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PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                       CONTACT: Sally Stewart Lee 

Jan. 16, 2019                                                                                        PHONE: 602.771.8530

Enormous water conservation symbol on display through January

PHOENIX – Do you know how much water you use daily? You may be surprised at the number. The symbol of the long-running water-conservation campaign — “Water – Use It Wisely” – clearly demonstrates that number and will be on display in the Executive Tower through January. (Image attached.)

The symbol, a tower of one-gallon jugs, is 16 feet tall and shows that on average an Arizona resident uses 120 gallons of water a day. The campaign is a partnership of 20 local municipalities and organizations working to bolster water conservation efforts in Arizona communities. The Arizona Department of Water Resources is a Steering Committee partner of this regional campaign.

See also:

• https://wordpress.com/post/azwaternews.com/1383
• https://new.azwater.gov/news/articles/2019-14-01

For more information regarding this matter, please contact Public Information Officer Sally Stewart Lee at [email protected] or (602) 771-8530.

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The imposing “Water – Use It Wisely” tower – a 16-foot tall pyramid of one-gallon water jugs – is now on display in the Executive Tower lobby.

The display reflects Governor Ducey’s expressed commitment to water issues during the current legislative session. Those include protecting the Colorado River system, as well as emphasizing the theme of the long-running Water – Use It Wisely campaign, which is to bolster water conservation efforts in Arizona communities.

Constructed from 120 water jugs, the tower represents a physical depiction of the amount of water – 120 gallons – that the average person in Arizona consumes daily.

Typically, that use includes seven gallons consumed either by drinking or cooking, 14 gallons used by shower or bath, 15 gallons by toilets, 18 gallons used up daily by household cleaning such as washing machines or dishwashers, and 66 gallons used daily for outdoor uses such as watering lawns and plants.

The tower will be on display at the Executive Tower at 1700 W. Washington St. through the month of January.

The Water – Use It Wisely campaign is a two-decade partnership among Arizona communities and organizations dedicated to providing Arizonans with meaningful tools for efficiently limiting water waste.

The Arizona Department of Water Resources is a Regional Campaign Steering Committee partner of the campaign.

For further information about the Tower, see:

ADWR Public Information Officer Sally Stewart Lee

[email protected] or (602) 771-8530

 

In delivering his second Inaugural Address today, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey told the audience at the State Capitol that the time has come to “press forward on some of the biggest challenges facing us.”

“Because none of us came here to do little things — we came here to do the things that matter, big things — and we can do them together.”

Among those big things the Governor identified was securing the State’s water future. Specifically, Governor Ducey called on lawmakers and stakeholders to take action on protecting the State’s Colorado River water supplies.

“We cannot kick the can any further,” he said.

Governor Ducey’s comments on Arizona water security, in full:

Our duty is to leave this state in far better shape than we found it — and we are well on our way.

These are the tasks before us. And if there’s any question of how Arizonans expect us to solve these problems, I’d say, look around. Taking the oath with me today are Republicans and Democrats – all hired by the same electorate.

When conversations stall, as they sometimes do during difficult discussions, we let history be our guide and the hand that lifts us back up.

Nearly four decades ago, in 1980, Arizona’s accelerated water consumption forced a sobering ultimatum from the federal government: reform or suffer severe water cutbacks.

The can could not be kicked any further.

But Arizona’s history is not one of missed opportunities or efforts that came up short. Rather we find, that in the darkest times, Arizona’s pioneering spirit shines the brightest.

Democrats and Republicans rose above party labels. They brought skeptical and reluctant stakeholders to the table. And they acted – and they did it with good faith and honest intentions.

For the people in this crowd and many across our state, I don’t have to spell out the parallel circumstances in which we find ourselves today.

It’s simple. Arizona and our neighboring states draw more water from the Colorado River than mother nature puts back. And with a critical shortfall imminent, we cannot kick the can any further.

It’s going to mean rising above self-interest, and doing the right thing. It means taking the action our past and future generations demand.

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                CONTACT: Sally Stewart Lee 

Dec. 20, 2018                                                                                          PHONE: 602.771.8530

Arizona Department of Water Resources conducts “basin sweep” to collect water-level measurements in the Pinal Active Management Area

PHOENIX – Beginning the week of December 10, 2018, and continuing approximately through the end of January 2019, the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) will be conducting an extensive effort to measure water levels in wells in the Pinal Active Management Area (AMA).

ADWR staff will attempt to measure water levels at hundreds of wells in the Pinal AMA.  This survey of area wells – or basin “sweep,” as it is known — will be the first such basin survey of the area since 2013. The data collected will be used for several purposes, including:

• analysis of water-level trends
• groundwater modeling
• water-level change maps
• hydrologic reports and
• water resource planning and management.

Every year the Department’s hydrologists collect water levels in a statewide network of about 1,600 to 1,800 “index” wells that have typically been measured annually over the last several decades. Also each year, the Department targets at least one area of the State for a more intensive “sweep,” which provides a deeper dive into regional groundwater conditions.

The involvement of well-owners in sweeps is entirely voluntary. ADWR greatly appreciates the cooperation of well owners who participate in the well survey.

For more information regarding this matter, please contact Public Information Officer Sally Stewart Lee at [email protected] or (602) 771-8530.

 

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The Water for Arizona Coalition, a group comprising Arizonans who support policies and innovative practices to ensure a reliable water supply to meet the state’s needs, has released a statement  of support for the “Implementation Plan” that was unveiled at the November 29 Steering Committee meeting at Central Arizona Project headquarters.

The coalition singled out three tenets of the Implementation Plan that its members consider key:

• Governor Ducey’s pledge to allocate $30 million in funding for system conservation as a part of the implementation of DCP
• The readiness of the Walton Family Foundation and Water Funders Initiative to work in partnership with public funders and other stakeholders to fill the $8 million funding gap for system conservation in the Lower Basin
• The benefits of the proposed mitigation for the Colorado River system and water levels in Lake Mead

The coalition’s complete statement:

11.30.2018 Water for Arizona AZ DCP Statement

 

ADWR’s Clay Target Fun Shoot team: (from left) Norman Lew, Mark Perez, Paul Yunker, Jason Mitchell and John Riggins at the Ben Avery Shooting Facility in north Phoenix

ADWR employees participated in the 21st Annual State Employees Charitable Campaign Clay Target Fun Shoot held November 5 at the Ben Avery Shooting Facility in north Phoenix.

Proceeds from the event benefit Special Olympics of Arizona, Wildlife for Tomorrow and the Arizona Elk Society.  Although totals are not yet available this year, in previous years clay-target shoot has been one of the largest single-event fundraisers that the SECC sponsors.

Team members included ADWR employees John Riggins, Mark Perez and Jason Mitchell, as well as Norman Lew of the Department of Economic Security, and Paul Yunker, husband of ADWR’s Dianne Yunker.

Thanks to all the employees who donated their time and effort!

Since the dawn of modern science – since Copernicus struggled to bring around 16th century skeptics to his evidence of a heliocentric solar system – illustrating complex science to a general audience has proved challenging.

A century or so after Copernicus, Galileo and his famous telescope would (eventually, at least) help illustrate the Polish astronomer’s claim that the earth revolved around the sun, as opposed to the other way around.

Proving, in other words, that images matter. Text is good. Text and way-cool images? Even better.

Following in Galileo’s footsteps, researchers in the Arizona Department of Water Resources’ Hydrology Division have developed one of the department’s most visually appealing presentations ever:

A “story map” depicting land subsidence in the Willcox Groundwater Basin, where ADWR recently completed work on a comprehensive groundwater-flow model.

Focusing on the prevalence of land subsidence in the Willcox Basin, the story map uses interactive imagery as a compliment to textual descriptions of the area’s subsidence issues. Together, they paint (quite literally) a clear picture of the dramatic subsidence issues facing the region.

Produced for ADWR by GIS Application Developer Karen Fisher and Brian Conway, supervisor of the Geophysics/Surveying Unit, the “story map” brings together into a single, user-friendly package a wide assortment of the tools that hydrologists employ to analyze groundwater conditions.

“This story map is the first of hopefully other story maps that combine (geographic information system, or “GIS”) maps, data analysis, images/multimedia content, and a summary of various Water Resources topics in an easy to read format to tell a story,” said Conway.

Fisher said they selected the Willcox Basin as the subject of the story map due to the area “having the highest annual magnitude of land subsidence in Arizona,” as well as “a number of active earth fissures.”

Fisher designed the story map using ArcGIS mapping and analytics software, a product of Esri, a global market leader in GIS.

“Esri has story-map templates that they have been encouraging their users to use,” said Fisher.

“Brian and I both thought of the idea and wanted to highlight land subsidence in hope that it would inspire other groups at ADWR to put their projects into a story map.”

As described by Esri, story maps “are a simple yet powerful way to inform, engage, and inspire people with any story you want to tell that involves maps, places, locations, or geography.”

The web applications, the firm notes, “let authors combine beautiful maps with narrative text, striking images, and multimedia, including video.”

The narrative text is the other beauty of the ADWR land-subsidence story map.

Its text is general-audience friendly – scientifically precise while, at the same time, expressing the complex land-subsidence issues the map depicts clearly enough for a high-school age, would-be hydrologist to appreciate.

In addition to the direct link found above, the story map is available at the ADWR Hydrology eLibrary, which can be found here: https://new.azwater.gov/hydrology/e-library

Science is all about experimentation, and one of the more spectacular experiments in the movement of Colorado River sediment is set to begin in a matter of days.

Beginning November 5, the Department of Interior will begin a High-Flow Experiment (HFE) release of water out of Glen Canyon Dam, slowly ramping up the volume to 38,100 cubic feet per second, which it will maintain for 60 hours over three days.

The forceful water release is intended to mimic the floods that once drove enormous volumes of sand through the river canyons prior to the construction of Glen Canyon Dam, which rebuilt eroded sandbars downstream.

Those reconstituted, enlarged beaches serve a number of valuable purposes – from providing camping space for river-rafters to creating backwater habitat for native fish populations. The enlarged eddies and pools enhanced by those bigger sandbars also encourage the growth of riparian vegetation that provides habitat for birds and other wildlife.

The upcoming “HFE” release is the first under the newly minted 2016 Record of Decision for the Glen Canyon Dam, which provides a framework for adaptively managing Glen Canyon Dam over the next 20 years. The goal of the “ROD” is to create certainty and predictability for water and power users while protecting environmental and cultural resources in Grand Canyon National Park and the Colorado River ecosystem.

The high-volume water release experiment, meanwhile, is a component of the 1992 Grand Canyon Protection Act, which mandated that Glen Canyon Dam be operated in a manner that protects the values for which Grand Canyon National Park and Glen Canyon Recreational Area were established. The first-ever release was conducted in 1996. Known as the Beach Habitat Building Flow, it was designed to mimic the dynamics of a natural system, including building high-elevation sandbars, depositing nutrients, and restoring backwater channels.

Given its unprecedented mission – imitating the sediment-rich flood conditions of a pre-Glen Canyon Dam river – the HFE releases have been genuinely experimental, adapting and changing as more data were accumulated about their impact.

Release times are scheduled to coincide with the periods that its tributaries – the Paria and Little Colorado rivers – have deposited their largest volumes of sand into the Colorado River.

A lot of concerns factor into the timing of HFE releases. One of the primary concerns is avoiding spreading the seeds of non-native vegetation, such as tamarisk, whose seed production generally occurs between April and September.

The effort to improve habitat for native fish species is a work in progress, too. Early on, researchers found that the intensity of the releases actually worked to expand habitat for non-native trout, which fed on rare native species like the humpback chub.

These discoveries have been the cornerstone of the “adaptive management” strategies adopted by the Department of Interior for the Glen Canyon Dam. The USGS researchers – considered the architects of the HFE — have had to change their strategies of making maximum use of the HFE releases by changing and adapting as new scientific findings improved their understanding of how HFE releases affect the Colorado River ecosystem.

The releases by the Department of Interior are conducted in consultation with the Colorado River Basin States, including Arizona, as well as with Native American tribes, federal and state agencies and with input from Glen Canyon Adaptive Management Program stakeholders.

The Department reports that the HFE releases will not impact the total annual amount of water released from Lake Powell to Lake Mead in water year 2019.

The most visually stunning image of the C.C. Cragin Reservoir nestled within the deep canyons of the Mogollon Plateau uplands is that of the dense forests surrounding the picturesque man-made lake.

For the people charged with maintaining the reservoir – now a vital source of water for the city of Payson – the handsome forests are not a pretty sight.

“The threat of wildfire to our forests is real,” said Stephen Flora, a senior hydrologist for the Salt River Project during one of the “Water 101” series of presentations sponsored by the Arizona Department of Water Resources.

SRP manages the C.C. Cragin Reservoir on behalf of Paysonand other Rim communities that expect to rely on the 15,000-acre-foot facility. As recently as May 2018, the “Tinder Fire” burned more than 12,000 woodland acres near the reservoir.

“The area around the C.C. Cragin Reservoir is very overstocked,” said Flora. “The highly dense forest in that area is at very high risk for fire. And that could have a significant effect on our watershed.”

The two phenomenon – forested Arizona mountain watersheds and the mostly winter runoff that provides much of central Arizona’s water supplies – are intrinsically linked.

SRP is a primary water provider for much of central Arizona. As Flora illustrated with his presentation, the majority of SRP’s watershed is covered in dense forest land, which in the course of the lengthy Southwestern drought has become increasingly susceptible to destructive, crown-topping wildfires. Two mega-fires alone – the 2002 Rodeo-Chediski Fire and the 2011 Wallow Fire – consumed nearly 1 million acres of mostly Ponderosa pine forestland.

“The flooding that follows after those wildfires degrades water quality,” explained Flora. “There is significant loss of capacity in reservoirs, which means there is less available water storage.”

Flora noted two big efforts now under way to mitigate the potential for wildfire in critical areas of the eastern mountains of Arizona.

Both efforts involve thinning dense forestland such as that surrounding the C.C. Cragin Reservoir to so-called “pre-Columbian” densities. Forests that prior to the 19th century may have had as few as 30 to 50 pine trees per acre today often have up to 1,000 trees per acre. That tree density saps the moisture from the soil and leaves the dense stands of trees more vulnerable to wildfire.

One of those efforts that Flora described is the Four Forest Restoration Initiative, or “4FRI,” an ambitious forest-restoration project that includes forested lands in the Kaibab, Coconino, Apache-Sitgreaves and Tonto national forests.

Including 2.4 million acres overall, 4FRI is considered one of the biggest forest restoration projects ever undertaken in the United States.. While it enjoys wide support, 4FRI has been hampered over the years by technical, environmental and economic challenges.

“Treatment (of the forest) has been very slow,” said Flora.

The other major effort is focused in the 64,000 woodland acres surrounding the C.C. Cragin Reservoir.

The Forest Service announced in September its plans to take action to protect the Payson water supplies with a thinning project anticipated to take five years or more.

“We have a need for larger efforts to reduce the risk of fire,” said Flora.

While Arizona water managers and affected stakeholders have been meeting almost daily over the past several months to finalize the state’s Drought Contingency Plan (DCP), plans have been underway on a parallel track for several years to ensure the framework is in place for the entire Colorado River Basin DCP.

Chronic, often severe drought in the Southwest is seriously straining the Colorado River system. With Lake Powell less than half full and Lake Mead below 40 percent of capacity, the seven Colorado River states are preparing to act should Lake Mead continue falling toward critical surface levels. At the same time, some states – including Arizona – are developing drought contingency plans supporting intrastate needs to contend with future Colorado River shortages.

Last week, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation released drafts of the Upper Basin DCP and Lower Basin DCP documents. This gives the first glimpse at what will be included in the interstate agreement amongst the Upper Basin and Lower Basin states. These documents contain actions that are in addition to the provisions of the existing system-wide agreement, formally known as the Colorado River Interim Guidelines for Lower Basin Shortages and the Coordinated Operations for Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

According to the Bureau’s website:

• The Upper Basin DCP is designed to: a) protect critical elevations at Lake Powell and help assure continued compliance with the 1922 Colorado River Compact, and b) authorize storage of conserved water in the Upper Basin that could help establish the foundation for a Demand Management Program that may be developed in the future.
• The Lower Basin DCP is designed to: a) require Arizona, California and Nevada to contribute additional water to Lake Mead storage at predetermined elevations, and b) create additional flexibility to incentivize additional voluntary conservation of water to be stored in Lake Mead.

These documents show the interstate framework into which the intrastate (in our case, AZDCP) will fit. AZDCP work continues and we anticipate our intrastate implementation plan and framework will be completed by the end of November, prior to the December Colorado River Water Users Association meeting, at which point the entire plan will come together.

For more information on AZDCP, visit ADWR’s website or CAP’s website.

The Arizona Department of Water Resources held its annual “Fall Festival” celebration during the lunch hour on Thursday. Needless to say, a fun time was had by all.  In addition to caramel apples, cider and (the ubiquitous) hot dogs and popcorn, the Department employees held a pumpkin-decorating contest.

The “Most Creative” pumpkin? An absolutely precious offering from water-resources specialist (and, cat lover) Claire Jaramillo:

In addition, Mark Joyner of the Surface Water Rights division created the “Spookiest” pumpkin. For those of us knee-deep in the effort to conclude a Drought Contingency Plan, Mark’s offering was spooky, indeed:

Analysts on the scene calculated that, yes, the amount of water in Mark’s pumpkin was approaching… deadpool.

(Editor’s note: for readers not conversant in DCP-speak, the Bureau of Reclamation calculates a better-than 50-50 chance that water levels at Lake Mead will fall below 1,075 feet by 2020, triggering a Tier 1 shortage declaration. Should the reservoir some day fall below 1,025 feet, it would be entering the most serious shortage tier, Tier 3, and would be approaching levels at which water no longer would flow through the Hoover Dam spillways. Those worst-case-scenario levels – generally believed to be below 900 feet – are known as “deadpool.” Negotiations in Arizona on an in-state Drought Contingency Plan that would mitigate the most dire scenarios are underway.) 

The winners:

 

 

The professionals doing science-based work at the Arizona Department of Water Resources have taken their duties “live.”

Active Management Areas Planning Manager Natalie Mast and Hydrologist IV Brian Conway, who supervises the Geophysics-Surveying Unit, were featured in a recent segment of the STEM Pro Live! program, which selects professionals in science-related fields who share with students details about their jobs, as well as insight into the journey that led them into their respective science-oriented professions.

ADWR’s Brian Conway (left) and Natalie Mast prepare to respond to live viewer questions on “STEM Pro Live!”

Specifically, they have gone “STEM Pro Live!” Two ADWR team members with science backgrounds recently contributed to an innovative, interactive video project dedicated to piquing the interest of young students in the sciences.

In addition to a pre-recorded “profile” segment, the “STEM Pro Live!” program included a Q&A segment in which Mast and Conway responded directly to student questions.

The show’s producers estimated that about 900 students, mostly from Maricopa County schools, viewed the segment, which remains posted on the “STEM Pro Live!” website. The program has caught the attention of students from as far away as Hawaii and Michigan.

Student viewers watch as Mast and Conway answer their questions about the science they do at ADWR

“This (segment) was a ‘water cycle’ program,” explained Mast. “It showed how we track water and how that data feeds into water management and tells us how end-users use their water.”

The ADWR segment went over so well, according to the show’s producers, that they are planning another ADWR segment for next spring focusing on drought and conservation.

Now in its fifth season, “STEM Pro Live!” is produced by the Maricopa County Education Service Agency, a division of the Office of the Maricopa County Schools Superintendent.

According to Laurie King of the Maricopa County School Superintendent’s Office, the Superintendent’s office put together the idea for the STEM Pro Live! program after participating in research studying why so few students pursue STEM fields. “STEM” is an abbreviation of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

“We found that if students don’t have a STEM “ID” by the time they finish middle school, they’re unlikely to continue,” said King.

“A major part of it is a role model,” she said – meaning, STEM professionals who appear to have the same motivating interests or background as the students themselves.

“STEM Pro Live!” producer fielding student queries

“The student connects,” said King, adding that the district has seen “quite a bit” of an increasing in students pursuing higher level STEM courses as a result.

The students, she said, are saying that “if you can do this, I can do this too.”

“For me, the STEM Pro Live video project allowed me to remember a lot of the amazing teachers that I had between 4th and 12th grades, as well as the amazing adventures I had, and also challenges,” said Conway.

“I also have had two amazing jobs during and after college: wildland firefighter and hydrologist.

“I hope that the stories that Natalie and I told will inspire kids to want to learn about and enter the STEM fields.  I also hope that the stories that Natalie and I told about being outside a lot — hiking, etc. — will motivate kids to put down their electronic devices and go outside more.”

         

The Water Infrastructure Financing Authority of Arizona (WIFA) has recently redesigned its Technical Assistance Program and is now offering additional lending options. Communities that are contemplating their next water or waste­water infrastructure project, may benefit from what WIFA has to offer.

WIFA acts as a “bond bank” that is able to issue water quality bonds on behalf of communities for basic water infrastructure. The program is authorized to finance the construction, rehabilitation and/or improvement of drinking water, wastewater, reclamation and other water-related projects.

WIFA already has conducted a Phoenix-area workshop, held on September 12. Statewide, however, there is still time to sign up for local-area workshops:

PHOENIX ……………………………….. Wednesday, Sept. 12 at l p.m.

WIFA Board Room, 100 North 15th Avenue, Suite 103

SHOW LOW ………………………………….. Tuesday, Sept. 18 at l p.m.

Show Low Public Works, 180 North 9th Street

YUMA ……………………………………………. Thursday, Sept. 20 at l p.m.

Yuma County Public Works, 4343 S Avenue 5 l/2E

FLAGSTAFF ………………………………….. Tuesday, Sept. 25 at l p.m.

Rio de Flag Water Reclamation Plant, 600 Babbitt Drive

TUCSON ………………………………………. Thursday, Sept. 27 at l p.m.

State Goverment Bldg., 400 West Congress St., Suite 444

To RSVP, please visit https://bit.ly/2OVOSSE 

Have additional questions? Contact WIFA at 602-364-1310

By Tom Buschatzke, Arizona Department of Water Resources Director, and Ted Cooke, Central Arizona Project General Manager

The State’s water stakeholders have been engaged for more than two months to craft Arizona’s approach to the Lower Basin Drought Contingency Plan. This effort, led by our two agencies, is directed toward “bending the curve” to protect Lake Mead from falling to critical levels.

Recent reports from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation have stated that the Colorado River Basin has avoided shortage for 2019, but has at least a 50/50 chance of moving into a shortage declaration in 2020.

So, will this drought contingency planning effort change that course? Will it keep the basin out of the Tier 1 shortage to be declared at Lake Mead elevation 1075’?

The answer to both questions is, simply, “no.”

The Lower Basin Drought Contingency Plan, or LBDCP, is not designed to keep Lake Mead above the first tier of shortage. Rather, it’s meant to keep Lake Mead from further dropping to the most critical elevation levels, at which point Arizona’s Colorado River water users would be facing deep cuts to their water supplies and the river system would be in extreme stress.

The risks to the Colorado River have increased from what was expected when the Interim Guidelines for Lower Basin Shortage were established in 2007. The tools provided in those guidelines now are insufficient to address the current risks to the system.

Over the last several years, water users in the Lower Basin states have worked together to voluntarily contribute water to Lake Mead, staving off shortage since 2015. However, after nearly two decades of drought and the recent poor hydrology (meaning little snow in the Upper Basin), a Tier 1 shortage is imminent, even with these increased conservation efforts. Whether it’s in 2020 or a year or two after, that first level of shortage likely will occur, regardless of LBDCP.

If not to keep us from shortage, then why is the Lower Basin’s DCP important?

One of the most important components lies in the realm of collaboration.

By working together, Arizona, California, Nevada, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and now Mexico (through the recent treaty update known as Minute 323), we can chart a path forward so one state alone does not feel the brunt of shortage. Once LBDCP is in place, we can work in partnership to leave enough water in Lake Mead so the lake begins to recede at a slower level – the “bending of the curve,” which has been rapidly trending downward. It will take some time to get there, but by starting now, there will be more leverage and momentum to prevent the lake from falling to critically low levels.

To make this happen sooner, rather than later, we have formed a Steering Committee with representation from a variety of sectors within Arizona. This group has been meeting bi-weekly beginning in late July and likely will continue past Thanksgiving. This “AZDCP” effort includes four essential elements for implementing the LBDCP in Arizona, which the group has begun to work through. The goal is to have a plan in place before the end of the year that would incorporate broad-based agreement within Arizona supporting an effective LBDCP. The State Legislature would then consider the proposal in early 2019 to authorize the State of Arizona to sign the LBDCP.

Each public Steering Committee meeting we’ve held has essentially been standing-room only. It’s clear a lot of people believe negotiating an effective Lower Basin Drought Contingency Plan is vital to our State. And each meeting tends to spawn additional meetings with people throughout Arizona working feverishly to get this done – not to keep us out of shortage, but to keep us and the Colorado River system from being in an even worse place.

Much work has been done and much will continue to be done – but the sooner we have the drought-contingency plan in place, the greater the benefits we will all reap via a plan that is acceptable to all Arizona water users.

To stay informed, visit www.azwater.gov and www.cap-az.com/AZDCP.

For the people of Nogales, Arizona, the sight of an approaching storm has become something to dread.

Water pouring onto the drought-parched desert of southern Arizona is a wonderful thing. All that water flowing into – and overflowing out of — the fast-disintegrating waste-water sewage system the community shares with Nogales, Mexico, is the stuff of nightmares. Rapidly worsening nightmares that may cost tens of millions of dollars to properly fix.

As a part of the long-running effort to resolve the sewage issues, the co-owner of the area’s sewage-treatment facility, has announced plans for a public meeting in the town of Tubac on September 13.

The purpose of the forum, sponsored by the U.S. Section of the International Boundary and Water Commission, or USIBWC, will be to promote the exchange of information between the USIBWC and the community regarding Commission projects and related activities in Pima, Cochise, and Santa Cruz counties. Specifically, the discussion will air issues regarding source metals that are being found in Nogales wastewater, as well as the health of the Santa Cruz River.

The Nogales sewage problems begin with a woefully over-taxed 8.8-mile sewage-drainage system known as the International Outflow Interceptor, or “IOI.”

At times, especially during storms, millions of gallons of untreated sewage have been spilling out of breaks in the nearly 70-year-old IOI and elsewhere in the system. In July 2017, the IOI ruptured under the strain of storm water surging up from Mexico, which, as reported by the Arizona Daily Star, spilled “raw sewage into a tributary of the Santa Cruz River and [caused] a significant spike in E. coli bacteria levels near the breach.”

And not just human waste, either. Untreated industrial wastes from Nogales, Mexico – which include regulated mater­­­­ials such as cadmium, lead, copper and zinc — have been discovered in “significant levels” in the wastewater. The pollutants are contaminating the Nogales Wash, under which the IOI is buried, as well as water leaching into the Upper Santa Cruz aquifer and the Santa Cruz River itself.

Health officials, including those from the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, now believe that the overtaxed wastewater system is becoming a serious environmental threat to the health of the river, to say nothing of the thousands of Arizonans that rely on groundwater wells tapping into the area aquifer.

The Santa Cruz relies heavily on treated effluent from the Nogales International Wastewater Treatment Plant, or NIWTP, near Rio Rico. Co-owned by the U.S. Boundary and Water Commission and the City of Nogales, Arizona, the plant is designed to treat nearly 15 million gallons of water daily, which accounts for about 38 percent of the Santa Cruz flow at that point.

Roughly 10 million gallons of that daily capacity are allocated to Nogales, Sonora, a much larger community (pop. 212,500) than Nogales, Arizona (pop. 20,000). On the U.S. side, Nogales and Rio Rico are allocated 4.84 million gallons of capacity. Annually, Nogales, Arizona, uses just 12 percent of the IOI system providing the as-yet untreated sewage to the plant, while the vast majority of the rest flows north across the border from Sonora.

At the September 13 public meeting in Tubac, a hydrologist from the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality will talk about metals in wastewater treated at the NIWTP.

The meeting also will include a presentation by representatives of the Sonoran Institute on the health of the Santa Cruz River.

Who: The International Boundary and Water Commission United States Section

What: A southeast Arizona citizens forum

When: Thursday, September 13; 3 – 5 p.m.

Where: Tubac Community Center; 50 Bridge Road; Tubac, Arizona 85646

After a so-so start to the southern Arizona summer “monsoon” season, storms pounded Tucson through early August with almost rhythmic frequency.

It was much the same in the metropolitan Phoenix area, which saw an unusual spate of strong storms moving through Arizona’s south-central Valley on five out of six days beginning on August 7.

This year’s summer storm activity has been widespread. Arizona’s eastern mountains saw almost daily rainfall from mid-July through early- to mid-August.  To the north, meanwhile, the strong storms started in earnest early.

Persistent, heavy rain battered the Flagstaff region commencing in mid-July, generating flash floods and localized flooding in many Flagstaff-area neighborhoods.

On July 18, a an estimated “1,000-year” storm dumped an astonishing six inches of rain on Flagstaff, with 4.5 inches of it pouring down in a span of just two hours.

The summer storm season has been so strong at times, in fact, that it has prompted some to ask: Is this the strongest monsoon-storm season ever for Arizona?

There’s no simple answer to that.

Arizona takes its summer monsoon season seriously. There is an extended web of agencies, including the Arizona Department of Water Resources, that performs a vast array of services tied to storm activity.

The National Weather Service, for example, monitors the conditions that may provoke Arizona storms. It reports both locally and from the service’s Climate Prediction Center (a function of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) in Maryland.

A complex, multi-agency system in Arizona, meanwhile, uses sophisticated land- and satellite-based technology to track storm production, including rain levels and flooding, and gets that information out to the public as soon as possible.

ADWR is the lead State agency for the Arizona Flood Warning System, or AFWS.

The AFWS is comprised of local, state and federal entities that collaborate on statewide strategies for flood management.

Podcast: Arizona Water Resources talks with Brian Cosson, Flood Warning Coordinator for ADWR

So, what is all that data telling us about the strength of the 2018 summer monsoon season thus far? It has set records in Flagstaff. But elsewhere?

Paul Iñiguez, a meteorologist with the NWS in Phoenix, recently told the Arizona Republic that from the standpoint of rainfall, the summer monsoons have been very productive in central Arizona, too.

“From June 15th through August 12th, this is the second most rain on average across (Phoenix) since 1990,” Iñiguez said. “It’s been wet.”

Some of the strength of the summer storms may be derived from “moisture surges” egged along by “tropical cyclones.”

Jon Gottschalck, chief of the Operational Prediction Branch at the Climate Prediction Center with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told KJZZ recently about how “tropical cyclones” in the eastern Pacific basin are connected to Arizona’s monsoon storms.

Hurricanes, typhoons and other major Pacific storms all come under the general heading of tropical cyclones.

“Sea-surface temperatures, or ocean temperatures at the surface are strongly positive, meaning warmer than normal,” said Gottschalck. “And when those temperatures that are warmer than normal have been persisting for quite some time, there is more energy for tropical cyclones to develop.”

He said a spate of tropical cyclones in the eastern Pacific likely contributed to the moisture surges in Arizona and New Mexico that, among other things, produced the amazing string of consecutive stormy days in central Arizona.

Big Pacific storms, he said, do not have to  make direct hits on the Southwest to have an impact.

“The systems very often create moisture surges up the coast,” he said. “That very often tends to create stronger coverage of rainfall. In general, these storms don’t have to make direct hits on Arizona and New Mexico to do that.”

(For more on research into monsoon activity in Arizona, view the video below)

 

The Arizona Department of Water Resources and the Central Arizona Project, co-hosts for the series of meetings on an intra-Arizona Drought Contingency Plan for protecting the Colorado River system, have released the agenda for their August 9 meeting.

The agenda can be found  here.

Scheduled for between 1-4 p.m. at the Burton Barr Public Library in central Phoenix, Thursday’s meeting represents the second gathering of the group’s Steering Committee.

The public is invited to attend.

 

 

A 22-slide PowerPoint presentation prepared jointly by the Arizona Department of Water Resources and the Central Arizona Project on behalf of the new Steering Committee is now available at ADWR’s Drought Contingency Plan web page.

The presentation, released just before the July 26 Steering Committee meeting, offers an overview of the key elements for implementing a Lower Basin Drought Contingency Plan in Arizona.

This first public meeting of the Steering Committee was scheduled at CAP headquarters in north Phoenix and is being videotaped for release on ADWR’s and CAP’s websites soon afterward.

It is the first meeting of the group whose mission is to recommend an LB DCP that is  acceptable to Arizona water users, and, ultimately, to facilitate Arizona joining with the rest of the Colorado River community in devising a strategy to protect Lake Mead from falling to intolerable elevations.

 

The agenda is out for Thursday’s meeting of the newly formed Steering Committee that will recommend how to adopt and implement a Lower Basin Drought Contingency Plan for Arizona.

The agenda can be found here and here.

Thursday’s agenda includes plans for discussing four key elements for implementing a drought-contingency plan in Arizona. They will include: plans for mitigating the impact on agriculture of a Colorado River water delivery shortage; tribal “intentionally created surplus” (ICS) water for Lake Mead; an Arizona Conservation Plan; and issues involving excess Colorado River water.

The Steering Committee was formed as a collaborative effort by the Arizona Department of Water Resources and the Central Arizona Project to help protect Lake Mead from falling to dangerously low levels.

The Steering Committee’s mission is to recommend an LB DCP that is  acceptable to Arizona water users. In addition to the July 26 event, eight more Steering Committee meetings are scheduled to be held between now and December. All meetings are open to the public.

Thursday’s meeting, scheduled for 1-4 p.m. at CAP’s headquarters at 23636 N 7th Street in north Phoenix, will be recorded for a later posting on the ADWR and CAP websites.

 

 

The co-sponsors of the statewide effort to complete a Drought Contingency Plan for  Arizona that helps protect Lake Mead from falling to dangerously low levels have named their Steering Committee.

The 37-member panel, co-chaired by Tom Buschatzke of the Arizona Department of Water Resources and Ted Cooke of the Central Arizona Project, will gather for the first time on July 26 at the CAP board meeting room in north Phoenix.

The meeting is a first, major step toward bringing DCP to closure in Arizona by addressing a broad range of issues that respect the concerns of all Colorado River stakeholders across the state. The two co-sponsoring organizations previously hosted two public briefings illustrating the need for a Colorado River system-wide DCP and the perils facing the system without one.

The Steering Committee gatherings also will be open to the public.

The Steering Committee’s goal is to prepare the way for the state Legislature to authorize ADWR Director Buschatzke to sign onto a system-wide agreement on behalf of Arizona.