Gov. Doug Ducey’s new budget gives his water agency a boost, but not as big as some water observers say is needed.
The Arizona Department of Water Resources would get a sizable staff increase compared to current levels under the proposed budget, but it’s not so sizable when compared to a few years ago.
Ducey’s proposed 2016-17 budget lets the long-pinched water agency hire 14 more staffers than today and 18 more than it had in November — without increasing the total budget. When the hiring is done, the agency would have 129 employees. That’s up from 115 today and 111 in November 2015.
The governor has loosened a statewide hiring freeze for the water agency, allowing spending of $2 million a year in unspent funds, said Tom Buschatzke, the department’s director.
The proposed 2016-17 budget and the current 2015-16 budget are both $12.803 million.
The water agency’s budget has become a big concern for many observers because of ongoing problems with Colorado River flows, unregulated rural groundwater pumping for farms and unfinished state water management plans for some urban areas, though Tucson is not one of them.
Many officials in academia, nonprofit organizations and local water agencies say the department has been starved by the Legislature for years.
The current water department budget is 0.12 percent of the total state budget, which former U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona has called “decimal dust” compared to the entire budget.
Kyl has said the department is a key economic engine for the state due to the importance of water to the state’s economy.
The staff increase will allow the department to work on a host of important tasks, Buschatzke said.
That includes carrying out Ducey’s recent water initiative and the state’s 2014 Strategic Vision report that warned we need to find more water to keep up with a nearly 300 percent increase in population by 2110.
New staff will also be used on Colorado River matters, collecting well data around the state and for working on long-delayed water-rights dispute cases, said Buschatzke, pronouncing himself happy with Ducey’s proposed budget.
The new staff will be far bigger than the 97 employees the department had in 2011, but far lower than the 236 and 235 it had in fiscal years 2007-08 and 2009-08, respectively.
Less happy is Kathleen Ferris, the department’s director nearly 30 years ago under Gov. Bruce Babbitt and currently executive director of the Phoenix-based Arizona Municipal Water Users Association.
“The department has been decimated by past budget cuts, and I am not confident that maintaining the current level of appropriations will allow the department to do the very important work it has in front of it,” Ferris said. “I was hoping for more. But if money is freed up to ADWR to hire new employees because of a thaw in the hiring freeze, that’s a start in the right direction.”
