Pushing the Pinal envelope

I attended kindergarten in Coolidge. Back then it was a compact town of 5,000 people. It boasted a charming little Spanish-style railroad depot on the Southern Pacific, with six passenger trains and many freight trains a day. My uncle showed me how to place a penny on the tracks to be mashed under a passing train.

Pinal County was home to about 63,000 people, most working in agriculture. Florence, the county seat, had a population of about 2,100, Casa Grande, another compact desert town on the SP, held 8,300, Eloy 4,900, and the remote crossroads of Maricopa a few hundred. Even then, Pinal County had a water problem: It was almost exclusively dependent on pumping groundwater. Coolidge Dam in neighboring Gila County wasn't enough for Pinal County's water needs even in 1960.

Fast forward to today. Pinal County holds an astonishing 447,000 people — more than the city of Phoenix in 1960. Maricopa alone (above) had an estimated population of more than 50,000 as of last year. This once-rural, once-distant county has become a Phoenix bedroom community — except the passenger trains are long gone. And, contrary to one of the key goals of the Central Arizona Project and Arizona Groundwater Management Act of 1980, it's still dependent on pumping from ever-diminishing aquifers.

Anyone who has been paying attention knows this is a crisis in the making. But there are two kinds of "anyones": The few natives — as rare as unicorns, someone noted — and the Real Estate Industrial Complex, which has been pulling off one of the most shameful hustles in the West here.

The cat jumped out of the bag recently, as the Arizona Republic reported on a presentation by state Department of Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke:

Pinal is one of the “active management areas” under Arizona’s groundwater law, where new subdivisions are required to have what officials deem to be an “assured water supply” for 100 years. The state’s updated groundwater model for Pinal found that there isn’t enough water to meet all the projected demands, even though the state had previously issued initial analyses for dozens of planned subdivisions indicating they would likely have a 100-year-supply...

"Looking out 100 years, there is insufficient groundwater in the Pinal active management area to support all existing uses and issued assured water supply determinations," Buschatzke said. 

In February, the newspaper had reported on the "recipe for disaster" from inadequate water in Pinal County. This isn't new, either. I wrote about it in the 2000s as a Republic columnist, one of the sins that cost me that column. A well-placed source in the Department of Water Resources detailed the concealment of the problem and the ability of developers to arrange for shady work-arounds. People should be in prison.

The vaunted 100-year supply — a grand hustle itself — needs some explaining. It was a requirement that grew out of the 1980 act, but the intention was to use that time to wean newly developed areas onto Central Arizona Project (CAP) water. It hasn't happened, certainly not in Pinal County, and the decades are ticking away. Officials cynically avoid the reality that too many straws are in the Colorado River — so forget the notion that the federal government would build a second CAP canal. Or that federal taxpayers would fund desalination plants.

You can see the consequences traveling between Phoenix and Tucson in Interstate 10 — the ugliest drive in America. Where cheap housing, walls, and dead outlet malls aren't proliferating around Casa Grande (far from its old town center), the land looks dead. Subsidence is a constant problem, sometimes swallowing houses.

Meanwhile, a new ASU report shows how developers have been essentially cheating on water requirements and it's unsustainable.

The canard that replacing cotton fields with subdivisions would be a net water win has long been disproved. The "calculation" didn't take into account that these developments want swimming pools, saunas, luxury baths, lakes, and championship golf. And it made the situation sound similar to Phoenix. Except Pinal County is not in a well-watered river valley with abundant (not unlimited) renewable water supplies from the Salt River Project's dams and lakes.

Pinal's water situation was already grave in 1960, before a single "master planned community" was erected. This didn't stop every little town since the turn of the century from encouraging massive construction of tract housing in leapfrog exurban sprawl (a ghastly Walmart sits across from Casa Grande National Monument). The minimal fees they accrued were not enough to even provide adequate infrastructure, much less address water needs. It gets worse along Hunt Highway with the Johnson developments along a two-lane road with privately-owned and troubled utilities.

The slo-mo crisis in Pinal County is being replicated all over the state, not least in the proposal to build a massive, car-dependent sprawlapalooza outside of Benson, destroying the last free-flowing river in the Southwest. And nobody with power — the Legislature most of all — is stopping it. The media are both-sidesing or shallow-covering the dangers to the point of meaningless.

The economic and political interests strip-mining Arizona through real-estate sprawl never get past the first of the famous five stages of grief and loss. They're stuck on denial. This is leavened with misinformation and techno-magic dreams. Rip out more shade trees and grass in central Phoenix! We can drink our pee! Just change the rules! Elon Musk! The boobs from the Midwest that bought those faux Spanish-Tuscan crapola houses will be dead and we'll be rich, outside the jurisdiction and statute of limitations when the jig is up! None but the last has so much as a one-night-stand relationship with reality. A reality most defined by climate change that Arizona's car-dependence helps worsen. 

In 2000, Proposition 202 was put on the ballot. The initiative would have imposed real, although very ample, urban growth boundaries. Through much of the year, polling showed strong support for the measure. The Real Estate Industrial Complex panicked and mobilized all hands to defeat it, whether through high-toned propaganda or thuggish intimidation. And down it went, tarred as a lefty "Sierra Club proposal" that would destroy the economy. (My point at the time: If this were true given the broad development that would still be allowed, then Phoenix and Arizona were way too dependent on sprawl).

In any event, after that scare the real-estate cabal platted every square inch of private land for development, needing only capital and pliant local officials. Water? Don't worry. The permits are being taken care of...

Arizona is past overshoot on population, especially the way it's dispersed. The tragicomic results will first play out in Pinal County when the taps start going dry.

 

 

Comments

[Thomas Klabunde]

I'll repeat my letter to the editor published in the Republic this past weekend concerning Arizona water policy. It rests firmly on three principles: unwarranted assumptions, exuberant optimism, and denial.

[Joe]

If the price of water is commensurate with its scarcity, or lack thereof, then water will flow. Albeit, it might not be as ample or cheap as it is today.

[Mark in Scottsdale]

Agreed with Joe. There is incredible waste involved in the transportation of water, the storage of water and the use of water are staggering, both in the West and in places like the City of New York, about which a New Yorker article was written in 2003 that I found fascinating: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/09/01/city-of-water.

I think the decades of inaction show that only market forces will ever effect change on this issue because water is still extremely cheap and it's just so hard to win votes by talking about this issue.

We've seen in the remarkably subsident Central Valley of California (some of which has subsided over 10 feet in the last century century) that nothing seems to be able to stop groundwater pumping, even in one of the most liberal states in the union. The pumping is even more unrestrained in Ogallala states.

Water is absolutely an essential for life, but less than 1% of the water we purchase from our municipalities enters our bodies.

It is wasted because it is cheap and easy to waste. I don't think it is out of any spite or forethought by water users; it's just so cheap and easy they don't think much about it. I imagine once it becomes more expensive, people will be more invested in making concerted efforts at water conservation.

My biggest water-related concern isn't running out of water for human or agricultural use, but the byproducts of the changes in our water system, such as the environmental disaster that is a shrinking Salton Sea. This problem exists in part because farmers are wasting less water and so the lake is shrinking ever faster.

I believe the Salton may be one of the biggest water-related threats to our health and well-being. The health impacts of the air quality in Imperial County have already proven to be devastating and I fear it could spread to other places, like the Valley.

As market forces lead more effective conservation of water, secondary consequences will emergy all over the region and I am sure humanity hasn't even anticipated all of them yet.

[Tricia Gerrodette]

Not only did they plat every square inch, they removed the ability of counties to actually do land use planning. Property could not be downzoned without the owner's permission.

[Cal Lash]

Tricia, Thank you for all your intensive activity in trying to save the planet from concrete and asphalt.
I look forward to moving
back to a place
near the San Pedro River.

[Norm W]

I'd pay to see Elon Musk drink his pee...

[DoggieCombover]

Jon,I am curious about your statement that "The canard that replacing cotton fields with subdivisions would be a net water win has long been disproved."

Can you cite a source for this? I don't believe this is correct. Although they would never admit it publicly, in my dealings with SRP over the years it, it's implicit in their management. There has never been much pressure on water supplies despite decades of drought.

In fact, AZ uses less water than it did 60 years ago: https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environment/2019/02/12/arizona-water-usage-state-uses-less-now-than-1957/2806899002/

SRP acknowleges as much in that article. When I think about a cotton field that requires 7 feet of water to grow a crop, I can't grasp that urban use comes anywhere close to that.

[Cal Lash]

Well Doggie just envision Arizona as a Roadless Wilderness rather than an place over ran by humans.
And
If you plan on shopping at the Fry's in AJ,i suggest you go about 10pm. An hour ago the parking lot had no asphalt parking spaces left including the folks sitting in their idling vehicles waiting for store staff to bring their groceries out.
They are back! The soil bankers, the snowbirds and thousands of questionably legal Canadians.
Ajo looks better every day.
PS, doggie once upon a time one could float a boat up the San Pedro River from Mexico to San Manuel AZ.
And as for SRP and the like to get the facts you need a CI not a PIO.

[Cal Lash]

Pushing the Malthus.
Push past the gibberish to the comments section.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2019/october/against-malthus

[Cal Lash]

In the Rogue Phoenix and Arizona news column, Mesa is building a 70 million dollar pipe to the Salt River Indigenous Nation. This will allow Mesa to keep sprawling as it is still the practice that it takes at least five (5) kids to get into Heaven.

[Citizen AllenM]

LoL- I worked on this issue from 2005-2015, and we all knew that delaying the phaseout of the water credits from agriculture would make the long term situation untenable, but hey, the speculators gotta dance. Even DWR staff would comment off the record that the delay was entirely political, and absolutely not based on the science.

The real truth is the value of the land falls with every overdraft of water supply by those idiot farmers, but then they gotta do *something* to stay afloat while they await the great subdivision investor morons.

The real truth is agriculture in Pinal County is doomed, as it is throughout Arizona beyond using surplus water from the canals in Wellton. And the houses are the end game- and then splat when the water shuts off in Johnsonville.

Meanwhile, they fantasize about buying CRIT water, or pumping more recharged water, LOL.

Go back and see the unspoken stuff, and you realize it is simply the longest scam, and the insiders will become very rich, while the old retirement suckers will have their water rationing.

2030 is when the jig is up, and the AzRep soft pedaled the report, which wasn't critical enough.

[Cal Lash]

Thanks Allen.
And the Arizona Republic management of the news began its decline of strong investigative reporting in 76. Its a mere shadow with very few real reporters.
Even Benson is gone.
Ah yes it was a great time at the old building loading docks. The smell of newsprint an Nick Kondora yelling at the drivers and loaders to get loaded and down the road so readers could have their paper and coffee in the rising sun.

[Roger]

I changed careers to get into this arena over a year ago.
Let's see ... the cotton fields to suburbs is a push in the legislature to authorized a 'farm to municipal' transition that would bypass the 100 year assured water supply designation requirement.

Amazing how when we need regulation the most, these guys are trying to roll it back.

The group in Pinal that is supposed to be a meeting of local stakeholders is more or less a gathering of real estate developers and Rep David Cook. A conspiracy was floated that the Governor was being bought off by the Gila River Indian Community so he would support them over the white people in the county.

If anyone cared, I think a good solution would be to establish Coops between the cities and the farming communities. The cities could provide resources like electricity and better irrigation equipment and the farms would send the majority of their crops to the cities (or to dairy farms/chicken farms/etc that would feed the cities as well).

There are no more new sources of water. It's time to stop those pipe dreams and start looking at a cultural change. But I know that business and the 2 political parties are all about extracting all they can from this state.

Pinal is doomed, I fear. They already announced they will mine water until depletion.

Cal- azmirror.com is (Steve) Benson's new home. Great stuff there. Benson's Corner is a state treasure, I think.

[Cal Lash]

Thanks Rog. You ole timer!

[Nicole]

Phoenix, we have a problem.

[Victoria Martinez]

You know Corrine is not Caesar zuniga mom of grandmother ..my name is Victoria Martinez I'm Caesar Zuniga mom and I'm Juan Zuniga mom . I'm the person who is lawsuiting on Gila Pima goverment and Indian federal . And on State of Arizona government and federal and on Mexico and Caribbean . And the reason for the land property and natral resources that belong to us AD aztecs Teotihuancan born in Arizona State not Born in Mexico ... Mexico and Indians and white and Caribbean are fraudulent .I notified embassies of United States and British embassies.cause of Arizona State and Texas fraudulent activity of years ...cause of what is a state under color ...the drama is that they tell black people something else , when it's only about terriost in State , a United States code , State under color. The government lies so United States citizens won't sue the government in United States. I been waiting for my son's that our in Arizona State prison Tucson and Winslow to send me papers back to take it to court where I already filed a lawsuit at. Yesterday alot of airplanes arrived in Arizona State sky harbor airport in Arizona State. The airplanes were from other countries and United States. That's okay mother fuckerz you want to lie on us United States citizens . Just cause you all want to call the next people a United States citizen or a AD aztec Teotihuancan United States citizen. Fuck you Mexico for stealing are AD Aztec tenitichuan templos artifacts . Fuck this world for the lies your government is . Fuck you George W Bush for the lies fuck you Joaquin Guzman and Raphael Caro Quientero and Gila salt Pina otham Indians . My two sons are not a illegal alien .you knew about Arizona State and the Arizona State Capital building was my AD Aztec real family and Antonio Santa Rosa was not a Mexico president. My real mom and dad is not Corrine and martin or Jesse . Bogota is not a AD Aztec civilization the only AD Aztec civilization is born in Arizona State . Not Bogota . In Arizona State capital building there's a picture of a woman name Guadalupe Hildalgo that says she was born in Mexico ..liars..water settlement was included in our AD aztecs settlement before concentration camps were in 1500 1800 1909 1930 1945 .all AD aztecs we're United States citizen. Mexico stop lying . Bogota stop lying. Fuck you Tijuana Mexico for lies ..cause there is some not all.only some in Tijuana that fled there around concentration camps time . Theres about 10 or 12 them . My son's Juan and Caesar shouldn't have suffered in the state Arizona where there born in Arizona State cause of this fued of land property and resources of funds money ..I know my great great grandfather and great grandfather pasqual shouldn't suffered or my real mom and dad shouldn't suffered in a 1930 1800 1700 in a concentration camps. Me me too..I shouldn't have suffered in a concentration camps also ...I have so much proof of it....fuck you dumb ducey and Indians government. Fuck worldwide