—Alan Dulaney
The Arizona Legislature is still in session. Last Friday was the last day to hear bills in committee, although they may still be heard on the floor until April 19. Budget discussions have been underway for some time, and decisions on water-related expenditures are moving forward. Specifically, HB 2124 would appropriate $289,500 for the General Stream Adjudication. This bill appears to be moving forward. It is likely that more funds will be appropriated for ADWR employees to support the adjudications process. Additional funds have also been requested to hire more hydrologists and modelers at ADWR. Briefly, and not including any DCP-related legislation, here is a status report:
HB 2586 was discussed here in detail last month. The bill would basically undercut aspects of the Assured Water Supply program in Pinal County by extending analyses indefinitely. Concerns have been expressed to the sponsor of this bill, and it is now on hold. The goal now is to discuss the concepts embedded in the bill over the summer.
HB 2609 addresses the Harquahala Irrigation Non-Expansion Area and would allow private water companies that own land there to pump groundwater down to 1,500 ft below ground surface instead of the 1,000 ft depth now allowed. These companies could then transport this groundwater to an AMA. La Paz County is worried that water for future development in the county could be threatened. Again, this bill has been placed on hold pending later discussions amongst stakeholders after the session is over.
HB 2476 would have restored forfeited water rights to farmers in the Upper Gila Valley. Various pre-1919 rights were lost due to disuse and picked up by the Gila River Indian Community years ago. GRIC was quite unhappy about the attempt to restore its rights back to farmers after it contributed so much to the DCP process. This bill too is now on hold.
HB 2111 is a striker that revived the attempt to allow County supervisors to opt out of the mandatory Adequate Water Supply program requirements, if previously adopted by them. Supervisors would not be able to readopt the requirement for 5 years. This comes out of Cochise County and is meant to get the Pueblo del Sol Water Company a Designation of Adequate Water Supply for 7,000 houses. Similar legislation was run in 2016 and 2018, and failed both times. It doesn’t seem to be moving now — but rest assured, it will be back again.
HB 2475 reduces any criminality to a Class 2 misdemeanor resulting from pumping any water from a registered well that may belong to another person, including subflow — as long as the pumper wasn’t aware that the water might be subflow. This bill might pass, or not.
HB 2484 reclassified groundwater used to water plants in containers to a non-irrigation use in an AMA. Such water use must be separately metered. The Governor signed this bill. What’s growing in those containers, anyway?
And separate from any legislation, ADEQ is moving forward with acquiring delegated authority to administer Clean Water Act Section 404 permitting. ADEQ will need to add staff to handle the 404 permit workload. Depending on what the new Waters of the United States rule will look like, this could affect many entities in Arizona.
A host of other bills never made it through the process and withered away. Some were interesting, some reached too far, and some cost too much money. Many of these concepts will return in the next session. Certainly, the Legislature is far more aware of water issues now than in past years.