Current print subscribers can create a free account by clicking here
Otherwise, follow the link below to join.
To Our Valued Readers –
Visitors to our website will be limited to five stories per month unless they opt to subscribe. The five stories do not include our exclusive content written by our journalists.
For $6.99, less than 20 cents a day, digital subscribers will receive unlimited access to YourValley.net, including exclusive content from our newsroom and access to our Daily Independent e-edition.
Our commitment to balanced, fair reporting and local coverage provides insight and perspective not found anywhere else.
Your financial commitment will help to preserve the kind of honest journalism produced by our reporters and editors. We trust you agree that independent journalism is an essential component of our democracy. Please click here to subscribe.
Need to set up your free e-Newspaper all-access account? click here.
Non-subscribers
Click here to see your options for becoming a subscriber.
Register to comment
Click here create a free account for posting comments.
Note that free accounts do not include access to premium content on this site.
I am anchor
SUPERIOR COURT
Judge backs Scottsdale in Rio Verde Foothills water case
Posted
INDEPENDENT NEWSMEDIA
A judge has declined to make Scottsdale resume sending water to Rio Verde Foothills, saying government, not the courts, should resolve the issue.
“Water is life in Arizona,” Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Joan Sinclair wrote in an order released over the weekend.
“The Court appreciates the difficulties inherent in allocating dwindling water resources between competing claimants. This is a function of governmental leaders and entities.
“This Court cannot, and should not, make water policy decisions in lieu of the
appropriate authorities.”
Rio Verde Foothills residents were seeking an injunction to make Scottsdale continue to provide water to haulers for delivery.
But the judge said the community had not proven “irreparable harm.”
“There has been no demonstration that the plaintiffs are unable to obtain water at all from any source.”
She continued: “Loss of water from Scottsdale to persons living outside the city’s boundaries is a hardship to Scottsdale. Given the current drought conditions in the area, loss of water to anyone is a hardship.”
Rio Verde Foothills has relied on Scottsdale to sell water to private haulers for years.
Scottsdale signaled for months that practice would end Jan. 1 because of drought concerns.