Myth vs Reality

Reality: NO.

Arizona’s laws and regulations do not protect our aquifer – our only supply of drinking water. Even though every city, town, and the county have been following all laws and regulations, the Arizona Department of Water Resources has determined that since 1996 on average we are pump more groundwater than is recharged by over 13,000 acre feet per year, enough water to fill a football field 2.5 miles deep, every year.

A recent report from the Morrison Institute of Arizona State University describes some of our permissive water laws:

• Current laws allow groundwater to be pumped without replenishment - an unsustainable policy. 
• Too many groundwater users are “grandfathered” - allowed to pump groundwater in perpetuity.
• New residential growth is permitted to rely on groundwater even if pumping that groundwater depletes the usable supply.

The bottom line is that Arizona water law is intended to support near-term economic development, not to sustain our groundwater or our rivers for future generations. Unfortunately, most elected officials in the Quad Cities continue to make decisions based strictly on what is legal rather than on what will achieve a secure water future for our region. 

Legal is not necessarily wise.

For more information, please view this video.

Reality: NO.

Safe yield is a management goal seeking a balance between the volume of water that leaves our aquifer with the volume replenished by precipitation and artificial recharge methods. Water leaves the aquifer primarily through pumping at municipal and private wells and by natural discharge to rivers and neighboring aquifers. Artificial recharge returns treated wastewater to the aquifer through percolation into recharge ponds or by injection wells.

Safe yield is a goal, not a requirement. There is no penalty for failure and no reward for success. It is the responsibility of local government, not the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR). There are no regional plans to discuss the possibility of beginning to cooperate to develop a safe yield plan!

Overdraft is a measurement of the gap between current groundwater use and the goal of safe yield.  ADWR has determined that, since 1996 on average the overdraft of our aquifer is over 13,000 acre feet per year, enough water to fill a football field 2.5 miles deep, every year. Groundwater provides 100% of the potable water for the Quad Cities.

Because of the overdraft, groundwater levels in our aquifers are declining. This causes wells on the edges of the aquifer to fail, threatens groundwater quality, and degrades the flow in rivers and springs.

Even if we achieve safe yield, river flows will continue to decline in response to the enormous groundwater deficit that has been accumulated.

Because of these flaws, safe yield is not a science-based goal. Achieving safe yield will not assure a sustainable water future. However, safe yield is the law we must work with today.

For more information, please refer to this article.

Reality: NO.

Arizona laws and regulations allow new development to pump groundwater without replenishment. Local governments use these inadequate regulations, special exceptions, and loopholes to facilitate construction of new homes and businesses. Each new home increases the overdraft. As a result, the overdraft grows, the aquifer continues to be drained, achieving safe yield becomes more difficult, more wells go dry, and the Verde River is degraded. 

Additionally, Arizona law does not require aggressive conservation programs to offset current over-pumping.

CWAG calculates that the exemptions, loopholes, and weaknesses in Arizona water law have legally authorized pumping a vast amount of “paper water” that is not sustainably available - enough to grow the population of western Yavapai County and cities to more than triple the current population - despite a growing overdraft.

Arizona water law needs to be modernized. CWAG suggests that water should be an important issue in every election, and we recommend that citizens vote for officials that recognize the problem and commit to achieving a sustainable water supply.

For more information, please view this article.

Reality: Realistic scientific estimates are not possible.

We cannot estimate the amount of economically recoverable water in our aquifer. We do not know how much growth will occur. And we do not know how much climate change will affect the aquifer.

The groundwater in an aquifer is not like a tank or swimming pool. Rather, groundwater occupies the spaces between underground rocks. Our aquifer has two main layers, an upper layer with sedimentary material (silt, clay, sand and gravel) and a lower layer of basaltic volcanic rocks. The thickness of these layers and the degree of saturation of the materials are different in different areas of our region. Because of all of this variation, estimates of the volume of water in our aquifer are uncertain and unreliable. However, even if we knew exactly how much groundwater there is, we could not say how much could be recovered or long it will last:

According to the Arizona Department of Water Resources:

“not all of that volume could be practically produced by groundwater withdrawals from wells. Hydrologic and technical issues that ultimately limit the actual volume of groundwater that can be produced include, but are not limited to: • Aquifer productivity and heterogeneity; • Costs to drill new wells; • Increasing pumping costs and decreasing well yields with increasing depth-to-water; • Physical availability requirements under the Assured Water Supply Program; • Legal restrictions on well locations; • Water quality; • Land subsidence.”

Thus it is not possible to estimate how much or how long water could be pumped before the aquifer runs out. 

For more information, please view this article.

Reality: NO.

We definitely should be concerned about whether the Quad Cities region will have a secure water future. We depend on groundwater from our aquifer as our sole source of water. Municipal and other wells are pumping far more water from our aquifer than is being replenished by nature and artificial recharge. Facilitated by Arizona laws and regulations, this level of over-pumping (called the “overdraft”) increases with each new home. Current conservation measures are helpful but inadequate; much more should be done. 

Scientists have concluded that it is not possible to determine what the volume of water in the aquifer is economically recoverable due to the variability of geologic and hydrologic conditions across the region. It is essentially impossible to estimate what portion of this volume might be economically recovered.

Since it is not possible to estimate how long our water will last, elected officials should adopt policies that, first, require water-neutral development, and, second implement aggressive conservation programs that target specific reductions in water use across all sectors, from residences to commercial buildings to institutions.

For more information, please view this article.

Reality: NO

Some officials in the PrAMA allege “exempt wells” are unregulated and cause the overdraft. This is false.

In the AMA, small wells are regulated but are exempt from annual reporting to the  Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) if they pump less than 35 gallons per minute and irrigate less than 2 acres. These small wells (“exempt wells”) provide water to rural families not served by a municipal water system. Their water usage is similar to a family using municipal water. 

Family wells represent a small proportion of the total water usage in the Quad Cities region. Data from ADWR states that family wells account for about 11% of total regional water use yet supply approximately 20% of the region's population. This indicates that rural families use water more efficiently. Rural homeowners are concerned about the falling water levels in their wells and most are not wasteful with water use. 

However, rural households use septic systems for wastewater treatment. Septic tanks do not recharge as much water as new developments in Prescott and Prescott Valley on a sewer system.

Prescott and Prescott Valley each cause larger negative impacts on the aquifer than all rural wells in our area combined! Each municipal system pumps about 4,000 acre-feet more groundwater than the volume of treated wastewater that is recharged. ADWR estimates that rural wells pump a total of about 2,500 acre-feet per year.

Reality: NO.

A sustainable water future for the Quad Cities region requires both safe yield, a balance between water pumped and recharged to our aquifer, and protection of the base flow of the upper Verde River. The Big Chino pipeline will not deliver enough water to reach safe yield and it will degrade the upper Verde River.

Big Chino water is insufficient to reach safe yield. The proposed Big Chino pipeline is legally authorized to deliver 8,068 acre-feet per year of groundwater from the Big Chino aquifer to Prescott and Prescott Valley. Since the average annual overdraft is over 13,000 acre-feet per year (and growing), this is not enough to close the gap. Plus, Prescott and Prescott Valley plan to use Big Chino water to support additional growth, not to reach safe yield. Each new home will increase the overdraft.

Unmitigated groundwater pumping to supply the Big Chino Pipeline will dry up the first 25 miles of the upper Verde, destroying some of the finest riparian and wildlife habitat in Arizona and degrading 190 miles of the entire river down to the confluence with the Salt River near Scottsdale. 

Why should we destroy the Verde and fail to fix the AMA? There are better solutions.

For more information, please read these articles.

Reality: NO.

• Every new home consumes groundwater.
• Recharged wastewater is recovered and used to supply new development.
• Recharge is 30-75% of pumping.
• For more information, please read this article.