Who has the water, who wants the water and who gets the water will loom larger in more peoples' minds as the drought continues. John Sullivan, of Salt River Project's water group says that if the drought goes on much longer it could become our new drought of record. SRP hydrologist Charlie Ester told a Tempe audience in April that four of the five driest years in the past century have occurred between 1996 and 2002, with evidence from tree ring studies indicating that 2002 was the driest in 1,400 years.
SRP collects water from 13,000 square miles of watersheds north and east of the Valley and stores it in six reservoirs... Roosevelt (by far the largest), Apache, Canyon and Saguaro lakes on the Salt River, and Horseshoe and Bartlett lakes on the Verde River... whose combined capacity is approximately 2.6 million acre-feet of water. An acre-foot is 325,851 gallons or enough water to cover an acre one-foot deep. An acre-foot generally is the amount consumed by a family of four or five in a year.
SRP was formed early in the century by Valley farmers and others, who put up their land as collateral and worked with the federal government to build Roosevelt Lake for assurance of flood control and a guaranteed water supply.
At that time little was known about the huge aquifer that lies beneath the Phoenix area and no deep well technology existed then anyhow. Roosevelt, completed in 1911 was the first of the great Western reclamation projects and the only one that has been paid off so far with local taxes and fees.
All of the reservoirs are presently at a fraction of capacity and Ester says that without 600,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water via the Central Arizona Project, the reservoir system would be at about 5 percent of capacity and Roosevelt would be dry.
The dividing up of Colorado River water among the seven states that border the river is an interesting story. The divvy that over allocated 17 million acre-feet a year was made in the 1920s. The development of tree ring studies later revealed that the division was made during the wettest period in 400 years! On average, the Colorado River only delivers about 12 million acre-feet a year, and for the last five years the inflow has only been 9 to 10 million acre-feet, the lowest flows recorded in modern times. However, studies indicate that droughts of 17 to 28 years have occurred periodically in the Southwest and at least one drought lasted for about 32 years. Most scientists now believe it was this drought that caused the abandonment of the cliff dwelling civilizations, and some studies indicate that the Colorado River may have dried up altogether at that time.
Those periodic droughts usually follow unusually wet periods. For instance, our most recent wet period lasted from the mid-1970s until the early 1990s. How well I remember those years when snow packed the Rim all winter and creeks and springs gushed all summer! Looking back, it was like living in another country.
The last driest year prior to the record FOUR driest years between 1996 and 2002 was in 1956, and Arizona has changed dramatically since then. For years we have been the second-fastest growing state in the nation, led only by Nevada, historically the driest state in the U.S. Our most rapid growth has occurred simultaneously with our record drought years.
In order to support this growth and make good on claims by Indian tribes for water promised to them by the federal government before Arizona was a state, aggressive competition for water is heating up, mostly behind the scenes at this point. Already the tribes have been awarded the rights to more than 40 percent of CAP water. Some people predict that within a few short years only reservations will have enough water to farm, and that tribes will be selling water at prices up to ten times higher than current rates.
We in the White Mountains sit atop what Apache County Supervisor David Brown says is the biggest relatively unused aquifer in the Southwest. The Coconino aquifer is huge and consists of three parts the "N-aquifer (Navajo system)", "D-aquifer (Dakota system)," and "C-aquifer (Coconino system)," aquifers. We here is Snowflake are on the C aquifer, by far the most abundant of the three. It spreads over 21,655 square miles and is estimated to contain up to a billion acre-feet of water. Only a fraction of that is used, even with several power plants and the paper mill. Historically, the C aquifer has been replenished by precipitation and runoff at the rate of about 500 million acre-feet annually (much less now under drought conditions), collecting water from the Mogollon Rim to the west, the White Mountains to the south and the Defiance Uplift to the north in Navajo country.
The Hopis and Navajos are claiming rights to much of that water under the ongoing Little Colorado River Adjudication. The Hopi reservation is located almost entirely atop the N aquifer, which has numerous quality and accessibility limitations. Window Rock also has a serious water shortage as well as quality problems, says Navajo County Supervisor Pete Shumway. Ganado, however, has good water. As water experts study the interrelationship of groundwater and surface water, only time and the conclusion of the adjudication will tell how the riches of the C aquifer will be divided. Lest the happy property owners with their own wells become alarmed, Brown says the adjudication (however it turns out) is not likely to affect residential properties. However...it could affect future industrial use of the water on non reservation lands. Maybe.
Brown and Shumway, along with State Rep. Jake Flake and Sen. Jack Brown have worked long and hard to reserve the water of northeastern Arizona for residents and businesses creating jobs... located in northeastern Arizona. The first time I heard Brown speak on the subject was in 1997 at an Arizona Town Hall on water. At that time, water starved areas of the state were already trying to devise ways to get a piece of the abundant C aquifer. Brown told the attendees at the town hall that the water was available only to those who moved to northeastern Arizona and became part of the economy.
In a recent interview, Shumway explained that surface and groundwater in the C aquifer area flow generally in the same direction. From Springerville it flows north and westerly, eventually intersecting the Little Colorado River at Holbrook. From the Rim, Blue Ridge, Chevelon, etc. It flows into the Little Colorado at Winslow, then flows westerly. From the north, drainage flows southwest into the Little Colorado. All this water can be compared to a large bowl with a spout. The spout is located far to the northwest at Blue Springs south of Page and north of Flagstaff. "Blue Springs is the outflow of the Little Colorado River," Shumway said.
Blue Springs is considered a holy place by the ancient Indians such as Hopis' the place where the water is forever. Let¹s hope so.
Meanwhile, Arizona politicians, water bureaucrats and media who constantly pontificate on water conservation (which is only ONE good idea), lag far behind New Mexico in educating their citizens about the relationship between overgrown forests and water shortages.
The following is from an article on http://www.waterforthewest.org
"At a time of drought, when wildfire potential is critical, the devastation created by the pinon bark beetle adds more acres of tinder to an already volatile mix. Further arguments that decreasing the density of water hungry trees like juniper, salt cedar and russian olive will increase the recharge rate to the ground water have not fallen on deaf ears. In the last legislative session, Senate Bill 209, introduced by Senator Timothy Jennings called for replenishing New Mexico's watersheds by thinning federal lands, either with or without federal cooperation. Jenning's bill estimated that overgrowth diverts an estimated 50 million acre-feet of water per year; enough to completely refill Elephant Butte Lake 126 times in the course of a year."
Studies concludes that millions of acres of federal lands in Arizona and New Mexico have at least 500 EXCESS trees per acre, each consuming 10 to 200 gallons of water a day (then dying and succumbing to bark beetle if the water isn't there). The optimal amount for Southwestern forests is 12 to 30 trees and that's how they were in pre and early-settlement times.
Even Forest Service studies estimate that clearing 1,000 acres of dangerous overgrowth could free up 12,000 acre-feet of water per year. Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton says there are 198 MILLION ACRES across the West that are dangerously overgrown.
Take a very conservative number... say there are 250 excess trees on each of 4.5 million acres. Assume each tree consumes 5 gallons of water a day. That equals 5.625 billion gallons, or 17,600 acre-feet per day... the amount of water that Arizonan's presently consume daily.
And as we wrangle over what kind and how many trees should be thinned from the forest and who should do it.... the drought continues, the forests that have already consumed all the water die and burn...and citizens are told by water "experts" to buy low-flow toilets and eliminate Arizona¹s water problems.