This idea would force Arizona counties to feud over water
Arizona is defined by acquiring, managing, sharing and moving water. From the time of the Hohokam through the building of the Salt River Project and the CAP canal, the portability of water has made Arizona possible.
Generations of Arizonans have participated in the complex system of managing water resources for the benefit of the entire state. For more than 100 years, these decisions have required balancing economic benefits, environmental impacts, individual property rights and public interests.
Bruce Babbitt has been one of those Arizonans – a thoughtful leader with broad, long-term perspective. That’s why it was shocking to see his column championing a scheme that would set off internal, parochial, Balkanizing fights over Arizona’s future.
Babbitt’s column decries proposals to move agricultural water from the Colorado River to support development in Central Arizona. One of the transactions he singles out would transfer about 2,000 acre feet of water from farming in Cibola to the Town of Queen Creek.
I represent GSC farms, the entity in Cibola which would transfer the water.
This proposal is currently before the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) for consideration, following four public hearings – three in communities on the river – and extensive public comment.
ADWR will ultimately make a recommendation to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which must approve a transfer. This is an effective process that should be allowed to play out.
What Babbitt suggests, however, is to scrap this process and give the on-river counties a veto.
This proposal represents extraordinarily ill-considered public policy, and is a shortsighted, knee-jerk approach with long-term negative consequences for Arizona’s future.
Through all of Arizona’s history, counties have never held water rights. The parties involved in this kind of transfer are:
❚ the farmers who invested their time and money in diverting water to their land;
❚ the irrigation districts they formed to contract with the federal government;
❚ the Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the Colorado River; and
❚ the Central Arizona Project, whose canal would be used for transportation.
Counties have never had any role in that process, and have neither legal standing nor any historical expertise.
Queen Creek seeks this water to support its existing growth with renewable surface water supplies rather than continuing to rely on non-renewable groundwater. This action is consistent with the Groundwater Management Act, one of the crowning achievements of Arizona water policy – and one passed under then-Governor Babbitt.
Further, while the water currently generates localized economic benefit of $1.2 million from the existing farm, the entire state will generate $307 million from the same water being used for economic development in central Arizona.
This water is not needed for urban growth along the Colorado River, where cities are only growing at about 1% per year and use less than half of the available urban water supplies. Queen Creek, on the other hand, is growing at 10% per year (that’s 9,000 new residents) and must obtain new sustainable supplies.
ADWR has a history of carefully weighing the factors at play in a water transfer. The department disapproved a proposal to move water to the Town of Quartzsite because that water had never previously been used.
But it also approved transfers out of Cibola to other locations, including at least one large transaction represented by Babbitt. The process is driven by what is best for the entire state.
Of the Western states, Arizona has the best history of cooperative water management for the benefit of all its citizens.
There is a legitimate need to talk about the competition between different water uses and to structure a careful way of making choices. Farming should be preserved in our state and can be preserved even while additional urban growth is supported.
But doing so requires balancing competing interests for the benefit of the whole state, not dividing Arizona into feuding fiefdoms.