—Alan Dulaney
The Arizona Legislature is back in town, contemplating a meaty session. Over 1,000 bills were dropped in the hopper within the first few days; more will come. The concerted effort to pass enabling legislation for the Drought Contingency Plan last session clearly sticks in the memories of the legislators, and several water-related bills have been introduced.
Senate Bill (SB) 1301 will make recovery of water stored by the Arizona Water Banking Authority cleaner and more efficient. AWBA has been storing excess Colorado River water underground for many years for the purpose of firming municipal and industrial supplies in the event of a shortage. Recovery of the stored water will partially make up for any shortage in Central Arizona Project deliveries. Currently the law requires that Long-Term Storage Credits resulting from underground storage by AWBA (4.28 maf as of 2019) be given to CAP for re-allocation to various cities. Cities have long contended that AWBA should just give out the LTSCs to the cities directly, without any middleman. After all, it is city wells that will be pumping the LTSCs in any shortage, as CAP does not have any recovery wells, and thus no real stake in how credits are to be recovered. Within the Recovery Planning Advisory Group, this idea has gained wide acceptance, including CAP assent, and with DCP and the very real possibility of a declared shortage in the next few years on the minds of legislators, SB 1301 is likely to pass.
House Bill (HB) 2158 calls for mandatory metering and reporting of groundwater usage from non-exempt wells across all of Arizona, not just the Active Management Areas. This bill (and the similar SB 1405) stem from situations in Mohave, La Paz, and Cochise Counties, where new entities with deeper pockets are drilling deeper wells for their own economic purposes, leaving the existing farms and towns with wells that are going dry. All of this is quite legal in rural Arizona. There is insufficient incoming information on water levels for ADWR to evaluate aquifer conditions and offer assessments of future supplies (like they recently did for Pinal County). This has several folks in the affected areas worried.
But ranchers and towns in other counties are not experiencing any declines in water levels, and are adamantly opposed to new requirements for their wells. They see mandatory metering and reporting as the first step in controlling water usage by the State, which they do not want. Plus fulfilling the requirements would be an additional burden on an already economically stressed way of life, which is much more a threat to them than competing wells. And rural Arizona has serious political power, most recently demonstrated in the compromises built into the DCP for Pinal County. Because mandatory monitoring across all of Arizona may be seen as reaching too far, this bill is not likely to pass.
HB 2159 and the complementary SB 1385 are also not likely to pass. This bill would make a water adequacy requirement mandatory for all counties outside the AMAs. Currently, only counties where the Board of Supervisors has unanimously passed a water adequacy requirement may mandate that subdivisions prove up water supplies for 100 years. The issue of making a favorable Water Report under the Adequate Water Supply program mandatory or voluntary was much debated in the last session, and the 2008 statute was weakened by the unanimity requirement. Again, most of rural Arizona does not see a serious threat to water supplies that would necessitate mandatory participation in the Adequate Water Supply program. And they have already stopped it once.
HB 2405 would prohibit any transfer of Priority 4 Colorado River water from the river to non-Colorado River communities. This bill targets potential sales of Colorado River water rights from agriculture to the AMAs. One such sale by Mohave Valley Irrigation and Drainage District was shot down within the last two years. Another such sale to the Town of Queen Creek is pending. Mohave, La Paz, and Yuma Counties are always on guard against any attempt to remove their Colorado River water and send it down the CAP canal, especially since CAP completed the wheeling agreement two years ago. Mohave County is particularly worried, since their groundwater supplies are shrinking fast and the pace of development is accelerating. Shipping water to Phoenix and Tucson is not something they appreciate.
HB 2738 addresses criteria for an irrigation non-expansion area (INA). INAs are lands that have been designated as having insufficient groundwater for agricultural irrigation. New irrigated acreage within an INA is generally prohibited and well metering and other management requirements apply. Only three INAs exist, and forming a new one is not easy for ADWR. HB 2738 would allow ADWR to consider future groundwater demands in evaluating new INAs; right now, only existing rates of withdrawal can be considered. This was the major reason the last proposal for an INA, in the San Simon Valley, was denied. Easier creation of INAs may prove an acceptable solution to rapidly increasing groundwater withdrawals in Mohave, La Paz, and Cochise Counties. The Legislature could find this bill acceptable.
HB 2174 changes the definition of an exempt well from one with a designed pump capacity of 35 gpm to a well of no more than 20 gpm pump capacity. Continuous pumping of an exempt well at 35 gpm could result in an annual withdrawal of up to 57 acre-feet, which seems excessive to many. Currently the exempt/non-exempt dichotomy exists in the legal sense only inside AMAs, although the terminology is widely used for all wells in Arizona. This bill does not expand the definition to legally include all of Arizona, even though that is the practice. This bill may seem minor, but it is a first step in clamping down on over-pumping, and thus could pass.
And then there are several funding bills. HB 2213 would fund the Water Quality Assurance Revolving Fund (WQARF) to the tune of $20 million; attempts to adequately fund WQARF haven’t always gone so well in the past. HB 2286 would fund wastewater infrastructure for Luke Air Force Base to $5 million. HB 2567 would fund testing for lead by ADEQ at charter schools at $100,000. HB 2671 appropriates $50,000,000 to the state Water Supply Development Revolving Fund. Established in 2007 to assist rural water providers acquire water supplies through loans and grants, the fund has never had any money. Leadership supports this bill, and it will probably pass at some level. HB 2212 appropriates $500,000 for ADEQ to test public water systems for PFAS and assist systems that exceed EPA health advisory levels.
HB 2076 would fund new hydrology staff at ADWR with $6.1 million, which would be much needed. HB 2101 would provide $1 million to the Arizona Water Protection Fund to maintain water quality and quality. With a healthy budget surplus this fiscal year, the Legislature may actually fund many of these programs, at least to some degree.
There are many more bills, and at the last-minute striker bills are inevitable. We shall stay tuned for further developments and discussion.