Forum on water allocation here Friday

The public meeting is part of state lawmakers’ ‘listening tour’ about the in-demand resource

The sponsors of the two major bills in the state Legislature dealing with water allocation are bringing their “listening tour” to Yuma on Friday, and they’re probably going to get an earful.

State Rep. Rusty Bowers, RMesa, and Sen. Gail Griffin, RHereford, will run a meeting that is likely to bring dozens of figures from Yuma County’s farming industry, government officials and other residents, and could draw others from throughout western Arizona.

The session is scheduled to start 10 a.m. Friday at Yuma City Hall, 1 City Plaza. Attendees will be able to testify with comments including “information involving water issues,” according to the meeting agenda.

Debates about how to conserve water as a historically low winter snowpack threatens to worsen the Southwest’s 18-year drought have spiraled into a “water civil war thing,” said Tom Davis, general manager of the Yuma County Water Users’ Association.

What he and others in the area fear is getting lost in the debate is Yuma as “a unique niche in that we grow products that aren’t grown anywhere else in the country in the wintertime, and we feed the entire country with these products, and so where’s the water the most value at, and I’m not sure anyone is seriously considering it at this time from the central part of the state,” he said.

The “mirror” water bills, known as SB1507 and HB2512, closely reflect each other and contain numerous provisions, many of which would affect the county in one way or another. But what is drawing the most concern here is what’s not included.

Local legislators and industry officials say they have been trying to get the bills amended since they were first introduced in early February to restrict the ability of Central Arizona Project and its associated agencies to claim “sovereign immunity” in recent court cases, a status that puts them on the same footing as a state agency and would protect it from lawsuits by other water users.

“They’re coming to take our water and in this case, the state Legislature is helping them, or would help them,” says Wade Noble, a Yuma attorney who represents the Yuma County Agriculture Water Coalition and is cited as a kind of guru on water rights law

by others in the community.

He and other observers say it could be that neither of the water bills make it to Gov. Doug Ducey’s desk this session, and if one does, it could well be vetoed. But an apparent lack of interest in an amendment pushed by a Yuma County agriculture industry valued at $2 billion annually is what is making many locals nervous, Noble said.

CAP operates the Central Arizona Project Canal, which transports water from the Colorado River to help the Phoenix and Tucson metro areas sustain and expand their populations. Its associated entities include the Central Arizona Water Conservation District and Central Arizona Groundwater Replenishment District, which secure more water for that region through one method or another.

“It’s not that we’re saying CAP’s bad people. We’re saying they’re doing things to threaten our water rights, and that’s why they’ve come to us, because they have to,” Noble said.

Bowers and Griffin chair the House and Senate committees dealing with water bills, respectively, and their meeting is expected to draw many local legislators. Rep. Tim Dunn, R-Yuma, and Sen. Lisa Otondo, D-Yuma, sit on the water committees, along with Sen. Sine Kerr, R-Buckeye, who represents the northern county through District 13. Rep. Charlene Fernandez, DYuma, also said she will be there.

Otondo said she will be there, and “I have been working with Wade Noble, Yuma County, our cities and towns, the irrigation districts, the conservation districts and the Cocopah Tribe. We’ve formed a strong coalition. We’ll be there and I encourage the public to join us.”

She said there’s even more at stake than the county’s senior rights to Colorado River water, which would be the last in the state to be affected by a shortage declaration on the river. Some of those rights are “present perfected,” which mean the users are entitled to use as much water as they want as long as it can be proven to be of “beneficial use.”

There’s also a large pool of groundwater underneath the Yuma Mesa that would require desalination in order to be usable for humans, and part of the current legislation calls for a largescale study of desalination prospects.

Yuma-area officials have not yet come up with a financially feasible way to extract this water and make it potable, while CAP has completed a study that’s still under discussion, Noble said.

“When they talk about the water mound, they feel like they can just come in and take it. Well, that doesn’t sit real well when over a 20 year period they can take a million acre-feet out of Yuma County? I don’t think people would stand still for that,” he said.

Dunn said the “listening tour” began with a session in Casa Grande earlier this month and will probably have at least one more next month, in southeastern Arizona. But by then the annual goal of a 100-day legislative session, this year falling on April 17, will be close at hand.

“There’s a good chance these listening sessions won’t be done in time before this session ends and we might be rolling into next year. That’s kind of been my statement since I was sent up there, that good water policy takes time, and I want to make sure we’re looking at good policy for the state. We don’t need to pass something just to pass something. We need something that’s good for the state,” he said. “And obviously we don’t want to do anything that will hurt Yuma County in the process.

Dunn became a legislator in early February after he was appointed to fill the seat vacated when the state House voted to expel Rep. Don Shooter after an investigation found he’d violated its policy against sexual harassment.

These meetings are being held as CAP and the Arizona Department of Water Resources are facing off over the sovereign immunity issue, with the state seeking to keep the superior position on water issues while CAP is pursuing deals to secure more Colorado River water in Mohave County and Quartzsite.

ADWR spokesman Doug McEachern said Friday the department’s director Tom Buschatzke, assistant director Clint Chandler, and legislative liaison Doug Dunham are going to the Yuma meeting. Buschatzke said he plans to testify at the meeting.

CAP spokeswoman DeEtte Person said CAP offices are closed on Fridays, so no information on whether anyone is expected to attend the Yuma meeting was available.

The emotions that surround the divvying up of a resource as critical as water has some people expecting and hoping for fireworks at the meeting. Noble said a small demonstration with sign-carrying protesters popped up at the Casa Grande meeting, and he’d encourage anyone so inclined in Yuma to do the same.

“I’m pretty certain that if there are people on the sidewalk in front of City Hall on Friday morning the 23rd, they’re going to know why they’re there, and they’re thinking about what’s happening to them and their future,” he said. “CAP would just devastate our area and never look back.”

Davis said he favors a more moderate approach, but still feels there are issues that need to be hashed out in front of the Legislature.

“What they’re doing is a good thing and I hope it’s well-attended, and I hope that reasonable minds prevail. And we’ve got to be careful about choosing up sides, ‘we’ and ‘them.’ But at the same time part of my job is protecting water rights for our customers, and that’s the growers in the Yuma Valley.

This is the way water business needs to be done, I think.”