Colorado River drought tests AZ’s ‘desert dweller’ ethic
Arizona’s cities should consider imposing unprecedented restrictions on outdoor water use if the Colorado River’s flow continues to decline as expected this year, the state’s water resources director says.
Scottsdale and Tucson already have declared themselves to be in the first stage of their respective drought plans, and are reducing government water uses. Phoenix plans to take payments from the state in lieu of some of its Colorado River deliveries next year, part of the state’s latest drought mitigation effort.
But these and other Arizona cities are not hiring water cops like those who patrol Las Vegas streets watching for waste.
Should they? Arizona’s top water official can’t order it, but he suggests the time for cities to enforce their own urban water savings outside the home is fast approaching.
If the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation this summer forecasts that Lake Mead’s sinking elevation will tip the region into deeper mandated cutbacks next year, as the current trajectory suggests, “there should be serious consideration by water providers to start going down that path,” Arizona Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke said.
Arizona’s neighbors to the west already have taken the plunge in an effort to prop up the Southwest’s supply stored in Lake Mead and elsewhere.
The Metropolitan Water District in Los Angeles announced last week that starting in June it would limit outdoor watering to one day a week for some 6 million Californians, and would consider banning it altogether in September. That emergency comes in response to an in-state drought afflicting the State Water Project, though Metropolitan also imports Colorado River water.
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The Southern Nevada Water Authority, the river-dependent provider to the Las Vegas area, has long targeted outdoor water use by ticketing people who water on prohibited days or in a wasteful manner, and now prohibits grass turf in front of new homes. Last fall it adopted a plan that will restrict river water going to new golf courses and reduce watering on existing courses.
The Las Vegas region cut per-person use by 47% between 2002 and 2020, to about 112 gallons, while its population grew by 52%.
Now officials seek to slash that use to 86 gallons by 2035, a task the agency says the warming climate and aging infrastructure will complicate by adding about 10 gallons of demand per person. Heat stresses plants, requiring more water to maintain healthy landscaping and shade trees.
Feds will hold back water from Lake Mead
Most of Arizona’s water supply is used outdoors, and the Colorado supplies about a third of it. Farms use about 70%, but even in cities the bulk is applied outside on landscaping and golf courses or in swimming pools.
Extended drought that scientists say is worsened by the region’s warming climate has exacerbated t
he Southwest’s overuse of the river, causing the U.S. Interior secretary to declare a shortage that is likely to worsen.
Arizona is normally entitled to 2.8 million acre-feet of Colorado River water. This year, through a combination of the federally-mandated cuts and in-state efforts to soften further cuts in future years, the state is leaving more than 500,000 are-feet — a third of what it normally pumps across the desert through the Central Arizona Project — behind Hoover Dam.
Those cuts have fallen hardest on central Arizona farms, but the next-level federal declarations will reduce deliveries to cities that have until now stored some of their river water in the ground. A third-tier of shortage, which Buschatzke fears is possible in 2024, would push the state’s losses above 700,000 acre-feet, enough to support a couple of million households, though farms would still absorb much of that loss.
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Federal shortage mandates on the states are linked to water levels in Lake Mead, which in turn rely on upstream releases from Lake Powell. There, with the reservoir’s surface nearing the minimum pool needed to generate hydropower for several million Americans, the Interior Department plans to hold back 480,000 of the 7.48 million acre-feet scheduled to flow from Powell to Mead this year, and Rocky Mountain states have agreed to send another 500,000 down the Green River from storage near the Wyoming-Utah state line.
The resulting loss in Lake Mead won’t trigger deeper cutbacks downstream unless another dry winter makes it necessary for the government to keep holding the water back.
These moves buy time but won’t prevent further losses without help from nature, Buschatzke warned.
“I don’t want to freak people out,” he said, “but we can’t guarantee that this is going to be the solution that fixes our problem.”
Phoenix wants ‘partners in conservation’
Mandatory watering restrictions remain a foreign concept in Arizona cities, where officials say they’re instead making progress by encouraging residents to embrace their Sonoran Desert surroundings.
“People need to understand that we live in a desert,” and landscape accordingly, said Cynthia Campbell, water resource management adviser for the city of Phoenix. Most in America’s biggest metropolitan growth magnet seem to agree, choosing succulents over sod, and the city of 1.7 million people uses no more water than it did 30 years and 600,000 people ago.
A wave of high-rise apartment and condo construction also goosed the city’s efficiency by cutting down on per-person outdoor watering, she said.
But mandatory watering restrictions? Those would instill a sense of temporary emergency, Campbell said, instead of a longer-term desert ethic. Phoenix prefers “partners in conservation” to water cops enforcing restrictions, she said.
Arizona water providers have never mandated residential water cutbacks, though city governments did limit their own uses during an unusually severe dry spell in 2004, Buschatzke said. The long-term outlook has since worsened.
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Warmth and dry soils kept most of a near-normal Rocky Mountain snowpack from reaching the reservoirs last year, and the current forecast is for less than two-thirds of normal runoff this year. Unless that changes, a deeper shortage affecting city supplies is likely next year.
“Look at all of those factors and it’s probably time to start doing something at the homeowner level or the business level,” Buschatzke said. “I can’t dictate that, but I might urge those folks to consider doing that.”
Tribes with water rights are both helping prop up Lake Mead and encouraging others to conserve. In response to the federal plan to hold back water in Lake Powell this year, Colorado River Indian Tribes Chairwoman Amelia Flores released a statement saying her government is in discussions about leaving more of its water in Lake Mead. If Congress approves a proposal to let it transfer water through the CAP, she said, providers in central Arizona could lease it.
“We are doing what we can to help and encourage everyone in the basin to conserve water,” she said in the written statement. “Reduced water in the River may be the future for our lifetimes.”
Cities may tap underground storage
Thanks to diversified water sources and a concerted effort to store previously unused river water underground in central and southern Arizona aquifers, residents connected to city water mains won’t soon face dry taps. The question is rather whether the extent of outdoor watering in the face of cutbacks to the Central Arizona Project canal will cause the cities to start depleting or “mining” that groundwater with no sure way of replacing it.
Phoenix relies on the Colorado for about 40% of its water, and takes the rest from in-state sources including groundwater and dams managed by Salt River Project. The Colorado River water that Phoenix has stored in the ground as a “savings account” could offset about five years of the city’s entire share of the river if Lake Mead could no longer supply it, Campbell said.
That’s a worst-case prospect that the states, tribes and federal agencies are working to prevent, and the city expects it
will instead use wells to replace a smaller portion of its Colorado water in bad years when that flow is curtailed.
A change in state law last year permits cities with banked water to retrieve the equivalent in local groundwater regardless of whether the banked water actually flows past those wells. Wherever the banked water actually is in the aquifer, it then becomes regular groundwater subject to the state’s urban groundwater conservation law.
The state will pay Phoenix more than $4 million to leave about 16,000 acre-feet of water in Lake Mead this year, a hedge against triggering new cutbacks. That’s not water that city residents need today, so the city would have banked it in the ground had it received it. Instead, the money will fund conservation programs, Campbell said, possibly including rebates on low-flow toilets.
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Phoenix currently uses 169 gallons per person every day, and has set a goal of 155 by the end of the decade. Residential use already is around 99, Campbell said.
Phoenix is focused on reducing its own municipal use, such as by retrofitting a cooling tower at Sky Harbor Airport to recycle water and xeriscaping public areas that don’t need turf for outdoor activities. It also has replaced fixtures such as toilets with more efficient models.
Phoenix has not, as yet, paid anyone to remove turf, a concept pioneered regionally by the Southern Nevada Water Authority with rebates that reached $3 per square foot.
“We don’t have to,” Campbell said. “We see our folks doing the right things without getting incentives.”
Technically, according to the Phoenix Water Resource Plan, it’s illegal to irrigate in a way that causes water to flow into a street or public place. The city responds to complaints, Campbell said, and “in most cases people either weren’t aware they were doing it or didn’t realize how bad that is.”
The city’s water department could fine violators up to $2,500 or even shut off the water when someone is uncooperative, though Campbell said she’s not aware that it has happened.
Conservation is ‘the low-hanging fruit’
Water in the street, whether from malfunctioning sprinklers or uncontained flood irrigation, is an enduring image of waste in the city.
“I’m amazed how almost always when I visit Phoenix I see water flowing down the street,” said Robert Glennon, a University of Arizona law professor and author who focuses on water policy and law. “There’s something horribly wrong about seeing that.”
Phoenix and other cities should push conservation, whether by mandate or by rebate, Glennon said, and should consider paying people to trade in water-guzzling fixtures. Such programs would cost far less than others that Arizona is considering, such as investing in seawater desalination in Mexico or California.
“Water conservation remains the low-hanging fruit,” Glennon said. “There are a lot of things we can do. Las Vegas has led the way.”
Glennon’s home city, Tucson, has less grass than Phoenix and uses less water per person: 135 gallons a day, including reclaimed water applied to golf courses and other purposes, and just 82 gallons by residential customers, according to Tucson Water.
The city has imposed the first stage of its drought plan, which triggered an accounting that shows residents how their use compares to the average in their customer class, along with a program offering free water audits, spokesperson James MacAdam said.
If the federal government imposes deeper cutbacks on releases from Lake Mead next year, he said, Tucson will go to its next stage and require water audits for those whose use exceeds guidelines that are now under development. The mayor and council could stop offering new water service to areas outside of its city limits or targeted annexation areas. They would consider adding a water surcharge. But they would not ticket or restrict water use.
Like Phoenix, Tucson believes it has the resources to protect residents even as the Colorado shrinks. Tucson uses about 100,000 acre-feet — each acre-foot equaling about 326,000 gallons — every year, all of it from the Colorado. Thanks to an allocation of 144,000 acre-feet from the river in years past, Tucson has stored five years’ worth in its aquifer, and forgoing groundwater use has also let the aquifer rebound naturally. But even if the Bureau of Reclamation imposes a Tier 3 shortage, cutting Tucson’s share to 130,000 acre-feet, MacAdam said Tucson could still store more in the ground.
That’s not to say cutbacks aren’t coming.
“Given the drama on the river and the way it’s going,” he said, “it’s not unlikely that there will be negotiations where everyone’s looking at voluntary cuts.”
Under current development patterns, he said, Tucson could tap groundwater to supply customers for several decades even if the CAP stopped delivering the city any Colorado River water.
“We feel really good about it,” MacAdam said of the city’s supply.
‘We are not running out of water’
In Scottsdale, residents rely on the Colorado for about two-thirds of their water, and the city has taken action this year to preserve it. Scottsdale declared a Stage 1 drought and committed itself to reducing 5% of municipal water uses while asking residents to voluntarily do the same, Scottsdale Water spokesperson Valerie Schneider said.
The city also announced it will stop allowing water haulers to take its water beyond city limits next year, forcing one unincorporated area to look for another source. City residents do not face restrictions.
As of May 1, Schneider said, the city had shaved nearly 8% of its water use on public properties, and Scottsdale overall had cut use by 2.5%.
“We are the only city actively looking to reduce water use by a designated number and asking residents to do the same,” Schneide
r said.
Scottsdale is not imposing restrictions on watering. If cuts from Lake Mead require more severe drought declarations, the mayor and council will decide whether to restrict watering or impose a water surcharge.
“We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves,” Schneider said. “We are not running out of water.”
In Phoenix’s far-northwest suburbs, Surprise also has activated the first stage of its drought plan. Like its larger neighbors, it says it has a resilient water supply and can rely on public information for now. It has banked groundwater since the 1990s, and last year stored twice what it served to customers. Like Phoenix, it has agreed to leave a portion of its Colorado River water in Lake Mead this year.
The city is completing a xeriscaping demonstration garden and offering courses on efficient landscaping and irrigation. It is not restricting use.
“We will continue to monitor the Colorado River basin,” Surprise water conservation specialist Amanda Rothermal said in an email, “and we are ready to respond and meet the needs of our community as conditions change.”
Large cities in metro Phoenix have not imposed watering restrictions because they don’t yet need to, said Warren Tenney, who directs the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association. His organization represents and advocates for 10 Maricopa County cities, including Phoenix and Scottsdale.
“If things get so serious that we need to ask for everyone to conserve even more,” Tenney said, “then we will do that. But it’s much more effective to work at instilling an understanding that we are desert dwellers, and therefore water is our most precious resource.”
Nevada, with only a 300,000-acre-foot allocation of the river for 2.3 million residents in and around Las Vegas (roughly equal to what Phoenix alone uses from all sources each year), has acted out of a necessity that hasn’t yet hit central Arizona’s big cities.
“We’re not in a situation like Las Vegas, where we are solely relying on the Colorado River,” Tenney said. “We’re fortunate to have more than one supply here, but we constantly remind ourselves that we have to be good stewards.”
The goal is to avoid mandates
Phoenix has achieved per-capita reductions in water use similar to those in Las Vegas and Los Angeles without spending millions on rebates or enforcement, said Kathryn Sorensen, director of research at Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy and a former director of the city’s water department.
About 80% of family homes in the city had lush green lawns in the 1970s, a percentage that has plummeted since then. Central Arizona cities have invested in conservation education, she said, and it is paying off.
“The cities have focused on culture change — getting people to understand that wise water use in the desert is always necessary,” Sorensen said, “not just when reservoir levels are low.”
The goal in Phoenix, according Campbell, is to avoid mandates. “We never want to have to do that,” she said.
State DWR Director Buschatzke, himself a former Phoenix water director, remembers homeowners and developers advocating against bans on grass or large pools, the sorts of tools Las Vegas has employed.
“I still think there’s a kind of strong individualist ethic in this state, and that would not be looked upon favorably,” he said.
Nonetheless, he said, it’s time for water departments to start thinking about options if the river keeps shrinking, and about what conditions might lead to outdoor water limits.
He expects any such moves would be incremental, tied to current drought conditions, so people can understand what’s coming.
“We’re not going to leap from A to Z, but we’re going to have that progress,” he said before amending his thought to reflect the river’s unpredictable nature: “Maybe we’ll have to leap.”
Brandon Loomis covers environmental and climate issues for The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. Reach him at [email protected] or follow on Twitter @brandonloomis.
Environmental coverage on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. Follow The Republic environmental reporting team at environment.azcentral.com and @azcenvironment on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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