| In 1922, the Colorado River Compact was created. The agreement divided water rights from the Colorado River to seven states, which are divided into lower and upper basins. Each basin is allocated 7.5 million acre-feet of water per year. An acre-foot is 325,851 gallons of water, or the yearly average use by a family of four. The upper basin consists of New Mexico, Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. The lower basin includes Nevada, Arizona and California. Arizona took 22 years to approve the compact because it disputed the amount allocated to the state and was the last of the states to do so. The current allocation includes 330,000 acre-feet to Nevada, 2.8 million acre-feet to Arizona and 4.4 million to California. | 
| What's CAP
The Central Arizona Project (CAP) Association was formed two years later to educate residents about the need for CAP water and to lobby Congress for construction financing. Construction wasn't approved until 1968. The federal government fronted the construction costs and the Bureau of Reclamation built the project. Entities were created within the state to fund repayment of the construction. In Arizona, the Central Arizona Water Conservation District was formed in 1971 to collect the funds, repay the federal government $1.65 billion, and manage and operate CAP. The 50-year repayment schedule started in 1993 when the project was substantially completed.
CAP was a $3.6 billion, 20-year project started in 1973 near Lake Havasu City. CAP has a canal that stretches 336 miles, to 14 miles south of Tucson. The canal, constructed of 3.5-inch-thick concrete panels, is 80 feet wide on the top, 24 feet wide on the bottom, and 16 feet deep. Within the canal there are oversized sections that are 160 feet wide at the top and 80 feet wide at the bottom. The oversized sections are used as internal reservoirs. The system also includes aqueducts, pumping plants, pipelines and tunnels.
CAP delivers 1.5 million acre-feet annually. The canal has the capacity to deliver 2.2 million acre-feet if it ran at capacity throughout the year. The purpose of CAP is to help municipal, industrial and agricultural users and Indian communities reduce the amount of groundwater used. Arizona has a 2.5 million acre-foot groundwater overdraft. As more of the groundwater is used and not replaced, that can play havoc with the stability of the ground. Fissures can occur, thus causing structural damage to homes, agricultural lands and industry.
When people wonder how the desert can handle so many homes, CAP is one of the main reasons why. The system helps deliver water to 5 million people, about 80 percent of the state's population. Nearly 50 cities are linked to CAP, including many within western Pinal County, metro Phoenix and Tucson.
The land that utilizes CAP is divided into active management areas through the Arizona Department of Water Resources. The water management areas help create and implement water use plans. Once CAP was built, each water management area needed to adopt a 10-year water management plan. The third plan expires in 2010. Development of the fourth plan is under way.
Randy Edmond, director of the Pinal Active Management Area, said the second and third plans added stringency. The third plan had modifications for agriculture and municipalities, including best practices. The practices were methods that were economically reasonable.
Current Water Issues
The Central Arizona Water Conservation District (CAWCD) manages and oversees CAP. Nearly 400 people work for the district. It is managed by a 15-member board of directors and a general manager.
Terri Kibler, whose family owns a dairy near Casa Grande, was voted in November to represent Pinal County and became part of the board in January.
"Growing up in Arizona, I've grown up with a keen sense of water importance," Kibler said. "It's an honor to be a part of helping protect Arizona's water and serve the people and keep their taxes low with that."
CAP is financed by a six-cent assessment per $100 of net property valuation. New home developments have an additional assessment of four cents per $100 property valuation.
Water is a complicated issue, and several groups are involved. Each has a separate function and goal. Not only do you have the CAWCD and the Arizona Department of Water Resources, there is also the Pinal County Water Augmentation Authority (PCWAA). The PCWAA is a "think tank" of individuals who represent all the various entities within the Pinal Active Management Area (AMA). The Pinal AMA includes the towns of Casa Grande, Coolidge, Eloy, Florence, and Maricopa; the irrigation districts of Maricopa-Stanfield, Central Arizona, San Carlos, Gila River and Hohokam; and Ak-Chin Indian Community and portions of the Gila River and Tohono O'odham Indian communities.
Barbara Massey-Nino, PCWAA executive director, said the group wants to make sure Central Arizona's interests are represented in the larger water picture. The group was started in 1993. A year later, the Legislature put the group's existence in state statute.
"It's a publicly held trade association, the only one of its kind in Arizona that is statutely grounded," Massey-Nino said.
The group's goal is to "support the development of responsible, collaborative and sustainable water planning and management" in the Pinal Active Management Area, according to its Web site.
Massey-Nino explained that sustainable water is defined as not taking out more water than what is allocated.
Between 1985 and 2006, the overdraft of the Pinal AMA generally varied from 146,000 acre-feet to nearly 296,000 acre-feet annually.
Kibler said agriculture is still the biggest user of water. Among Maricopa, Pinal and Pima counties, Pinal is the biggest agricultural hub.
Edmond said the area had 70 million acre-feet of groundwater at the end of World War II, in the 1940s. Now, 60 years later, half the water remains. Of the water used, 97 percent went toward agriculture.
Having agriculture use CAP water instead of groundwater has made a difference in saving groundwater. Kibler said farmers use CAP water first, and the cost of the CAP water is subsidized to make it more economically attractive.
It's a balancing act for agricultural users. Water is used on crops, while some soaks into the soil, increasing the groundwater. Alfalfa is a popular crop in Pinal County. On the one hand, it takes more water, but on the other hand it puts valuable nitrogen back into the soil. This is important so the soil has the nutrients needed to grow other crops.
Between CAP and water from the Gila River, Edmond said agriculture's demand for groundwater has been cut in half.
David Snider, chairman of the Pinal County Board of Supervisors, said agriculture was able to flourish when CAP brought resources of renewable water to Pinal County. Snider has been involved in water issues for more than 20 years as a member of the area Groundwater Users Advisory Council, PCWAA and the Governor's Groundwater Commission. But the ability to have the water came at a cost. As part of the 1980 Groundwater Management Act, the agricultural community in Maricopa, Pinal and Pima counties was required to freeze the amount of irrigated acreage. Whatever was irrigated in 1979 would be the maximum amount. The existing acreage would eventually be retired or removed from use through municipal and industrial development.
Snider said that when CAP first started flowing in the Pinal AMA, 99 percent went toward agriculture and 1 percent toward municipality and industrial use. Today, it has shifted to 90 percent agriculture and 10 percent municipal and industrial use.
Arizona law and regulations govern water planning and use. Snider said that when building, developers must be able to show there is a physical 100-year supply of water and that they have a backup supply of renewable water, just in case the demand of the development outstrips the 100-year supply.
Future Water Issues
Kibler said the fourth plan will provide more incentives to use low-water plants. There will be less agriculture as farmers relinquish water rights.
Edmond said that relatively little CAP water is available for the Pinal AMA compared to the Phoenix and Tucson AMAs. While cities in Pinal's area are not utilizing CAP water now, they will be in five to six years.
Water use will need to shift in the future. Edmond said that by 2030, there will be no more CAP water for non-Indian agriculture. Although residents watched much farmland turned into subdivisions over the last five years, not all farmland will become part of a municipality. Edmond said there's not enough water to support that type of population growth. Pinal's current allotment will serve between 750,000 and 1.5 million people.
For farmers, the most water-efficient will survive. "The less efficient farmers will go out of business," said Edmond.
Finding enough water
Finding renewable sources is a challenge. Snider said about 80,000 acre-feet of renewable water enters the Pinal AMA between CAP sources and natural recharge, such as storms and water sub-flow below the Santa Cruz River. Compare that to the Maricopa AMA, which has 1 million acre-feet a year through the dams, lakes and canals that Salt River Project runs.
"Recharging is the future," Edmond said.
Recharging is when water is put back into the ground. A simple way to recharge is just letting rain soak into the ground. In other cases, some AMAs use part of their CAP allotment to put back into recharge basins and save for a non-rainy day, per se.
Another way to reduce groundwater use is to utilize effluent. Effluent is wastewater, the water that goes down residents' toilets and sinks. It can be treated and reused. In Arizona some cities use effluent to water city parks and golf courses. Effluent from metro Phoenix is piped to the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station to be used in its cooling towers. For Pinal AMA, effluent can be used to water parks, golf courses, common ground areas; provide water to the Desert Basin generating station in Casa Grande; and for agricultural purposes.
Edmond said Arizona Water Company, which supplies water to Casa Grande and Coolidge, is to build a water treatment plant for surface water.
Snider said another use for effluent would be recharge. The soils would act as an additional filter for the previously treated water.
Currently there aren't many recharge activities in the Pinal AMA. Florence does some recharge, but Snider said the Pinal AMA is trying to find recharge sites where it can capitalize and secure the water.
Desalinization is another way to provide water. Snider said the method is used in Europe and the Middle East. With desalinization a filter is used to remove the unwanted minerals in the water. It hasn't been a viable option for Arizona since water is inexpensive, costing between $200 and $500 an acre-foot. In California, water runs $3,000 an acre-foot. Snider said Arizona is beginning to approach the point where it will be cost-effective to consider the method.
A prospective site could be near Buckeye, where the Gila and Salt rivers join. The water table is close to the surface and needs to be removed. The desalinization would be needed to remove the bad quality.
A challenge to desalinization will be to find a way to transport the water because that takes energy. Snider said energy is the biggest single cost for getting water. Energy is needed to pump water, to treat water and to move water.
Deciding how to secure future water resources will not be easy or simple. The choices need to protect what residents currently have, ensure that growth and development uses water prudently and that the area can obtain substantial sources, without tying the hands of a future generation.
"We need to make sure we have choices in the future," Snider said.
EDITOR'S NOTE - Interviews for this story were conducted in January and February. Sadly, Randy Edmond, director of the Pinal Active Management Area, died Feb. 2, before the magazine's publication. Information provided from his interview is incorporated in this story. |
This is a historical photo of the construction of the Santa Rosa Turnout. Photo courtesy of Central Arizona Project
