Colorado River water flows through a canal that feeds farms operated by Tempe Farming Co., in Casa Grande, Ariz., Thursday, July 22, 2021. The Colorado River has been a go-to source of water for cities, tribes and farmers in the U.S. West for decades. But climate change, drought and increased demand are taking a toll. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is expected to declare the first-ever mandatory cuts from the river for 2022./Oskar Agredano/Cronkite News
By Nathan Brown | Arizona Capitol Times
For most of this session, lawmakers have been working with stakeholders of various interests to cobble together legislation that addresses Arizona’s water woes, but concerns over conservation and money have slowed progress.
House and Senate leadership have been talking for more than two months about changing the proposed Arizona Water Authority legislation to address some of the concerns about it, including changes to its governing board and more guardrails on how the money would be distributed.
“We’ve had a lot of involvement from stakeholders, especially recently where we turned it over to a group of stakeholders to take apart, add, subtract, make suggestions (on) how to make it better,” said House Speaker Rusty Bowers, R-Mesa. “The result’s – even with a good, healthy group who have different interests and many times are competing interests – that I think the product came back better.”
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The Speaker said they’ve also been working with minority leadership on concerns about conservation and have some ideas to “augment the augmentation.”
However, Senate Republican leadership wrote in a memo on May 16 that they are wary of the entire concept and think much of what the Arizona Water Authority would do could be accomplished by existing government bodies that oversee water spending. Creating a new agency, they wrote, “will be costly and result in administrative expenses that do not directly further the stated objectives of the investment.”
“The Majority concludes that the financing objectives of AWA and key aspects of its mission can be achieved through moderate investments in existing government entities accompanied with narrow statutory revisions,” wrote Senate President Karen Fann, R-Prescott, and Sens. Sine Kerr, R-Buckeye, and Majority Leader Rick Gray, R-Sun City.
Gov. Doug Ducey called for a $1 billion investment in water infrastructure over the next three years in his State of the State Address. The next month, legislative leaders started to solicit feedback on legislation creating an Arizona Water Authority to oversee this expansion.
There was initially talk of calling a special session to pass water legislation quickly. And while there is consensus that Arizona needs to do something about water, that doesn’t mean everyone was in love with the proposal on the table. Some stakeholders wanted to see conservation as part of the plan.
“The fact that the governor and the leadership in the House, especially, they want to look elsewhere for water when we haven’t even done what we can to conserve water in the state, that’s just ridiculous,” said Sandy Bahr, director of the Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon chapter. “And these conservation measures are way cheaper than what they’re proposing, so from a conservative perspective, it’s much better to invest in conservation before looking to invest a billion dollars in desal or some pipeline somewhere.”
