Welcome back, readers!
After a slow start, this year’s monsoon season ended with a nice finale in Central Arizona, becoming the second wettest in the last decade. I didn’t exactly notice because it was consistently wetter over here in the Sky Islands region I call home.
I also took most of the summer off to work on some personal projects while Arren took the helm of the S.S. Water Agenda, covering a bunch of great stories. Today we’re reviewing some of the water news that dripped through the cracks: weather patterns and forecasts, Colorado River updates, and groundwater stories — including first steps toward a possible eighth Active Management Area in Arizona.
Weather watch
Despite some heavy and occasionally catastrophic monsoon rains this year, Arizona’s water situation isn’t looking great.
The San Carlos Reservoir of the Gila River, which supplies water for the Gila River Indian Community and local farmers, was only holding 8,627 acrefeet of water as of September 10, down from 500,000 acrefeet in 2023.
“Dry-ups have happened before. This is a trend with the ongoing drought, but it’s a renewable water source,” reservoir manager Brandi Ogle told the Republic. “If we’re getting good snowmelt and rain, the farmers are going to be able to use that.”
However, snowmelt might not be as predictive as once thought.
A team of researchers from multiple Colorado Basin states published a paper in May that found that low groundwater levels can reduce expected snowmelt runoff by 30%. That’s because dry soil absorbs more water before it can reach major water channels. Blogger Daniel Rothberg interviewed the paper’s lead author, Paul Brooks, who is trying to get the word out to southwestern water managers so they can plan accordingly.
Our next-door neighbors in New Mexico experienced a “bottom 10 percent” of snowpack this year, leading to unusually long dry stretches of the Rio Grande. Up in Utah, hot temperatures early in the season, followed by freezes, meant that the apple, apricot, cherry, peach and pear trees in the Fruita Historic District didn’t bear any fruit.
The U.S. Drought Monitor reports that Utah has drawn down their reservoirs at more than double the normal rate this summer, and it predicts that Lake Powell could hit “dead pool” by December 2026, meaning water levels will be too low to generate electricity at the dam.
Unfortunately, the upcoming winter rainy season doesn’t offer a hopeful forecast, with a 71% chance of dry La Niña conditions until January, and a 54% chance thereafter.
In July, a team of researchers from across the Southwest published a paper claiming that current scientific models are underestimating the severity of continued droughts expected for the next 25 years.
While we should be happy for every drop of rain that comes our way, flash flooding can also be perilous.
Last week, a flood in Globe-Miami took the lives of three people. On Sept. 26, a 38-year-old man in Scottsdale was fatally caught in nine-foot floodwaters. And a 37-year-old woman suffered a similar fate in a flood in Benson on Sept. 12. A tragedy was averted on Aug. 6 when six ADOT workers rescued a woman who had fallen into a Phoenix canal the night before and kept afloat by clinging to a tire in the waters.
The Globe-Miami flood damaged over 50 homes and brought thousands of volunteer assistants to the area. Gov. Katie Hobbs declared a state of emergency for the region and released $200,000 from the Governor’s Emergency Fund. Globe Mayor Al Gameros told the Republic that the city needs federal disaster assistance.
Earlier this year, Attorney General Kris Mayes joined a coalition of 20 states in a lawsuit challenging Trump’s decision to defund FEMA’s disaster prevention Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, which includes $9.8 million for Arizona flood-prevention projects in Buckeye, Camp Verde, and other areas.
On Tuesday, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s defunding of $233 million in FEMA disaster relief funds for 12 states while litigation continues.
The Colorado
Last month, a team of experts from the University of Colorado issued a white paper predicting that nearly half of the water stored in Lakes Powell and Mead will be depleted, and urged the Department of the Interior to take immediate action.
In a blog post, the authors described the situation as “a near-term crisis is unfolding before our eyes.” Jonathan Thompson at The Land Desk gives a rundown of the paper’s findings.
In August, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation issued its own two-year estimates for the lakes’ storage level declines, with Acting Commissioner David Palumbo stating in a press release:
“We must develop new, sustainable operating guidelines that are robust enough to withstand ongoing drought and poor runoff conditions to ensure water security for more than 40 million people who rely on this vital resource.”
The federal government’s current deadline for interstate agreement on Colorado River management is October 11, and no one is sure if the states will pull something off by then.
Last week, former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard joined KTAR’s Jim Sharpe on the AZ Political Podcast and briefed on the status of political gridlock between the Basin states. University of Arizona professor Karl Flessa reminds us that most of Arizona’s Colorado River water rights are the most junior and thus most imperiled by cutback agreements.
“Let’s face it, a new operating agreement is not going to create new water. It is only to find a new way to share the pain of the decreased water we are getting in our future. I suspect restrictions will become more severe as time goes by,” Flessa told AZFamily.
In an August news post, Arizona State University water experts expressed concerns that Arizona could lose up to 40% of its water supply.
Water law Professor Rhett Larson spoke to economic tradeoffs like “higher food prices due to less water for agriculture but lower housing prices with more water for residential growth.” Professor of Hydrosystems Engineering Enrique Vivoni said, “Arizona will have to start thinking about replacing that water supply. That would require investments.” The university also released a guide to the soon-to-expire operating guidelines for Lakes Powell and Mead.
Arizona’s Water Infrastructure Finance Authority is looking at six proposals for water augmentation, including desalination plants, reclaimed water, and new surface water sources. Former Gov. Doug Ducey set aside $1 billion for WIFA to invest in these projects. That budget has already been reapportioned three times, leaving only about one-third of the original amount (the Arizona Agenda dug into that situation last month).
The Colorado River Indian Tribes are taking a water conservation approach unique in the United States — requesting that the Colorado River be granted the rights of legal personhood.
CRIT Chairwoman Amelia Flores said the inspiration for this strategy came from a trip to New Zealand, where the Whanganui River was granted legal personhood after a lengthy court case.
The “rights of nature” concept originated in Ecuador when its Constitution was restructured in 2008 under then-President Rafael Correa. Bolivia followed suit in 2010, India in 2017 for the Ganges River, Colombia in 2016 for the Atrato River and Bangladesh in 2019 for all rivers.
In the U.S., citizens of Toledo, Ohio, passed the Lake Erie Bill of Rights via referendum, which was later struck down by federal courts as unconstitutional.
Groundwater
On Tuesday, the Arizona Department of Water Resources gave notice of an informal public meeting to discuss the possibility of designating La Paz County’s Ranegras Plain Basin as the state’s eighth Active Management Area, or ‘AMA’.
For nearly 40 years, Arizona had only five AMA designations, the Phoenix, Tucson, Pinal, Prescott, and Santa Cruz AMAs, where restrictions on groundwater use pertain mainly to agriculture. In 2022, citizens of the Douglas Basin successfully initiated their basin as the sixth AMA, and ADWR designated the neighboring Willcox Basin as the seventh AMA in 2024.
For a refresher on Arizona’s past and present in groundwater regulations, see our previous three-part series for the Tucson Agenda: A Tale of Two Basins, The Well of History, and Rural Arizona, Land of the Free (Water).
The name “Ranegras Plain” may not be as familiar as “Fondomonte”, the Saudi-owned alfalfa mega farm which has made headlines for years as the water-hungry resident of the Basin.
Last week, we reported on updates to Attorney General Kris Mayes’ ongoing nuisance lawsuit against Fondomonte. We accidentally only pushed that story to paid subscribers of the Water Agenda, but it’s now publicly accessible here.
Last year, a similar meeting was held for possible designation for the Gila Bend Basin, which saw a lot of pushback from the area’s long-established agricultural community.
Ranegras Plain, however, did not have much agricultural development before Fondomonte showed up, and the local communities may be more supportive of an AMA designation.
East of the Granite Wash Mountains from Ranegras Plain is the McMullen Valley Basin, where groundwater declines cause the ground to subside over 2 inches per year. The big water user there is United Arab Emirates-owned Al Dahra Farms.
This year, Arizona passed an “Ag to Urban” law, which allows agricultural water rights in AMAs to be sold to residential developments within a limited distance from the irrigated land.
Not only is the law supposed to help transition water from cropland to suburbia, but it also helps reduce overall water use as the total water rights are diminished when transferred to the new developments.
But there is some contention over how effective the law will be, as structured. Some Democratic legislators and environmental organizations say the measure didn’t go far enough in addressing water supply problems. And some Republicans said it gave too much discretion to the Department of Water Resources.
In an opinion piece for the Capitol Times, former Gov. Bruce Babbitt, who signed the historic 1980 Groundwater Management Act into law, said the new law is a “good start” and wants to see it expanded outside of the Phoenix, Tucson, and Pinal AMAs.
Water policy expert Kathleen Ferris, whom Babbitt appointed to oversee the creation of the Groundwater Management Act, is far more pessimistic.
In an interview with KJZZ’s Mark Brodie, Ferris critiques the ag-to-urban approach’s short-sightedness, pointing out that we’ll be increasing our water demands in the long run, which we can’t afford to do.
“And remember that you’re replacing them — these crops — with homes,” she told Brodie. “Homes cannot be fallowed. Homes are permanent. And even the Department of Water Resources projections show that, at some point, the benefit to the aquifer becomes negative as more and more homes are built and more groundwater is pumped.
…[Arizonans] want the state to prioritize basic needs and the current population. It can’t all be driven by growth. But our policymakers, for the most part, don’t seem to be listening.”
In other groundwater lawsuit news, the Center for Biological Diversity continues its battle for the future of the San Pedro River with lawsuit #4 against the Department of Water Resources, which they charge with wrongly granting a designation of adequate water supply to a 28,000-home development in Benson.
“The Villages of Vigneto development has always been predicated on the mirage of unavailable water,” says Robin Silver, a co-founder of the Center.
To end with a note of can-do optimism, let’s look at the groundwater work our state universities have tasked themselves with.
The Tri-University Recharge and Water Reliability Project (ATUR) collaboration between ASU, NAU, and UA is working to “identify possible new supplies of water across Arizona and to provide screening tools to support recharge planning.” You can read their summer newsletter here and check out their accomplishments here.