Bad bill undermines responsible water law
Arizona’s Groundwater Management Act mandates the kind of careful planning an arid and fastgrowing state needs for sustainable economic progress. Any changes made to reflect the urbanization of rural areas need to be done carefully to avoid 1) undermining this law, 2) depleting groundwater supplies and/or 3) creating unsustainable developments.
A measure in the Legislature fails all three tests.
SB 1309 limits how the Arizona Department of Water Resources or ADWR can make rules in Pinal County when agricultural water rights are transferred for non-agricultural uses. In other words, when water for farming becomes water for a subdivision.
Kathleen Ferris, Phoenix water attorney and a former director of the ADWR, says it is a “terrible bill.”
Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy, said, “If we are going to make changes, we need to do it carefully with the goals of the active management area and the Groundwater Management Act in mind.”
This bill is careless and oblivious to the larger goals of smart water management.
Because the goal for the Pinal Active Management Area was to preserve farming and the rural economy, agricultural uses get favored treatment. Farmers using grandfathered irrigation rights can continue to do so in perpetuity.
But new non-agricultural developments have to show a 100-year water supply.
Farmers who want to convert their groundwater rights for development or sell those rights can do so by transferring them to water credits. The law anticipates that the resulting subdivisions will work toward using sustainable nongroundwater sources.
To encourage that — and in recognition that groundwater resources are being depleted — rules for the Prescott, Phoenix and Tucson Active Management Areas systematically reduce the amount of water credits given when grandfathered irrigation rights are retired.
That's because groundwater could not sustain the level of use if agricultural rights were simply transferred to subdivisions.
SB 1309 would ban such rules for Pinal County — despite the fact that local leaders had asked the ADWR to help assure that groundwater would be available for future use.
Despite the fact that ADWR was created by state statute and given the mandate to implement the Groundwater Management Act. Promulgating rules is how that is done.
Warren Tenney, executive director of the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association, said it is “critical for ADWR to have that authority.”
A similar measure to circumvent needed groundwater rules was introduced in the Senate earlier this year, where it died. SB 1309 is a strike-everything amendment being pushed in the late days of the session. It should die, too. It requires a one-for-one transfer of water rights to non-agricultural uses — even though there may not actually be enough groundwater to sustain that level of use for the long term.
It means subdivisions could be built with water that exists only on paper.
SB 1309 is being presented as a way to protect the water rights of farmers. It’s not.
Tenney explained why his group opposes the bill in a letter to House Speaker J.D. Mesnard, saying SB 1309 would “have a severe impact on remaining agricultural users by depleting groundwater supplies.”
The bill “sets a dangerous precedent of interfering with the goals of the Groundwater Management Act to the detriment of the state,” Tenney writes.
It’s a bad bill.