By Phil Riske | Managing Editor
(STATE CAPITOL) — Many Arizona voters have misconceptions about the amount of water available in the state, a legislative committee was told Monday.
News accounts, including of California’s drought conditions, have left the impression Arizona is short of water, according to a survey last summer conducted by Public Opinion Strategies (+/-4%).
Just over 50 percent of voters said Arizona’s groundwater resources are insufficient for the next decade, Bas Aja, director of the Arizona Cattlemen’s Association, told the Senate Natural Resources Committee.
Aja said the finding was a surprise because most areas of the state have 100-year supplies of groundwater. He said most people don’t distinguish between surface and groundwater.
“You can’t see groundwater,” Aja told the committee. “Our groundwater resources are the reason we’re not California.”
Eight-five of those surveyed said they were concerned about water available to farmers and ranchers, although 66 percent said they were satisfied with agriculture’s water management programs.
Voters in the survey strongly opposed allowing farmers to be able to sell their groundwater allotments.
California has first rights to Colorado River water, and declared shortages are decisions by the level of water in Lake Mead. Under the Colorado River agreement, agriculture would take the first reduction in a shortage.
A majority of those surveyed prefered paying for desalinization in California in exchange for their allotment of the Colorado.
Voters were asked where usage should be cut in a shortage. Farmers and ranchers (2%) were far outside the top three: private lawns, golf courses and other outdoor uses (70%); new growth and development (22%), and cities and towns (4%).
Aja said the state needs to look at water infrastructure, which it hasn’t had to do since the building damns decades ago, partly because of opposition from environmentalists.
“Dams had a bad name,” he said, ‘but we haven’t built storage infrastructure for a long, long time. There are places we can build additional storage.”
Voters supported both spending more tax dollars on dams and relaxing environmental laws to build new dams, and about 80 percent in Southern Arizona supported relaxing environmental laws to build new dams.
Other survey findings
- Voters widely approved of the job the Department of Water Resources is doing managing the state’s water supply.
- Voters were most supportive of protecting landowners’ rights to drill their own wells.
- Voters opposed transferring or limiting the water of Arizona farmers and ranchers.
- Protecting well-drilling was the most popular proposal in all corners of the state.
- Opinion was evenly split on relaxing the current prohibition on transferring water from rural areas to urban areas.
- A glance at the political environment revealed a majority believed the state has gotten off on the wrong track. The number was driven by independents, Democrats, older voters and women.
Other action
The Senate Natural Resources committee also forwarded two executive nominations to the full Senate: Mark Killian, appointed Director of Agriculture, and Eric Slocum, nominated as director of the Department of Environmental Quality.
