier of shortage is put in place when the reservoir drops to an elevation of 1,075 feet above sea level, which would trigger cutbacks for Arizona.

As the reservoir drops closer to the first trigger, Arizona water officials have renounced the jabs they publicly traded over shortages and conservation and, amid pressure from other states and the federal government, vowed to have a drought contingency plan ready next year for the state Legislature.

“We know this 19-year drought is one of the worst in the last 1,200 years,” U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman said at a June briefing. “This is the time for action to reduce risks on the Colorado River.”

The news that overall water use has fallen came amid increasing tension about the impending shortage, and it highlighted differences in how water use is managed in Arizona.

More people are moving to the state — Maricopa County was the fastest-growing county in the country last year — which means more people need water. That’s a tall order when most of Arizona is in a severe or extreme drought, as measured by the National Drought Mitigation Center. McJunkin, of SRP, credits a mid-1990s plumbing code, water storage and wastewater recycling for reducing the amount of water used.

“One of the benefits for much of the Valley: Most of our housing stock is younger,” she said. “Much of our significant growth has happened after those plumbing codes were in effect. The impact of that growth is lessened because they were using less water to begin with.”

McJunkin said efficiently using water and strategically conserving it is an ongoing effort, whether it’s making sure SRP reservoirs are sound, having enough underground storage facilities or making sure existing physical systems are all connected.

“We benefited from a history where people made good decisions to set us up to be successful — but we can’t lose our vigilance,” she said. “These are all ongoing efforts that give us the flexibility to adapt to whatever changes are brought on by variation in climate.”

The Colorado River serves some 40 million people in seven states and Mexico. As Lake Mead inches closer to a shortage, officials have stressed the importance of a drought contingency plan.

Since the mid-1990s, the Central Arizona Project, or CAP, numbers have stayed relatively stable. It delivered just 12,000 acre-feet in 1985, the year the canal began operating, compared with the near-capacity 1.4 million acre-feet in 2017, according to a CAP spokeswoman.

Because CAP is a wholesaler, its deliveries can’t be compared to consumptive use, she said.

“During the 1980s, when CAP came online, the cities were getting off groundwater and transitioning to these surface water supplies,” spokeswoman DeEtte Person said in an email. “Although we’ve always had a strong conservation ethic ... the story wouldn’t be demonstrated by showing the increase in CAP water deliveries.”

CAP actively banks water for future use, but that water is tied up in different places under separate agreements and doesn’t neatly add up to a simple number.

CAP officials have also said that Lake Mead would already be in shortage if it weren’t for the agency’s ongoing conservation efforts. Water levels at Lake Mead sat at just more than 1,076 feet above sea level on Wednesday — about a foot and a half away from shortage levels.

CAP in April came under fire over an online graphic calling for a “sweet spot” — conserving water levels enough to avoid a federal shortage, but not enough to stop Lake Powell’s flow downstream into Lake Mead. That sweet spot was an elevation between 1,080 and 1,085 feet, narrowly dodging mandatory cutbacks for Arizona.

Water managers at the time accused CAP of undercutting conservation efforts, though CAP officials said there would already have been a shortage without their actions.

At a June briefing with Reclamation Commissioner Burman, CAP General Manager Ted Cooke and ADWR Director Tom Buschatzke vowed to finish a drought contingency plan by the end of the year. Burman stressed the need for a plan and also said the current long-term drought is the worst of its kind in 1,200 years.