State creating agency to find water

By Howard Fischer
Twitter: @azcapmedia

PHOENIX — The state is moving to create a new agency to search for and finance the water Arizona will need if it hopes to support the current population and grow into the future.

But Arizonans, particularly those who plan to move here in the future, should be prepared to pay more — possibly a lot more — to get it.

The new Arizona Water Authority announced Friday by Gov. Doug Ducey would have the unique right to obtain and even own water, much of it presumably coming from everything from piping excess from the Midwest to desalination of water from the Gulf of California. And it would start with that $1 billion the governor hopes to set aside over the next three years.

That, however, would not go far, especially with expensive new technology required to make water from elsewhere suitable for household use. So what the plan envisions is having the state partner with private investors who would be willing to finance these projects — investors who would want a rate of return on their cash.

House Speaker Rusty Bowers, R-Mesa, who is instrumental in crafting the plan that does require legislative approval, said likely means the rates Arizonans pay for water, which often cover only the cost of treating and delivering it, will have to go up.

“We’re going to have to get over the idea that water is cheap,” he said.

The key, Bowers told Capitol Media Services, may be finding ways to protect those who already are here and charging higher rates or connection fees to those who come to the state in the future — and want that water.

“My mother-in-law, 100 years old, down on her little lot in Mesa, shouldn’t have to pay the cost of a desalination plant in Mexico,” he said.

But the bottom line, Bowers said, is that without that new water, expensive that it may be, there just won’t be enough to go around.

“If we don’t do it quick, then people actually will be leaving this Valley,” he said.

“They’ll be packing it up and leaving,” Bowers continued. “What do you do when you run out of that ditch?”

The authority is the next step to the Drought Contingency Plan adopted in 2019 in the wake of a decline in water in the Colorado River.

Even at the time it was recognized to be only a stop-gap measure, patching together things like obtaining water rights from tribes and some cutbacks in agricultural use. But now the region is facing its driest conditions in 1,200 years.

“If that continues for another 10 years, Lake Mead will be empty,” Bowers said. In fact, he said that at the current rate of use versus replenishment, it will be a “dead pool” in four or five years.

All that is leading to some more radical proposals.

“Desalination is one of them,” Ducey said.

How far the state’s money would go — even if it used the entire $1 billion for construction — is unclear. And even then, current estimates are that treated water would cost $2,500 an acre-foot.

That’s the amount of water that, depending on usage, is needed to serve from two to four single-family homes each year.

So, think possible $1,200 annual water bills.

Bruce Babbitt, the former Arizona governor and U.S. interior secretary, told reporters this past week the state should not look to desalination to answer its water woes, at least not in the next generation.

“We need people to understand, it isn’t going to help us out of our present crisis,” he said.

Ducey, however, said Friday he considers it to be one of the options.

Bowers, for his part, acknowledged the state, in considering desalination, may be looking for a “magic bullet” to solve its water woes. But that, he said, does not make this a bad idea.

“I would proffer that there aren’t any other bullets,” Bowers said.

Technology aside, Bowers said there’s something else that makes this a practical solution, even if it is expensive.

In Arizona, a host of laws govern the ownership of ground water and surface water, meaning much of it already belongs to someone. Even treated effluent, Bowers said, is subject to certain regulations.

And the water authority will not have the right to use “eminent domain” to seize water that belongs to someone else.

But new water from somewhere else? That’s not covered by state law. And that means it actually could be owned outright by the new water authority, which then would have the power to sell it where needed without having to worry that someone else’s legal rights were being trampled.

The high-dollar solutions like desalination and treated effluent — more colorfully referred to a “toilet-to-tap” won’t be the only ways the authority could spend its money.

There are other options, Bowers said, like paying farmers to convert to new crops or use different irrigation techniques. Even incentives to urban landowners to cut back on their lush lawns — some of them in the Phoenix area actually watered through flood irrigation — might result in water credits developers could buy up for new subdivisions.

But Ducey is balking at any talk of forcing the issue, at least when it comes to farms, even though agriculture uses about 70% of the state’s water.

“Farming and agriculture is a huge part of our economy,” the governor said. “I think we’ve been able to do it successfully.”

Any change, Ducey said, will have to come from within.

“I think we’ve also had and seen the farmers and the companies that are involved in agriculture diversify their crops depending on what the needs and the costs are,” he said. “So I don’t know that it’s for the governor to decide who grows what.”

Nor does he particularly believe that the state needs to curtail farming, even with the amount of water used on agriculture.

“And we’re the leafy green capital of the country,” Ducey said. “I think we’ve been pretty good at it.”

The flip side of agriculture using 70% is that urban use is a minority. And while the governor said he thinks encouraging conservation should be part of the discussion and a “responsible practice, he isn’t sure that it would make much of a difference.

“It doesn’t do much to affect the water supply statewide,” he said. Still, Ducey said he does his part.

“I turn off the water when I brush my teeth,” the governor said.

The new authority will have a nine-member board, with six appointed by the governor and three state officials, including the head of the Department of Water Resources.

Of those the governor would name, no more than three could be from the same political party. No more than one appointed member can be from the same county, with a limit of just two of the six coming from Maricopa, Pinal or Pima counties.