Tucson, Phoenix herald water sharing deal at White House summit

A water-sharing agreement will allow Tucson to soon store enough of Phoenix’s Central Arizona Project water to serve 17,000 homes.

The agreement to significantly boost Phoenix’s CAP water storage in Tucson was announced at Tuesday’s White House water summit. The agreement calls for 4,910 acre-feet of Phoenix’s CAP supply from the Colorado River to be stored within the next year in recharge basins in the Avra Valley, west of the Tucson Mountains. Up to 40,000 acre-feet of Phoenix’s water could be stored there by the end of the decade.

It was one of dozens of water sustainability measures unveiled or discussed at the national summit. The session was called in part in response to the West’s prolonged drought, and to the Flint, Michigan, water crisis caused by lead contamination.

But while most of the summit was filled with talk of new technologies and research tools, massive corporate investments in new supplies and hope for ramped-up conservation measures, an Arizonan who spoke at the four-hour summit offered a more discordant note. Gila River Indian Community Chairman Stephen Roe Lewis — whose tribe controls by far the biggest individual share of CAP water — criticized state and federal officials for leaving tribes out of the seven-state talks looking for ways to save water in the Colorado River Basin.

“It is a glaring misstep that needs to be corrected,” Lewis told the summit, held at the Eisenhower Office Building adjacent to the White House. “We want to be at the table. At our hearts, we’re stewards of the land. When we start talking about innovation, we have very innovative solutions to water management.”

Arizona’s water chief, Tom Buschatzke, said he has already discussed the ongoing negotiations with the Gila River Tribe but doesn’t believe it’s practical to expand the talks beyond the state water officials and others who currently participate in the meetings.

“I think you can understand that probably every water user in the state would want to be in that room, and that is not possible,” said Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the Colorado River’s reservoirs, had no comment on Lewis’ statement.

By contrast, Tucson and Phoenix officials were pitching their agreement as an example of the kind of cooperation needed to protect the region against its unyielding drought, now in its 15th year and standing as the Colorado Basin’s worst drought in 1,200 years.

“The biggest benefit of the agreement is that we’re working with other communities to insure long-term water security,” Tucson Water spokesman Fernando Molina said. “It gets as much of this state’s allocation (as possible) into the ground in a way it can be used more effectively.

“A lot of Maricopa County communities have recharge capability, but not the infrastructure to recover it and get it out of the ground,” Molina said.

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The new agreement ramps up a 2014 pact that allowed Phoenix to store 850 acre-feet of its CAP supply in the Avra Valley basins belonging to Tucson Water. In 2015, about 4,000 acre-feet of Phoenix water was stored there. Before the 40,000 acre feet can be stored, legal issues must be resolved and design work must be done on expanded recharge basins here, Tucson Water says.

The agreement benefits Tucson in the short term by raising its water table with recharged water. When future Colorado River water shortages become severe enough to impact cities — a prospect most likely five or more years away — Phoenix can take some of Tucson’s CAP water as it comes down the canal.

At that time, Tucson would be able to use Phoenix’s water that was stored in its basins. Expanding Avra Valley recharge basins to accommodate Phoenix’s water will cost $20 million to $30 million, and Phoenix will pay for it, Molina said.

If CAP supplies to cities are ever completely curtailed, Tucson would be in a better position than Phoenix because this city would have Phoenix’s stored water and Phoenix would have no CAP supplies of Tucson’s to divert. But Molina said he’s not aware of any forecast of a complete cutoff in the foreseeable future.

To forestall the possibility of major shortages, the seven river-basin states’ water officials are meeting regularly to try to work out a water-saving agreement. Their goal is to reduce water use in the lower basin of the river by 1.5 million to 3 million acre-feet over a five-year period, enough to keep Lake Mead, a Colorado River water reservoir at the Nevada border, from dropping below 1,025 feet or so. Cutbacks in deliveries to cities and tribes could occur at that level or shortly below it.

But in his talk at the summit Tuesday, Lewis said “the tribes get lost in the mix” in these discussions. The Gila Tribe has rights to 311,000 acre-feet of CAP, more than twice as much as the second biggest CAP right holder, the city of Tucson. Indian tribes statewide get about 555,000 acre-feet of CAP, compared to cities’ and industries’ 620,000.

“The feds think the tribes are working with the states and the states think the feds are working with and speaking for the tribes,” Lewis said. “Neither happens and the tribes get left out. We have no more time left. We all look forward to being proactive and working together in a collaborative fashion.”

Arizona water chief Buschatzke said he has started discussing a preliminary proposal to meet the states’ water-savings goal with water users statewide, including Indian tribes, and that he met with representatives of the Gila River Indian Community before the start of 2016.

“These discussions with our water users are at a very, very preliminary stage,” Buschatzke said. “We’re doing our best to be inclusive. ... We certainly wouldn’t consider leaving tribes out of the discussions.”

The Bureau of Reclamation also wrote tribal chairman Lewis on Feb. 4, offering to set up a meeting with tribal officials to discuss the water issues.

“The Gila River Indian Community holds significant and important water rights in the basin and could be a key partner in the development of additional measures to address the drought,” wrote Terry Fulp, the bureau’s Lower Colorado regional director.