The Verde River.

What are they talking about? And why should anyone care?

Yes, the water issue in Prescott is huge, complicated and on the surface, (so to speak), may seem just plain boring. But when dollars start to come into the equation, it suddenly becomes fascinating. The city of Prescott paid $23 million for the JWK Ranch, and plan on spending $170 million, (at last estimate) on the pipeline to get that water into town. If the city has 40,000 citizens, that calculates out to a $4,825 bill for each and every citizen. Interested now?

The Northern Arizona Interfaith Council, a non-profit, non-partisan group that works in different arenas within the community recently sponsored a lecture called Water 101. They wanted to learn about the basics of the various water issues and invited Howard Mechanic, from the Citizens Water Advocacy Group to come speak. CWAG's philosophy is to be a good steward of natural resources for future generations, and help educate the public. And in order to do that their goal is to conserve the area’s water and riparian area. They also want to achieve safe yield in the AMA. In order to understand all that we have to have a short history lesson.

A History Review 

As Mechanic explained it, in 1980 the State of Arizona passed the Groundwater Management Act. The reason was that President Jimmy Carter had asked states to take control of their own water resources. At the time Arizona wanted to complete the Central Arizona Project, CAP so they could get water from the Colorado River. Wanting federal money for the project, the Arizona legislature  passed the law. As part of the law, the state had to decide which areas they felt were at risk as far as groundwater was concerned.

The Prescott quad-city area was one of the areas identified, which created the Prescott AMA or Active Management Area. That meant the ADWR, Arizona Department of Water Resources, would be watching. And if they saw that Prescott was consistently “over drafting” the aquifer – which means taking out more than allowed, they could declare Groundwater Mining. Which is bad. Or good. Depending on which side you’re on. The notification that Prescott’s AMA was in a state of Groundwater Mining meant that the amount of water that can be taken out of the ground is capped. Period. But, in Prescott’s case it wasn’t immediate. The Prescott area was given some leeway in the timing of the cap being put in place. So, in 1998 developers rushed to get their plans for subdivisions approved before the rules went into effect. This is commonly called the “plat rush.”.

A Geography Review 

The basics as far as the geology can be simply put. Water and snow falls on the mountains surrounding Chino Valley, Prescott Valley, Prescott and Dewey-Humboldt. This is called the watershed. Over many, many years as that snow melted and rain flowed into the flat area and it was absorbed into the ground. Fortunately for the Prescott area, the ground held just the right type of material to hold the water, and that is known as the Little Chino Aquifer, which is basically an underground storage tank. There is no way to measure or quantify the aquifer with 100% accuracy. What we do know is that it is deep but it does not go on to infinity, refilling itself like a magical water bowl. The aquifer has pressure built up inside of it and as a result we enjoy the release of that pressure, which becomes the headwaters of the Verde River. 

Howard Mechanic speaks to the Interfaith group.

Most of the area’s water groups believe it’s only logical that if cities pump too much water out of the aquifer, the pressure to push itself out above ground will stop and the river will no longer flow. Mechanic feels that as far as water goes, “we’re digging ourselves into a hole. If we’d dealt with it in the 1980’s it would have been an easier problem to solve.”

U.S. Geological Studies show that the Verde River gets about 14% of its flow from the Little Chino Aquifer. The Big Chino Aquifer contributes between 80 – 86% of the Verde’s flow. But, the Big Chino is outside Prescott’s AMA that should not be a problem. The Arizona State Law that set this entire program up bans the quad city area from pumping outside their own AMA. But, (and this is a big “but”), in 1992, when Carol Springer was an Arizona State Senator, she was able to get an exemption to the law passed; the only one in the state. So, because of this exemption from the legislature, cities inside the Prescott AMA are allowed to pipe in water from the Big Chino Aquifer. Hence the purchase of the water ranch and the potential of a 36-inch in diameter pipeline to follow.

Another part of the Arizona law stated that the Prescott AMA should be in compliance with “Safe Yield” by 2025. Safe Yield means that the amount pumped in should equal the amount pumped out. The problem is that this is not really a “law” per se. It’s more of a suggestion. And a legislative suggestion is very difficult to enforce.

Though he's an active member of CWAG, Mechanic made clear at the presentation that he was expressing his own opinions, unless otherwise specified. And his opinion about the big picture of our water situation was laid out in a question he commonly gets. “How long will our water last? You can turn on a facet and water comes out. So maybe you don’t think there’s a problem right now. You cannot see the aquifer going down every year. It’s just not visible. You can look at the numbers but it doesn’t really get to you in an emotional framework as far as the groundwater going down each year. The question, 'How long will our water last?' just isn’t’ a relevant question because our goal is not to destroy our aquifer. Our goal is not to see how long it takes to destroy our water supply; to see if we can last 60 years instead of 50, to destroy our aquifer. The goal is to get to a situation where future generations will have this water supply.”

The next article will cover exempt wells, some of the numbers, grandfathered water rights and other cities and agencies that have claim on the water from the Verde River. Also we will look at who will benefit from water brought in via the pipeline from the Big Chino Aquifer. The one costing each citizen approximately $4,825.

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