Measure calls for Yuma Desalting Plant activation
Legislation that would request the Department of Interior to activate the Yuma Desalting Plant failed in a consent calendar vote that would have shortened its time to take effect — but the measure isn’t dead yet.
Rep. Gail Griffin introduced the item to the Arizona House of Representatives earlier this month. She represents District 14, which covers the southeast corner of the state that includes Cochise County and parts of Graham, Greenlee and Pima counties.
The item is a concurrent memorial, which means it’s intended to ask government actors with more jurisdiction to take action the state can’t. That it’s concurrent means that the measure will be presented in both the state House and Senate.
Rep. Tim Dunn of Yuma voted to pass the bill through the House Natural Resources, Energy and Water Committee, where the measure passed 12 votes to one.
The measure specifies a concern for the Central Arizona Project, a 336-mile water delivery system that serves central and southern Arizona.
“The Central Arizona Project is a junior priority rights holder to Colorado River water and would bear the largest reduction of Colorado River water in times of shortage,” the measure reads. “By abdicating its obligation to operate the Yuma Desalting Plant, the federal government has caused the loss of more than 1,300,000 acre-feet from Lake Mead, placing the State of Arizona at increased risk of water shortage.”
The measure’s two provisions request that the Secretary of the Department of Interior “immediately take all necessary measures” to start operating the desalting plant and for the Arizona Secretary of State to send copies of the measure to the President and every member of Congress.
The item failed to get through an expedited legislative process on Monday because a representative formally protested the measure. Now the measure will go through further consideration by more members of the state legislature. According to the measure’s text, the goal is to offset water usage from Lake Mead in Nevada, which has been decreasing in wa
ter elevation since 1999.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has reported that Lake Mead loses an average of 1.2 million acre-feet of water each year because of drought. The current water elevation of Lake Mead, according to USBR, is 42% of its overall capacity, which hasn’t been the case since about 1938, when the lake was first being filled.
2020 is also the first year of a USBR-created five-year drought contingency plan that aims at deterring the decreasing water levels from heading towards a critically low level.
According to USBR information, the water level currently sits about 14 feet above what that drought contingency plan calls Level 1 Shortage Conditions. The more water levels drop into lower levels of shortage conditions, the more the USBR plans to reduce the amount of water allocated to states out of Lake Mead.
“Under a shortage condition, reductions in Lower Basin state allocations are required and not recoverable,” said Michael Bernardo, a River Operations Manager in the Boulder Canyon, Nevada USBR offices that understand Lake Mead well. “[The Drought Contingency Plan] calls for mandatory water savings contributions, in addition to any applicable shortage reductions, that may be recovered at a later year once Lake Mead has risen above elevation 1,110 feet.”
Mike Norris, the deputy area manager of the Yuma Desalting Plant, said that the facility can produce up to about 80,000 acre-feet of water a year, 20,000 less than the memorial aims to offset.
Norris said that authority over the plant resides in U.S. Congressional action. The power to activate the plant would have to come from the Reclamation through Congress. The activation of the plant is more of a process of congressional action and funding than one of administrative action, Norris said.
USBR is funded every year through the Congressional appropriations process and the presidential budget provides for funding outlines each fiscal year.
The Secretary of Interior, however, does act through the USBR to take salinity control measures like activating or creating desalination plants. According to the Colorado River Salinity Control Act, which provided the DOI the power to create the Yuma Desalting Plant, the Secretary of the Interior can use the plant to treat water from the Wellton-Mohawk Division of the Gila Project, one of the main systems of water delivery to Yuma, but only to meet salinity standards for water delivered to Mexico.