Ducey: Don't punish Arizona for its water conservation

Arizona leaders are starting to worry that California's water crisis will ensnare Arizona if Congress or the U.S. Interior Department get involved.

Gov. Doug Ducey said Tuesday that his predecessors and the state's water managers have wisely conserved and banked water in the ground — and that the state shouldn't be penalized for it.

Arizona is bracing for drought-induced reductions in what it can take from the Colorado River, perhaps beginning next year if there's isn't a change in the weather. Some in the state fear that Congress or the U.S. Interior Department will expand the punishment further to push more of the river to parched California.

"We must be vigilant as we deal with the federal government," Ducey told a few hundred people assembled in Tempe for an East Valley Partnership luncheon.

"Arizona already takes the lion's share of Colorado River water shortages."

The current arrangement, signed by each of the Southwestern states, works like this:

If Lake Mead, the Colorado's largest impoundment, drops to an elevation of 1,075 feet, Arizona and Nevada must curtail water deliveries. In Arizona's case, that was part of the deal for gaining California's support for the canal that brings the Colorado cross-country to Phoenix and Tucson.

If Lake Mead drops below 1,075 feet — an event that the dam-managing U.S. Bureau of Reclamation currently gives about a 75 percent likelihood next year — the state would lose 345,000 acre-feet.

An acre-foot — roughly 325,000 gallons — is about what it takes to supply two Southwest families for a year. But central Arizona's farmers, who have a lower priority than cities on the canal system, would sustain that first shortage. If the lake keeps dropping, further cuts would follow.

No one has publicly proposed changing the shortage agreement or otherwise shorting Arizona, but water attorney and former Central Arizona Project board president Grady Gammage said he's starting to see chatter among California bloggers and commentators.

"People in Arizona are beginning to pick up signals," he said.

It's unclear how the states' previous agreement would hold up in court if California sought federal help in breaking it, Gammage said. At the least, it could require Arizona to sue.

Arizona currently has 9 million acre-feet in the ground, having socked it away in aquifers during years when the river provided more than it needed. Californians are starting to look at that cushion as their potentially their own, he said, while others question why some Arizona farmers are growing cotton with water that could save California food crops.

"That is penalizing us for being responsible," he said, "and rewarding them for being irresponsible."

Phoenix water services director Kathryn Sorensen said the state's water providers are starting to talk about a California threat. One potential area of concern is a California drought-relief bill now being envisioned in Congress.

"California has not shared what they're doing," she said.

Arizona is well positioned for drought because of its past planning," Sorensen said. "In an era of climate change, ironically one of the advantages that a desert city has is it knows it's limitations and plans for them."

That doesn't mean more work isn't needed to assure and conserve supplies, she said, and soon.

"Over the next couple of years things are going to get weird," Sorensen said.

Ducey praised Arizona's decades of preparation and bipartisan work to build the CAP canal and to regulate groundwater withdrawals where most of the state's population lives. California, by contrast, has only recently passed a groundwater management act.

"Arizona stands where California could have had they taken our path decades ago," Ducey said.

Arizona must remain wary and protect its economic interests, he said, fueled as they are by water.

"Historically it's been imperative that Arizona fight for our fair share of this resource," he said.

The governor did not take questions after his speech. Spokesman Daniel Scarpinato said the governor cautiously is watching the situation but not responding to any specific threat.

"We're monitoring the situation in Congress closely," Scarpinato said.

Some experts who attended the speech said one of Arizona's wisest moves would be to bolster the state's Department of Water Resources, whose budget was slashed and never restored after the Great Recession.

Dozens of positions were lost at the agency, which "We need to make sure e have a fully empowered Department of Water Resources, and that mean s rebuilding it to its 2008 level," said Sarah Porter, director of the Morrison Institute's Kyl Center for Water Policy.

The agency plans for a secure water future and also negotiates on the state's behalf in Colorado River matters. But in 2010 the staff dropped from a high of 236 to 98.

"It got savaged," Gammage said. "Given what's happening, it's really important to rebuild it."