Arizona is smart about water and should stay that way
You really have to hand it to Arizona: Even as its population has doubled and it has suffered through a decadeslong megadrought, the state uses less water today than it did 40 years ago.
This success story is the result of what may be the smartest, most conservative approach to water in the country. But homebuilders want to scrap some key elements of this careful system. It’s a bad idea, especially as the climate changes, making the state’s water supply less reliable. And it’s a cautionary tale for the rest of us as we try to adapt to a warming world.
In 1980, alarmed at watching its precious groundwater disappear amid rapid development, Arizona passed the Groundwater Management Act. The law established the Arizona Department of Water Resources, set up water-management zones around cities and required new housing developments to prove they had access to 100 years’ worth of clean water, among other things.
The results were nothing short of astonishing: The state’s water use fell from 9.5 million acre-feet a year to about 7 million, even as the population boomed from 2.7 million to 7.3 million. (An acre-foot is the amount of water it takes to cover a football field with a foot of water. It should be enough to last two families a year, unless those families have teenagers.)
But Arizona’s economic boom is starting to bump up against the limits of sustainability. Last year, Governor Katie Hobbs halted some developments on the Phoenix outskirts, saying they didn’t meet the state’s 100-year water supply requirement. Homebuilders, stuck with 200,000 lots they couldn’t develop, were not happy.
So unhappy, in fact, that they are threatening to derail what had promised to be a constructive year for water regulation in the state. Before the Arizona legislative session began this year, there was hope of a bipartisan deal to close two big loopholes that developers use to avoid the 100-year water rule, state Sena