Phoenix's Grand Canal in 1915. Arizona's population: about 250,000.
I have been hesitant to pass along recent stories about water. Some examples, "Arizona Cities Could Face Cutbacks in Water From Colorado River," from the New York Times; "Phoenix May Not Survive Climate Change" on Salon; "America is Running Out of Water," from Vice; "Arizona May Be California's Future" on Slate, and this Tucson Weekly examination of the situation in the Old Pueblo.
Oh, and from Smithsonian (!): "Arizona Could Be Out of Water in Six Years."
Water in Arizona is a highly complex issue. It risks being spun as "everything's fine!" by the boosters, lied about by real-estate hustlers and their stooges, or oversimplified as "Phoenix is about to run out of water!" by outside observers. So let me tiptoe in with a reminder of this Phoenix 101 primer, and then...
Some things we know:
1. As with so much else, Arizona is not Phoenix. Even the farthest-flung reaches of the metropolitan area are not the old city. In other words, each part of the state has distinct water issues.
2. Phoenix is not Death Valley with subdivisions. In fact, the Salt River Valley, sitting in and near the confluence of multiple rivers, is the most abundantly watered place in the Southwest. The Sonoran Desert is the planet's wettest desert. This is why the Phoenix area has attracted irrigation civilizations going back perhaps 3,000 years. Phoenix is a natural oasis.
3. Thanks to this and the billions of federal dollars spent on reclamation projects in the first half of the 20th century, the core of Phoenix is blessed with nearby renewable water supplies. The dams and lakes of the Salt River Project delivered 767,445 acre feet to the project's footprint in 2012 and held nearly 1.5 million acre feet in the reservoirs in fiscal 2013. This water comes from snowmelt in the east-central Arizona mountains.
In other words, a dense Phoenix built within the SRP footprint would be, within certain population limits, highly sustainable and not dependent on the CAP. Within certain limits and dependent on certain planning and investments, there is enough water for this city. Unfortunately, it's not the one being built now.
4. The Central Arizona Project which brings Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson via a 336-mile canal is another engineering marvel, built from 1973 to 1993. It allows the state to exercise its legal right to 2.8 million acre feet of water annually. In reality, the system can deliver about 1.5 million acre.
Unfortunately, the allocations in the Colorado River Compact of 1922 were based on years of abundant snowmelt in the Rockies rather than the long history of droughts going back 500 years. As a result...
5. The Colorado is oversubscribed ("too many straws in the river") — serving a region of 40 million people unimaginable in the empty West of 1922 — and facing drought, longer-term threats from climate change, and resistance from the Upper Basin to giving up more water. Lake Powell and Lake Mead are at or near historic lows. I discuss this issue in greater depth in this column.
To be sure, some news accounts have overstated the danger of near-term reductions of water to Arizona cities. Agriculture would face cutbacks first. CAP officials don't expect cities to be affected for 10 to 15 years. But this is a heartbeat of time given the transitions the state needs to make. And it is a forecast based on a fickle river in a time of climate change.
6. Tucson and Pinal County face greater water vulnerability than Phoenix. Both are heavily dependent on groundwater and the CAP. Other parts of the state are encroaching on Salt River Project headwaters, especially in the over-developed Verde Valley. Yet other regions have little water, such as Mojave County and much of the High Country, but this hasn't stopped tract houses from being thrown up. In other words...
7. There is a near total and aggressive disconnect between land use and water supplies.
8. About 70 percent of Arizona's water was used for agriculture as of the 2000s. Another 22 percent went to municipalities. The former has likely fallen and the latter risen since. Still, ag uses the majority of the water. Yet this doesn't mean the agricultural water is there for the taking. First, many of the farmers' non-CAP water rights are grounded in law. Second, the nominal rights and even past usage may not translate into actual water now and in the future.
9. Both Phoenix and Tucson have made tremendous progress in water conservation.
10. Much of the groundwater in Phoenix, intended as emergency supplies, is contaminated from the "clean industries" that were attracted after World War II.
11. More water won't be coming from ambitious technological or public works schemes. A federal government that is thinking of mothballing an aircraft carrier — because taxes must always be cut and stay low — is not going to build a second CAP canal. And that would assume the Colorado water would be there. It won't, both because of the effect of climate change on Rockies runoff and resistance from the Upper Basin and California.
Similarly, desalination is a plan that has been floated from time to time. Build a plant for California and let Arizona use part of its Colorado River allocation. Build a plant in the Gulf of California. It has various iterations. Half of Israel's potable water comes from the sea. Federal austerity is again a barrier. But so are issues of huge energy consumption, damage to sea life and overall costs.
In addition, the Republican members of the congressional delegation are staunchly against infrastructure. They are the opposite of the statesmen who, for better and worse, ensured central Arizona's water in the twentieth century.
Some things we don't know:
1. How severely and quickly climate change will affect the Salt River Project. If the snowmelt decreases dramatically and stays that way, all bets are off. This year's critical January to May runoff was only 148,000 acre feet, the eighth driest in the 116 years that the SRP has been keeping records. It was also the fourth consecutive year of below-median inflows to the project's reservoirs (The 30-year median is 534,336 acre-feet).
2. Ditto for the Central Arizona Project.
3. How effectively and transparently the state is tracking and enforcing water regulations, especially the 1980 Groundwater Management Act. As the indispensable Shaun McKinnon explained in this 2009 Arizona Republic article, exurban developers and private water companies have undermined the act thanks to a variety of runarounds and a Legislature dominated by the Real Estate Industrial Complex. My sources question how aggressively the Department of Water Resources has done its job — thanks to political pushback from well-connected developers and lack of funding.
Put another way, the Groundwater Management Act has done much good. But we know it has been repeatedly subverted. We don't know how great the damage is and will be.
Speaking of which...the "100-year water supply" required of new developments has been the source of much mischief. Who knows if such a supply exists in some cases? Where it is real, the clock has been ticking, in some instances for decades. The mandate was primarily a requirement that would give the state time to wean these developments over to CAP water. Unfortunately, that supply is limited and most at risk.
4. How the Indian water rights settlement affects the future. The 2004 settlement with the Pimas and Maricopas had its origins in diversion of Gila River water and as a requirement for federal funding of the CAP. In total, the CAP has settled with nine tribes, with other settlements to come.
As a result, 47 percent of the CAP is designated for the tribes. Whether the they use it for farming and a return to a healthier lifestyle on the rez — or sell it to the Real Estate Industrial Complex remains to be seen.
5. Which trade-offs are real and constructive, which not?
Here's one example of the latter: X acres of agriculture can be converted into X acres of housing with big water savings. Even if this is true, it assumes that the agriculture in that location was sustainable in the first place given persistent drought and climate change. That the better response might be letting it return to desert.
A second concern, never examined with any diligence, is the long-term cost-benefit analysis of these trades. How much water is actually used/evaporated when golf courses, artificial lakes, swimming pools, asphalt, concrete and McMansions filled with water-sucking appliances and luxuries are added to the mix? When endless car dependency adds greenhouse gases that increase global warming?
Third, as the 10,000-mile-supply chain faces a host of challenges, it might be useful to save a portion of farmland and its water. Phoenix could once feed itself. Now it almost entirely depends on the outside.
Fourth, a cotton field could be left fallow in dry years. How do you do that with 5,000 houses outside Casa Grande or Coolidge?
Another questionable tradeoff is thoughtlessly decimating shade and plant life, and in some places grass, in favor of throwing down gravel on an industrial level. Phoenix officials are unforgivable on this front. Loss of the oasis already has drastically changed temperatures and weather (e.g., when a monsoon storm hits the concrete heat island), and the worst of climate change is yet to come. Why should the historic districts or Arcadia be reduced to dirt so the playerz can keep expanding on the fringes?
6. How much the increased scrutiny by the national press and scholars will affect decisions and behavior in Arizona.
The first reaction by the local-yokel opinion-makers is to rush to the barricades of denial. Everything's fine! With championship golf. Justify. Explain away. Lie. Attack the messenger. As I've written before, there is a cottage industry devoted to this (McMansion-sized, actually). Nor has serious examination of water been encouraged by political leaders of either party. It is Arizona's equivalent of the third rail.
There are some serious thinkers to be found. But speaking out without abundant, soothing caveats is highly dangerous. The state motto might as well be Upton Sinclair's "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
Everything is not fine. The complexity of the issue and the details still open to argument should not lull anyone into denial.
I recall the hysterical denunciations that met Andrew Ross' Bird on Fire, published by that slipshod bunch of nobodies, The Oxford University Press (Yes, I was extensively quoted in the book). It's unclear if the apologists even read it, much less with an open mind.
What really stuck in the collective craw was his subtitle: Lessons From the World's Least Sustainable City.
What about Dubai! Bangkok, Singapore, Hong Kong, Riyadh — Houston, for goodness sake? All are very hot places and will feel the whip of climate change. But they are also global centers of wealth and commerce. Their prosperity will buy them time. Baghdad, surely more unsustainable! Perhaps politically. But Phoenicians don't aspire to a Third World life, so the analogy doesn't work.
What makes the provocative subtitle worth, well, sustained reflection is that Phoenix and Arizona mostly exist to add population and give most residents greater or lesser degrees of a "resort lifestyle" in a completely artificial environment. There is no larger economy — oil, world-class ports, major financial center — sufficient to backstop the population.
Arizona is now the third most populous state in the entire West, behind California and Washington. The state as a whole uses about 7 million acre feet per year. This is far more than the CAP and SRP can deliver, so much of it is coming from precious groundwater.
What happens when the cost of population becomes too great? When the tipping point begins to hurt?
So far, Arizona has not begun making transitions that might take a decade or two to complete. Chief among them is moving away from a real-estate development/extraction economy.
Instead, the real-estate interests and "economic freedom" ideology unite to continue the one thing that should be stopped: sprawl development outside historic urban footprints. Against this continued destructive arrangement, hedges such as the estimated 3 million acre feet of CAP water stored in aquifers are not enough to avoid eventual disaster.
Phoenix is not going to run out of water tomorrow. Arizona has more than a few years of water, even in the most vulnerable places. This could buy time for intelligent responses to reality. Instead, it is empowering a continued toxic status quo.
So far. It's not too late.
Unless something is done about the sale of state trust lands to real estate developers, it IS too late.
Posted by: Joe Schallan | July 15, 2014 at 01:52 AM
I watch the water issues closely in Arizona, and I agree with the problems in rural Arizona coming up first and foremost.
Flagstaff after a couple of crappy winters nearly went dry, and quite frankly, the cost of pulling water 35 miles uphill from Red Gap Ranch almost in Winslow is going to leave a mark and a half on their long term lack of growth.
The wildcat subdivisions will eventually succumb to that bane of property values, hauled water.
Further, the first in time and use values waste over conservation outside of the AMAs.
But hey, make it so water is really valued, and you might find it is conserved.
I would note my water bill from da city of phoenix charges me $8 for water, and $71 for everything else on the damned bill (including money for Shurf Joke's Jails).
The upper middle class family uses under 8k gallons a month, including a pool and three people in a big house. No water for most of the landscraping.
Now, is that sustainable- heck yeah. The real question, as you point out above is when we quit wasting water on cotton. A low return, water hog of a crop.
But groundwater- well, look at Pinal County for the fools who think they can build long term on just groundwater- after agriculture has sucked out the first 200 feet of it. Jump those cracks, and ignore your drop until your sewer backs up into your house!
Of course, as you write this, El Nino is coming, and it will drown Arizona again, and the Colorado problems will abate. But California is the future, and running right up to the limits of growth is a zero sum game.
As for the political class paying attention- no way. Short term is the entire game.
The folks who were stable enough to see the long term are long dead, and now you just have the hustlers out for a quick buck.
Posted by: Concern Troll | July 15, 2014 at 07:32 AM
Nestlé's makes the very best...
http://www.salon.com/2014/07/14/nestle_is_bottling_water_straight_from_the_heart_of_californias_drought/
A hint of what AZ tribes will do with their allotment.
Posted by: Jerry McKenzie | July 15, 2014 at 11:07 AM
Gotta disagree with U Jon.
it's WAY TO LATE.
more later.
Posted by: cal Lash | July 15, 2014 at 07:21 PM
what can Petra tell Phoenix?
Not Petro
but Petra Jordan
Posted by: cal Lash | July 15, 2014 at 07:41 PM
Not much interest in water. Oh well, there is no shortage of beer. Problem solved.
Posted by: Ruben | July 16, 2014 at 11:45 AM
Speaking of Water
and hoses.
Back under Yarnell silence I mentioned fire fighter calenders. There here and they have a female fire fighter. No smoke jumpers?
http://www.aol.com/article/2014/07/16/FDNY-calendar-features-first-female-firefighter/20932103/?ncid=webmail32
Posted by: cal Lash | July 16, 2014 at 03:20 PM
Side-note: a new reply to Concern Troll has been added in the previous thread, here:
http://www.roguecolumnist.com/rogue_columnist/2014/07/the-omen.html
(The gist: high-tech ID cards are not the solution, for logical rather than political or budgetary reasons.)
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | July 16, 2014 at 03:42 PM
I seldom employ hyperbole, but I'd have to call this blog entry "awesome" for the breadth, depth, balance, and insight shown. Terrific.
Mr. Talton wrote:
"About 70 percent of Arizona's water was used for agriculture as of the 2000s."
That still seems to be correct: at least, the Arizona Department of Water Resources website gives the figure as 68 percent.
"Yet this doesn't mean the agricultural water is there for the taking. First, many of the farmers' non-CAP water rights are grounded in law. Second, the nominal rights and even past usage may not translate into actual water now and in the future."
If climate change results in precipitation decreases that seriously threaten Arizona's water supply, Arizona will need to face the fact that agriculture is best left to areas with abundant rainfall.
One way to get around legal rights is to impose legal obligations on top of them.
For example, most of Arizona's agricultural irrigation is terribly inefficient. Requiring farms to use efficient drip-irrigation will greatly decrease agricultural use of water, since many farms either cannot afford to upgrade their infrastructure, or else prefer to relocate rather than make this investment. Those who stay and upgrade to efficient irrigation will use vastly less water. All three outcomes lead to a substantial decrease in water use.
I don't know how likely Arizona's legislature is to impose such a solution in the event that shortages increase water prices; but theoretically if not politically, it's a solution.
What is done with the saved water is another question. Mr. Talton suggests allowing the land to return to desert.
A judicious mix of this together with reallocation for development might convince important segments of Arizona's economy to support laws requiring efficient agricultural irrigation, and to lobby the legislature and the governor to take action.
In other words, if the developers and their dependents and allies think they are going to get something out of it, they may possess the political momentum to roll-over legislative opposition. This doesn't rule out partial desertification, but promising them a piece of the pie would be politically constructive.
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | July 16, 2014 at 05:17 PM
Side Bar: Ruben since you have that Email Filter problem in religious world, here, I am recommending a book for you knowing how you like SW history.
Terry Dudas U might find it interesting also.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/01/09/reviews/000109.09lassont.html
Is todays Supreme court much like it was in 1904?
Posted by: cal Lash | July 16, 2014 at 06:29 PM
Emil, you need to understand how the state has been cut out of the ability to do anything to curtail water rights: http://wsp.arizona.edu/sites/wsp.arizona.edu/files/uawater/documents/Fellowship200708/Pullen.pdf
This paper should help your understanding, especially of Proposition 207, and the mandatory regulatory takings compensation that would be due should the state limit any property owner's vested water rights.
Now, this means the state Department of Water Resources has been ultimately neutered anywhere that did not have water use restrictions in place by 2007.
Ooops. We dun did it again.
And no way in hell would the Leg ever do anything that would cost billions of nonexistent tax payer dollars.
Left a response to you repectfully disagree.
Posted by: Concern Troll | July 16, 2014 at 09:20 PM
'cadillac desert' should be required reading in AZ high school history.
and 'guns, germs and steel'...
Posted by: dave weiss | July 17, 2014 at 06:13 AM
Cal - thanks for the tip; I'll look into the subject.
Posted by: Terry Dudas | July 17, 2014 at 09:25 AM
Dave Weiss,I buy used copies of Cadillac Desert and Desert Solitaire and Killing the Hidden Waters and give them to folks I think might read them. Just the first Chapter of Cadillac Desert is highly informative.
And Jared Diamond said something like "The advent of agriculture was the beginning of the decline of man." I agree with that premise as it speaks to farming where the soil in plowed and water is drawn from under the ground
Posted by: cal Lash | July 17, 2014 at 10:07 AM
Cadillac Desert opening statement.
a lot of emptiness amid a civilization whose success was achieved on the pretension that natural obstacles do not exist... Thanks to irrigation, thanks to the Bureau [of Reclamation]... states such as California, Arizona, and Idaho became populous and wealthy; millions settled in regions where nature, left alone, would have countenanced thousands at best... what has it all amounted to?... not all that much. Most of the West is still untrammeled, unirrigated, depopulate in the extreme... Westerners call what they have established out here a civilization, but it would be more accurate to call it a beachhead. And if history is any guide, the odds that we can sustain it would have to be regarded as low (pp. 1-3).
Posted by: cal Lash | July 17, 2014 at 11:22 AM
Edward Abbey:
Water, water, water . . . There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount, a perfect ratio of water to rock. Of water to sand, insuring that wide, free, open, generous spacing among plants and animals, homes and towns and cities, which makes the arid West so different from any other part of the nation. There is no lack of water here, unless you try to establish a city where no city should be. — (Edward Abbey, Wilderness Reader)
Posted by: cal Lash | July 17, 2014 at 11:30 AM
Regarding Emil and Concern Troll's comments on 19 century laws about agriculture water in the 21st century Mitch Tobin covers this in his book "Endangered, Biodiversity on the Brink" Pages 367 and 368. A good read published 2010.
Posted by: cal Lash | July 17, 2014 at 11:41 AM
"The O-otam have lost the Keeper of the Smoke, given up the call of the dream in the night,turned a deaf ear to the voice in the darkness. In lives bunkered by steel, gasoline, electricity, groundwater and cash, they can ignore the desert for a while."
Charles Bowden from, "Killing the Hidden Waters."
Posted by: cal Lash | July 17, 2014 at 11:52 AM
Let me see if I’ve got my math right here: SRP deliveries in 2012 = 767K acre-feet. Inflows to SRP = 148K acre feet. That would work out to a difference of 619K acre feet. All of a sudden the 1.5KK acre-feet in storage doesn’t seem too impressive.
I don’t keep up with Arizona weather. But the narrative would imply that there has been four years of drought or near-drought conditions.
It’s always gratifying to be able to agree with the crowd here on something. I agree that the water outlook of Phoenix is perilous. I’d go so far as to say it’s worse than that. But that’s another topic. The root cause of the water situation is climate change. We’re going to disagree on just exactly what that climate change is – mine is that a global cooling event is in progress (but let’s not go there). I can’t tell you how long this is going to last: 10 years? 50 years? 300 years? The “science is settled” crowd can’t tell you either – if in fact they even recognize that cooling events have occurred.
On a more cheerful note: I don’t know that the Ag-Muni allocation has to be an either/or proposition. It would seem that at least 50% of residential water use is returned via the sewage system. This can very economically be treated into what is known as “grey water”. This type of water is not potable and you can’t dump it into a river – but you can pipe it for agricultural and horticultural uses. In my home town of Cocoa , Florida the sewage authority would give you the grey water for free if you paid for the piping to deliver it.
Trivia for no reason at all: Birmingham gets more rain than Seattle. Not much more – but more.
Posted by: wkg in bham | July 17, 2014 at 11:53 AM
Working our way to extinction, dying of thirst. (my opinion.)
"Religion has failed us because long ago it separated us from Nature, which we now call Our Mother, and made us worship things."
"Science has failed us because it bedded down with wealth, became technocracy, and made us so many things that clutter up our lives."
Charles Bowden in "Desierto, Memories of the Future."
Posted by: cal Lash | July 17, 2014 at 12:06 PM
WKG, U seem to be caught up in the belief that man can "mine" resources. To me it is evident we should live "with" the surface of the planet. Many cultures did for thousands of years, extracting nothing from the inner earth but living with what the surface provided.
Of course they did not have I Pads and music plugs stuck inn their ears. A pity!
Posted by: cal Lash | July 17, 2014 at 12:12 PM
"The Earth is in great peril due to the coporatization of agriculture, the rising climate crisis, and the ever-increasing levels of global poverty, starvation and desertification on a massive scale. This present condition is not natural, according to Masanobu Fukuoka but a result of humanity's destructive actions.
From "Sowing Seeds in the Desert."
By Masanobu Fukuoka also the author of "The One-Straw Revolution."
Posted by: cal Lash | July 17, 2014 at 12:20 PM
Wkg, our current drought is at 18 years and counting.
Posted by: Ruben | July 17, 2014 at 12:23 PM
WKG said:Trivia for no reason at all: Birmingham gets more rain than Seattle. Not much more – but more.
are "you all wet"
Posted by: cal Lash | July 17, 2014 at 12:24 PM
Cal,
I'm doing as my ancestors did.
I bugged out of the desert to the White mountains.
Next, we'll bug out to Colorado.
Rocky Mountain water and pot.
It'll be the pueblo life until the great spirit brings the rains to wash the piles of bones out of the Salt river valley.
Posted by: Ruben | July 17, 2014 at 12:34 PM
@Cal: When I first heard the statement (Seattle vs. Bham rain) my reaction was “BS”. But I checked it out and it is true. Seattle gets a lot of that grey, drizzly kind of rain that goes on for days. When it rains here – it really rains. Had seven inches in one night in my neighborhood a few months ago. Our main concern is too much rain.
@Ruben: 18 years. That would line up with the “pause” in the global warming trend.
@All: I don’t want to be an alarmist, but if I lived in Phoenix I’d have a Rubenesque exit strategy. First thing I’d do is make sure I don’t own any real estate.
Posted by: wkg in bham | July 17, 2014 at 01:10 PM
WKG: How about a house with wheels?
Posted by: cal Lash | July 17, 2014 at 01:17 PM
@Cal: 5th wheel my leading candidate for future.
Posted by: wkg in bham | July 17, 2014 at 01:23 PM
House on wheels, I know gas, ect.
but at a crippled 74 I cannot backpack across the nation as I once did. I would be the person the tribe left behind so the healthy could survive for another day.
I am slowly lightening my load for more efficiency by giving away my books.
I do have a FIT, a cot and a sleeping bag.
Posted by: cal Lash | July 17, 2014 at 01:24 PM
@Cal: Tried to lighten my load too. When I retired back in January I was taking in about 20 books a day and piling them on the counter near our centralized printer station. With a big sign: “Free. Help yourself”. I was taking in my good stuff – no pop novels. They just kept piling up. As near as I can tell young people just do not read. When they do it seems to be juvenile “vampire series” genre stuff.
Posted by: wkg in bham | July 17, 2014 at 01:45 PM
Water is all about Water Rights. My family owned property in Camp Verde that had a water right dating to 1885. we started selling it when houses were more profitable than alfalfa. the old saying "Water is for fighting - whiskey is for drinking." is still true today.
Posted by: ramjer | July 17, 2014 at 04:04 PM
Ramjet, the Satanist now claim a spot near your old homestead for thier Vortex. As do the New Age folks in Sedona.
Posted by: cal Lash | July 17, 2014 at 05:32 PM
Concern Troll wrote:
"Emil, you need to understand how the state has been cut out of the ability to do anything to curtail water rights..."
I took a look at the link you provided. Here's a verbatim quote:
"Proposition 207, a voter initiated ballot measure, entitles a property owners to just compensation if the value of a person’s property is reduced by the enactment of a land use law."
A law requiring farmers to convert to efficient drip irrigation from inefficient flood irrigation does NOT reduce the value of the owner's property. On the contrary, infrastructure improvements might well increase the land's value.
So, in my opinion, Arizona law does not prevent the sort of legal measures I suggested. Of course, I'm not an attorney specializing in water rights or land use law.
Concern Troll also wrote:
"And no way in hell would the Leg ever do anything that would cost billions of nonexistent tax payer dollars."
The legislature recently passed two sets of tax breaks which, according to their own joint budget committee, costs the state $1 billion dollars through their expected life (and what do you want to bet that life will be extended?).
Also, it isn't clear to me that my proposal would carry such a price tag. Perhaps I'm being obtuse, but could you spell this out for me? It's an interesting issue and might be worth a discussion.
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | July 19, 2014 at 04:56 PM
The three largest crops grown in az don't lend themselves to drip irrigation, cotton, alfalfa, wheat.
I' m a proponent and practitioner of drip irrigation. We would need to change our major crops. You know how well change is accepted in these parts.
Posted by: Ruben | July 19, 2014 at 06:01 PM
I have been told that Arizona cotton is a very important crop for Dairy Farmers as the cotton seed is about 40 percent protein. And of course alfalfa goes to the cows also. I just returned from the Casa Grande area after lunch with a Spaniard dairy farmer. There are over a 100,000 dairy cows in and around Casa Grande. The Wilcox area in SE Arizona has many more, including Japanese and Portuguese dairy farmers. More dairy farms can be found near Tacna, AZ and on towards Yuma, all these areas suffer from water shortages. I am told and it is less expensive to have a large dairy farm in the Midwest. If you would like to visit these areas, one can see very healthy looking cotton and corn surrounding the dairy farms. Currently the Salt River Gila Indians hold a number of important water rights as a result of congressional legislation
Posted by: cal Lash | July 19, 2014 at 11:17 PM
Emil,
I see that others have filled you in on what it means to become more efficient- spend serious money. Now, the Leg will give tax breaks all day long, but that regulation to force use of drip? That would have to be compensated- now if water costs a lot more, ag will leave anyway, because houses pay more to use the same damned water.
I admit to being an insider on this to some extent, so I can't point to the very specific stuff available without basically outing myself, and since I am vulnerable to the kookocracy, no way.
But trust me, take away any rights that exist, and the regulating body has to pay through the nose. And no way we are going to have any more real regulation at the state level.
Hence my devil will take the hindmost when it comes to water, and many people will learn in the coming decades that their houses are behind some of that wasteful agriculture, and tribal rights, and they will have to pay through the nose to keep the tap on.
Those guys growing cotton will eventually quit, and it will be replaced by more profitable crops- or the water will be sold to the houses.
Posted by: Concern Troll | July 20, 2014 at 09:02 AM
Concern Troll, Dairy Farming appears to be in trouble in the desert. The midwest is more profitable for Dairy farmers. I think its only a matter of time before Dairy farms begin to shrink in the desert. Of course the bottom line is water and dairy takes a lot of water.
Arizona legislatures have for the most part decided "rights" are more important than regulations. Hence the recent POLS have done as much as possible to weaken state regulatory
agencies. Such as ADEQ, Weights and Measures, etc. One no longer needs a permit to carry a concealed weapon and I know folks that believe they should not have to have a drivers license.
The desert will survive while the human population will shrink until the time of the Seri Indians return
Posted by: cal Lash | July 20, 2014 at 01:32 PM
First of all, note that agriculture uses 70 percent of the state's water, but contributes only 1.6 percent of the state's economic output.
Also note that "saving just 10 percent of the water currently dedicated to agriculture could mean water available for urban uses in support of 2 million additional people." (Or, for the same number of people, if climate change reduces available water. See below for sourcing.)
Ruben wrote:
"The three largest crops grown in az don't lend themselves to drip irrigation, cotton, alfalfa, wheat."
Apparently they do. According to the Grand Canyon Institute:
"One Arizona farm, the Howard Wuertz family’s Sundance Farms in Coolidge has used sub-surface drip irrigation for more than 40 years to farm primarily cotton and wheat. Recently, the Wuertzs began using drip irrigation on alfalfa, both conserving water and increasing yields. The drip system, including filter station and injection system for Arizona alfalfa production costs about $2,000 per acre, according to Wuertz, but pays for itself in three to five years."
Something else to consider: pound for pound, cattle raising for beef uses far more water than any other Arizona agricultural sector: about 15,000 liters per kilogram, versus less than 1,000 for fruits and about 300 for vegetables. The alfalfa and hay grown for cattle feed is a high-water demand product, compared to medium-demand products like cotton.
About 4 percent of Arizona farms account for 89 percent of agricultural water use, so it's Big Ag that is the major culprit. Thus, legislation requiring efficient irrigation could exempt the small farmer without sacrificing much water savings. That means anyone with less than 500 acres.
Source: Grand Canyon Institute Policy Paper: "The Third Way": Accommodating Agriculture and Urban Growth.
http://grandcanyoninstitute.org/research/third-way-accommodating-agriculture-and-urban-growth
Concern Troll wrote:
"Regulation to force use of drip...would have to be compensated".
You keep asserting this, but haven't backed up the claim thus far. If there is a precedent in case-law that applies, please cite it, with a link. In no way could this identify you personally, either to the kookocracy or to anyone else.
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | July 22, 2014 at 07:35 PM
Emil, excellent points. And I think in addition to Beef cattle you must include alfalfa for dairy cattle. And the dairys themselves use a lot of water.
Posted by: cal Lash | July 22, 2014 at 09:01 PM
Incidentally, here's a working link for that Grand Canyon Institute report:
http://kjzz.org/sites/default/files/GCI_Policy_ThirdWay_Agric&UrbanGrowth_Aug2012.pdf
Cal, as to dairy farms, I looked through the fine print (footnotes) in the GCI report referenced above, and it looks like they are very water intensive, though the total number of dairy farms (and thus the total water usage by such farms) is more limited.
"For cattle feedlots, the amount of water allowed is 30 gallons per animal per day, and for a dairy, 105 gallons/day for a lactating animal and 20 gallons/day for a non-lactating
animal."
Of course, most dairy cows would be lactating.
Still, one might contrast this with urban water use. Even for the city of Tucson, which has a good conservation record for urban areas in Arizona, per capita use is 130 gallons per day. Of course, that includes all city water use, including industrial, not just residential water use.
The report also gives a footnoted figure for the "water footprint" used by various farming sectors, in a form that makes it even clearer how water intensive cattle farming is:
"This equates to about 4078 gallons of water for every 2.2 pounds of meat. For vegetables, this equates to about 85 gallons for every 2.2 pounds of product and for fruits, 254 gallons for every 2.2 pounds."
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | July 23, 2014 at 05:37 PM
I appreciate this post very much, Jon. It is enormously frustrating to watch no-brainer water conservation efforts (covered irrigation canals, anyone?) be ignored by leadership and a populace more willing to pay their monthly Netflix bill than invest in infrastructure that could circumvent the impending drought panic.
Posted by: Diane D'Angelo | August 11, 2014 at 11:17 AM