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.