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Will ADWR Help?

Will the Arizona Department of Water Resources Help the Prescott AMA Achieve a Sustainable Water Future?

Arizona water laws, administered by the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR), will continue to frustrate our efforts to achieve a long-term sustainable water future for the Quad Cities area. When it comes to managing our finite water supply, ADWR has one big foot on the economic growth accelerator pedal and only a little toe on the water conservation brake pedal. 

The state legislature approved water law and regulations saying that economic development in Arizona cannot be held back by a lack of water. ADWR authorizes the volume of groundwater that municipalities and individual well owners can legally pump but doesn't require them to replenish the aquifer with the equivalent of what they pump.

ADWR assigned the Prescott Active Management Area the goal to achieve safe yield - zero overdraft - by 2025. Not only are we a long way from achieving this goal (we are going further into water debt every year) but there are no penalties if the goal isn't met, there are no incentives, and there is little assistance. ADWR does not believe that safe yield is achievable and refuses to insist that municipalities implement a full range of water conservation policies. In the context of Arizona water problems, the Prescott AMA is a small and difficult problem (but it is vitally important to us).

Safe yield is a deeply flawed management goal. Reaching safe yield will prevent further declines in our aquifers, but it will not protect our groundwater-dependent rivers. USGS states that safe yield is conceptually impossible, but we need to work with it because it is the law.

Arizona water law is administered by ADWR in order to facilitate development by permitting increasing groundwater pumping. Municipalities like Prescott and Prescott Valley understand that because there are no penalties for failing to achieve safe yield, they have no incentive to slow down development or to implement aggressive water conservation. For the cities in the Prescott AMA, a safe yield plan is all risk and no gain. It would reduce their existing paper water supply, provide no short-term benefit, and constrain new development.

Arizona water law and ADWR will not and cannot help us. The responsibility to achieve a sustainable water supply is ours alone.

DAILY DROPLET

  • "Ranchers need clean water for their stock, farmers need it for their crops, every employer needs it to stay in business, and every living thing needs it for life... The law needs to be clear to protect water quality and the rights of landowners."
    Mark Udall

  • "Water is the driver of Nature."
    Leonardo da Vinci

  • "When the well is dry, we know the worth of water."
    Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac, 1746

  • "...and since flow of information is to spirit what water is to life, we'd best think about how to keep the pipes free and unclogged."
    Raphie Frank

  • "In an age when man has forgotten his origins and is blind even to his most essential needs for survival, water along with other resources has become the victim of his indifference."
    Rachel Carson

  • "We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one."
    Jacques Yves Cousteau

  • "Water is life's matter and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water."
    Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, 1937 Nobel Prize for Medicine

  • "Water is everywhere and in all living things; we cannot be separated from water. No water, no life. Period..."
    Robert Fulghum

  • "It's the water. Everything is driven by the water."
    Mike Thompson

  • "Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over."
    Mark Twain