Arizona has a sordid history of fraud, predating the predations of Ned Warren, whose land frauds in the 1960s and 1970s bilked hundreds of millions of dollars from gullible Americans. It continued through with the East Valley mafia's "alt fuels" scandal of the early 2000s and the big blowup with the Ponzi scheme of the housing bubble.
The relatively new racket, on a trajectory for crisis, concerns water. Last month, Arizona Republic reporter Rebekah L. Sanders produced a blockbuster about "water haulers" apparently stealing city of Phoenix water from hydrants for delivery to hundreds of residents in New River. Meanwhile, this entire area is seeing the ground water in its meager aquifers diminish as more people move in. New River grew by more than 40 percent, to 15,000, from 2010 to 2015.
Earlier this month, the Republic's Dustin Gardiner reported a fascinating story about Pinal County's complex but unsettling water situation:
So far, according to the Arizona Department of Water Resources, 15 proposed projects in the Pinal County area have received letters from the state notifying them that groundwater necessary for their projects could be in short supply.
It's likely the first time the state has sent such letters, but state officials say there is no reason to panic.
Of course officials would say that. And they're right, after their fashion. Panic isn't enough.
This momentous news likely passes by most Phoenix residents who, thanks to the mighty acts of earlier generations and copious amounts of federal funding, can turn on their tap, flush their toilet, and take a dip in the swimming pool without ever giving a thought to where the water comes from. America is incapable of such feats today. All we can do is move money around and pick the carcass of national wealth that it took more than a century to create. And Arizona lacks even this get-up-and-go.
But pay attention. One thing the wildcat subdivisions north of Phoenix and the subdivisions of Pinal County do is fatally undermine a key argument of suburban apologist (and water lawyer) Grady Gammage: That water apportionment and scarcity would necessarily make development contained, contiguous, and relatively orderly. So much for that.
On to New River. When I was young, there was no "unincorporated community" — only the dry river of the same name. And for good reason: There was no water. But in the past decade or so, gullible people have been sold houses (by whom? permitted by whom?) expecting water to be as easy peasy as in Boone, Iowa, or Edina, Minn. Suckers. Now they, and the "water haulers," are actually claiming to be victims of the big, bad city of Phoenix. These houses never should have been built. Somebody profited and is long gone.
Pinal County has been an unsustainable water mess for decades. This has been because of ground-water pumping, first for agriculture and then for sprawl. So bad is the problem that subsidence, land sinking into drying aquifers, is common. The subdivisions never should have been allowed — certainly not in the incoherent mess they assumed, and with no infrastructure or impact fees. But the marginal taxes developers paid to local government greased the way. Never was the question adequately answered: If groundwater irrigation is unsustainable there, how can tract houses, swimming pools, and championship golf be sustainable?
Along with settling tribal water rights as part of the Central Arizona Project, Pinal County's trouble was a major driver of the Groundwater Management Act of 1980. It required that industrial users not served by a municipal system use renewable supplies and replenish any groundwater that they pumped. New residential development outside of the Salt River Project was to be on farmland with existing water rights. It required the famous "100-year supply" be guaranteed. The latter is often misunderstood. Yes, the state was kicking the can down the road, hoping that in the coming decades some technological solution, such as desalination plants, might come online. But the goal was also to get these new developments off groundwater and on the supposedly renewable supplies from the CAP (for newcomers, it's pronounced see-a-pee, not like a baseball cap).
Unfortunately, the law has plenty of loopholes and Phoenix has scores of clever water lawyers skilled at exploiting them. The law intended for Arizona to reach "safe yield" by 2025, where groundwater would be much less needed and where pumped would be done so without causing environmental harm. Unfortunately, we're little closer to safe yield as when the act was passed, thanks to overdevelopment and regulators pressured to look the other way (my sources in the Department of Water Resources say this is a common and scandalous occurrence). The Active Management Areas (AWA) have been overwhelmed by shady but well-connected developers. And situations such as New River have been allowed to proliferate. Most of the state is not even subject to the more rigorous oversight of AWAs. Among them: The Verde Valley and Flagstaff. Remember, after the scare of Prop 202 in 2000, which would have imposed growth boundaries, the real-estate playerz platted every inch of private land for development.
The 1980 law couldn't anticipate the effects of climate change and subsequent Legislatures have been full of people who deny settled science on the issue. Among the consequences is to place renewable water supplies from the Colorado and Salt rivers at risk. This is a red alert not only for the metropolitan and exurban expansions made possible by the CAP, but even for the Salt River Valley proper, that most rare place on the planet. a "wet desert" where four rivers converge. It was this unique circumstance that made possible the Hohokam civilization and the American Eden that was old Phoenix.
Even if there was federal money and will, other states won't allow a second CAP canal. Desalination would require the kind of federal investment that is long gone in the Trump era. Instead, the state remains wedded to population growth at all costs. And those costs are going to rise exponentially. Their consistent message: Shut up about water. Arizona's water situation is indeed complex, not so simple as "we're running out of water." But the Real Estate Industrial Complex and its elected and "think tank" stooges use that complexity to hide the truth. New River is only the beginning.
In nuclear war, something that should be on everyone's mind today, command-and-control systems operate by two philosophies: fail-safe or fail-deadly. So it is with Arizona's water. And decades of rackets and lies have ensured things will be fail deadly.
Not just Arizona, the Pacific Northwest has problems pumping too much ground water also, but some districts in NE Oregon are actively doing ground water recharge systems to put water back into the aquifers.
My brother has put in several as well as making the use of water more "efficient" but there is still a long ways to go since many times the old treaties allocate more water to be used than there is available.
Some areas have a lot of non-permitted wells and everyone is in a race to go deeper and get theirs before the water goes away or someone wakes up and enforces responsible usage and shuts down the non-permitted wells
A mess for sure no matter how one looks at water. Even Seattle had water rationing some years back because of snowpack failure, that was ironically the same year we had major flooding and sunk one of our floating bridges that was being repaired.
Posted by: Mike | October 17, 2017 at 05:02 PM
A Ponzi scheme indeed. How will those poor homeowners pay the recharge fees they will be left holding? I predict many will simply walk away and leave the keys at the bank holding the mortgage. Many of these wildcat developments will be abandoned ghost towns in the 2020s.
Posted by: Michael Byan | October 17, 2017 at 06:03 PM
What is my incentive for water conservation, lacking any coherent approach to do so? My mantra has been, I'm using whatever water I want, because anything conserved will just allow another developer to continue exploitation. The sooner the day of reckoning arrives, the better.
Posted by: DoggieCombover | October 18, 2017 at 11:48 AM
Recently hiked in the Verde Valley to see how groundwater pumping has lowered the Big Chino aquifer. I understand the historic source was at Del Rio Springs, but is now a few miles "downstream" at Verde Springs. The Town of Prescott has plans for new pumping stations as well. Similarly, the San Pedro River is vulnerable to pumping for development in its watershed including Buena Vista. These are Arizona's two remaining undammed rivers, much deserving of protection.
Posted by: Tony Winters | October 18, 2017 at 02:18 PM
This "water" issue will continue to bedevil the willfully ignorant global warming deniers--who are the huge majority in Arizona. The main reason this "drying up" exists is because of capitalism run irresponsibly amok with its carbon and methane emissions. This is simply the manifestation of Isaac Newton's saying, "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." to put it another way (as in the Chiffon margarine commercial), "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature." When the Earth makes a move, we humans are quite feeble and powerless. Capitalists, the free lunch isn't free: Payback's a %#&*@!
Posted by: Bradley Dranka | October 18, 2017 at 06:13 PM
Death to the water thieves! SRP will.tap the LDS mafia to run off the heathens making bank off the Saintly bleed the beast scheme. New River is populated mostly with that special kind of Arizona krank that hates gub’ment, loves their guns and trucks, and screams the loudest when skinned by the REIC.
Careful Rogue, Roscoe Jr. and Crow might go Seattle to lay a new trap for ya!
Posted by: Jerry | October 18, 2017 at 08:19 PM
Jerry is Very insightful
Posted by: Cal Lash | October 18, 2017 at 11:02 PM
The sound of Trump and developers sucking ground water.
http://www.hcn.org/articles/water-trumps-blm-bureau-of-land-management-clears-a-hurdle-for-controversial-cadiz-project?utm_source=wcn1&utm_medium=email
And
http://www.hcn.org/articles/monuments-in-congress-rob-bishop-threatens-national-monuments-face-another-attack?utm_source=wcn1&utm_medium=email
Posted by: Cal Lash | October 19, 2017 at 03:37 PM
However State of Washington fights back.
Denies water permit for coal boys
http://www.hcn.org/articles/latest-more-pushback-against-coal-export-terminals?utm_source=wcn1&utm_medium=email
Posted by: Cal Lash | October 19, 2017 at 03:45 PM
So I have a friend who is up on water issues and her advice is do not buy land in Pinal County as they have last dibs on CAP water and groundwater tables are dropping. In New River some people have wells and others drilled for water but came up dry and had to haul water from a nearby (!) source in Scottsdale on Dynamite Road. Said Scottsdale fore-warned them that the tap would/will be turned off (I think it is but not sure) as their water resources are looking to be stretched by the West’s Most Western Town’s continued growth. So New River turned to Phoenix and got the thumb down again. So they are paying haulers an ever increasing premium for water. It costs about $1500 to fill a pool! Also Rio Verde is increasingly in the same boat as New River.
Posted by: Jerry | October 20, 2017 at 07:36 PM
I feel there's a lot of people, not just in Arizona, that think this issue will somehow magically right itself. They choose to willfully ignore what all the scientists say about the dire consequences ahead from our profligate use of fossil fuels, instead pinning their hopes on the idea that the scientists are somehow in a conspiracy to either constrict our way of life or have some kind of animus toward American freedom. As these climate changes pile up, as they will on ascending parabolas of temperature increase, storm ferocity increase, and rising sea level, these skeptics will become the worst zealots (as the newly converted usually are), but by then, it may very well be to late.
Posted by: Bradley Dranka | October 22, 2017 at 05:50 PM
Thank you Jerry for the background.
We won't literally run out of water, as farmers will fallow their fields once water prices make it worth their while to sell water rather than farm, but like all commodities, it surely will get more expensive.
I read an article in the Republic a few weeks ago about how the Colorado River Indian Communities are exploring possible ways they could monetize and sell their their tremendous water allocation, rather than using it via a leaky canal system to irrigate crops.
We shall see over time how scarcity drives investments in efficiency. No one cares when water's cheap; once it becomes expensive, people will start to care.
Posted by: Mark in Scottsdale | October 31, 2017 at 12:13 AM