Enews Press Release
The Arizona Department of Water Resources has approved a massive groundwater pumping project that will drain the Upper San Pedro River in Southern Arizona. This decision comes despite opposition from the property owners along the river and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and ignores the project’s impact on the birds, wildlife, and local residents and businesses that are dependent on a healthy river.
The planned groundwater pumping will feed massive new development in Sierra Vista, a small city in the desert east of Tucson. By the developers’ own admission, the proposed construction will consume “virtually all of the available development land” left in Sierra Vista, and will significantly expand the population of this critically water-short area.
The developers could not proceed with the project without the State’s determination of an adequate water supply—a determination the State could only make by assuming that there is no connection between groundwater and water in the river.
Incredibly, despite volumes of scientific study demonstrating that the river and the groundwater aquifer are interconnected, the State has now made that determination and the pumping may begin.
