More water-saving measures Linda Stitzer, Arizona senior water policy advisor for the group Western Resource Advocates, says the region needs to pursue water-saving measures like these:
- The water-sharing agreement approved this year by Tucson and Phoenix in which Phoenix stores some of its CAP water underground here, and gets the right to some of Tucson’s CAP water during shortages Reducing water losses by city water utilities through leakage and other problems Continued increases in efficiency of indoor plumbing fixtures More efficiency in farm water use, by planting fewer water-intensive crops and by how they schedule irrigation of them Continued reductions in water-sucking landscaping such as lawns and non-native trees
Water conservation in Arizona and a third straight year of good runoff mean no Central Arizona Project water shortage again in 2017, federal and CAP officials say.
But the annual August forecast by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation — on which shortage declaration decisions are based — predicts Lake Mead will be just low enough by the end of 2017 to trigger a 2018 CAP shortage.
State and federal officials point to an array of conservation efforts that have forestalled a shortage, saving 200,000 acre-feet a year in Lake Mead just from Arizona’s programs. The river and lake also have benefited from three straight years of spring-summer runoff of 92 to 97 percent of normal.
But environmentalists say more conservation is needed to prevent future, more serious shortages.
The bureau’s 2018 forecast is highly uncertain because it doesn’t account for Arizona’s plans to keep conserving Colorado River water next year. Also, it assumes continued good, although slightly below average, runoff next year.
The bureau’s report also predicts that Lake Mead — where the three Lower Colorado River Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada store their water — will keep dropping this and next year, although at a slower pace than before.
The lake is supposed to drop nearly 2 feet to 1,078.93 feet by Dec. 31, and another 4 feet to 1,074.31 feet by Dec. 31, 2017. Through much of the worst drought years starting in 2000, the lake was dropping as much as 12 feet a year.
A shortage is supposed to be declared under federal guidelines when the lake is below 1,075 feet at the end of a year. It fell below 1,075 both this and last summer, hitting record lows both times. But it typically rises toward the end of each year.
“Absent near normal runoff, we would be in shortage. Without more aggressive action than what we’ve taken … we’d be in shortage,” said Chuck Cullom, CAP’s Colorado River program manager.
“We are very hopeful that continuing conservation programs that we put in place this year will be enough to keep us out of shortage in 2018,” he said.
Now, all three Lower Basin states should do more conservation, environmentalists say.
“I think it has to happen across all water using sectors — residential, industrial and agricultural,” said Linda Stitzer, Arizona senior water policy adviser for the group Western Resource Advocates.
While people are taking a huge sigh of relief at avoiding shortage, “we feel it’s a warning signal,” said Nicole Patterson, Arizona state director for the business-oriented group Protect the Flows.
“People gloss over conservation. I go to meetings where people say we’ve done that, and it’s time to move on,” Patterson said. “But we need to expand and incentivize conservation and efficiency. Our business community is filled with innovators, and they talk about wanting to be more efficient.”
“Conservation is the most cost-effective thing you can do,” said Patterson, whose group has about 300 Arizona business members.
CAP’s Cullom agrees that “we absolutely need to do more” to conserve. That’s the purpose of the ongoing discussions happening in all three Lower Basin states these days to draft a longer-term drought contingency plan, he said. It could reduce Arizona’s CAP use by 512,000 acre-feet at first and more than 700,000 acre-feet if Mead dropped as low as 1,025 feet.
The CAP, which provides Tucson and Phoenix drinking water and keeps Central Arizona farms from having to rely on groundwater, has been on the edge of shortage since 2010 when Lake Mead first hit a record low level.
Under a shortage, the CAP would lose about 20 percent of its allocation of 1.5 mlllion acre-feet. That water — enough to serve about 600,000 average homes — would be taken from farmers and a state program to put CAP water into the ground to save it for drier times.
But every time it has come close to shortage, unexpectedly heavy winter snowfalls or late spring rains in the Upper Basin states of Colorado, Wyoming and Utah have saved the day. That’s unlike California, which experienced a water crisis last year after a series of very low years of runoff into its reservoirs.
The water conservation measures that also have propped the lake up include:
- About 3 feet worth of water were left in the lake by Lower Basin states and 2 feet by Mexico in a program created through guidelines approved in 2007.
- Another 5 feet have been left since 2014 under a separate agreement by Arizona, Nevada and California. Most has been left by Arizona — the first state to lose significant amounts of water during a shortage.
- Another 3 feet was left by Mexico under a 2012 agreement with the U.S. government.
- A separate conservation program run by water agencies in the Lower Basin States and the Denver Water Department have added another two-thirds of a foot to Mead. That program, started last year with $11 million in federal money, has received more money this year and more, new conservation projects are expected in 2016 and 2017, the bureau says.
Without a shortage, the project gets 120,000 acre-feet of water — enough water to supply 240,000 homes for a year — that it wouldn’t otherwise get, even with the conservation that’s already going on.
“We’re making full deliveries to our agricultural pool and to the water bank, and we’re replenishing our aquifer,” Cullom said.
