Tucson Water’s new boss, Timothy Thomure, has a long history in water engineering.
In an interview with the Star in advance of his Feb. 15 start date, Thomure laid out his vision for a new rate structure. (See accompanying story.)
He also shared the prospects for treating wastewater to drinking quality, a practice he has long supported and has worked on.
Additionally, he discussed water conservation in general, the city’s potential responses to and preparedness for future Central Arizona Project shortages, the ongoing controversy over city water harvesting rebates, and the possibility of large-scale capture of storm runoff to store for future use.
Thomure was an official with Tucson Water from the early to mid-2000s. Most recently, he worked for HDR Engineering Inc., in Tucson and Phoenix, since 2007 as an area water operations manager.
Thomure, who is 47, will earn $160,000 a year at his new job. That compares to a $154,000 annual salary earned by his predecessor, Alan Forrest, who resigned last year as Tucson Water director to go into private consulting.
An engineer who earned a bachelor’s degree in geography from the University of Illinois and a master’s in engineering from the University of Arizona, Thomure also studied geology and hydrology for two years at the South Dakota School of Mines.
Here are excerpts from the interview:
Q: Engineers are known as straight-line thinkers, seeking the most efficient way to get from Point A to Point B, sometimes even when that collides with values such as conservation and sustainability. Can you think outside the box?
A: I’m not your typical engineer. Most of my career has been spent as a planner, looking at the big picture, solving problems on a major scale, as opposed to project-by-project engineering approaches.
Q: Give an example of big-picture work.
A: When I was at Tucson Water, I was the Clearwater program manager, in charge of the CAP recharge facility in the Avra Valley. I wasn’t in charge of engineering the facilities, but I was coordinating work from different disciplines, helping the utility make decisions on how we approach the CAP and how do we develop infrastructure — wells and pipelines — to meet resource objectives. There were individual design contracts led by other engineers. I coordinated how that fit together in the overall system.
Q: You spent a lot of time on treating wastewater for drinking programs while at HDR. As Tucson Water director, what are your plans for that? Will you accelerate them to prepare for CAP shortages, or simply carry out the current plan to have a pilot project online by the mid-2020s?
A: It’s a critical resource for the city and we need to do everything we can to maximize use of it. I don’t know that I have the answer yet for when.
It’s a factor of how quickly the community is ready for that implementation; also, how soon do we need to go to that step.
With the amount of demand we have, and our capability to meet that demand right now, we’ll still remain focused on Colorado River supplies.
Q: Are we ready for a CAP-Colorado River shortage? The Bureau of Reclamation now predicts one will occur in 2018, curtailing deliveries to Central Arizona farmers. It warns that there is a 30 percent chance that conditions on the Colorado River and Lake Mead could be dire enough in five years to raise the prospect of urban water curtailments soon afterward.
A: I would tend to agree that a shortage on the Colorado River is more likely to occur in the next five years than we’ve ever seen before; it’s imminent and we need to be prepared for that.
I think we need to do a couple of things. One is to support regional efforts to implement recovery of Arizona Water Banking Authority water (it’s stored underground in the Tucson and Phoenix areas for use in times of shortage).
It’s great that we have that water in ground. (But) we want to make sure we have agreements and infrastructure in place to recover that water. From my understanding, it’s exception rather than rule where, like our facilities in the Avra Valley, we have pumping capacity to get that water out.
Q: There’s been a guerrilla war at City Hall over rainwater harvesting rebates for people who install cisterns and earthworks at home. The City Council has unanimously supported expanding rebates. But Tucson Water says they’re not conserving water because a lot of people who get rebates plant more vegetation to use the harvested rainfall. Will you fight or cooperate?
A. Things like water harvesting and conservation efforts have always been part of how we are as a culture, as a community. I think Tucson Water is supportive of that.
I recognize there’s been some resistance (at Tucson Water); it’s always been Tucson Water’s position that we want to make decisions based on facts and we want to understand from a cost and water-supply standpoint the implications of any water harvesting or conservation approach. We need to find a way to do it as efficient as we can and cost effective as we can, while honoring the direction from the mayor and council.
Q: Doesn’t water harvesting have a value as a backup supply for people in the event of a CAP shortage?
A: It certainly makes individuals and homes more resilient. The effect that has as a utility of 750,000 people is a little bit difficult to quantify. Individuals saving their own water might not benefit their neighbors or the whole system, but it benefits themselves when a shortage comes.
Q: California plans to spend $200 million to study the possibility of large-scale capture of stormwater for future use, and Los Angeles plans to double the amount of stormwater it captures. Is it time for Tucson to look more closely at this idea?
A: I’m aware of at least two or three times over the last 15 years where I know Tucson Water has looked at that, specifically in the Santa Cruz River. Certainly I’m open to refreshing those studies and seeing what might make sense in the future, whether we can do it economically. One of the key criteria we need to understand is how our hydrology in our rivers does differ from coastal California.
