Prescott plans to import four billion gallons of groundwater a year, pumped from the aquifer that feeds the Verde River. There’ll be some hefty decisions to make along the way. 

“I’m the Decider!” President Bush once declared in his own unique idiom. Prescott has its own Deciders, and clamoring for the City Council’s decisions are critical questions around importing water from the Big Chino aquifer. The pipeline project has been long years in the planning, but as the targeted July, 2009 first pumping date looms, pressure on the Deciders increases.

What they’re dealing with is no small garden hose. The City’s current plan envisions a 30-mile pipeline to carry up to 12,400 acre-feet of groundwater per year, running from the Big Chino Water Ranch through Paulden to the Chino Valley wellfield, Prescott’s current water source. Prescott Valley contracts for 45 percent of that water and shares in the $170 million project cost. Pumping on the projected scale will remove unprecedented volumes of water from the Big Chino aquifer, with uncertain but potentially destructive effects on the Verde River headwaters it feeds.

Council members have to make their best guesses given what they know. On each of the pipeline funding steps along the way, Councilman Bob Luzius has been the lone member voting against the step. Why? It’s no simple story of opposition to importing water from the Big Chino, and in mid-March, at least one of the darkest clouds over the pipeline, from Luzius’s perspective, finally received the attention he has always advocated.

What if you built a pipeline… 

The issue is “availability,” and Luzius has brought it up since he ran for election almost two years ago. “I’ve always voted 'No' because I want to make sure that once we build this pipeline, we’re going to be able to use it,” Luzius said.

Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) has ruled that Prescott may pump 8,717 acre-feet of water a year (an acre-foot is 325,851 gallons), but there’s a problem. ADWR had never given Prescott assurance that that quantity of water would be available indefinitely. Councilman Lamerson also raised this issue, noting that he had never seen any guarantee that ADWR will legally support Prescott’s rights. So when ADWR head Herb Guenther came to a city council workshop in February, Lamerson asked him to clear away this cloud, “before we go ahead and plunge our population and taxpayers into indebtedness.”

Guenther agreed that “the risks [to the pipeline project] are several under existing law.” Competition for the water loomed large at that moment. A neighboring development could compromise availability when it sticks its straw into the community milkshake that is the Big Chino and starts sucking. Developers holding the CV/CF Ranch, just northeast of Prescott’s water ranch and zoned for up to 25,000 homes, applied for their assurance of physical availability in December. Prescott is particularly vulnerable in this competition, since others pumping in the Big Chino are outside the Prescott AMA (Active Management Area) and its regulatory structure, and thus don’t have to “jump through its hoops,” in Councilman Luzius’s phraseology. But Prescott, importing into the AMA, must follow rules, including not drilling its water-ranch wells too close to those of its neighbors. Under current law the neighbors have no such constraint.

Guenther foresaw no problem with assuring availability, and by the time this story appears, the legal protection should be in place. But, ultimately, the issue of competition is beyond the city’s power to solve. Guenther said that he and State Representative Lucy Mason, who invited and accompanied him to the Prescott meeting, are working at the state level on the “insecurity of the Big Chino set-aside.”

Availability is one cloud over the pipeline. Councilman Luzius calls it “Number 1,” but continues: “Number 2 is [having] a mitigation problem with any damage that might be caused” to the Verde River; Number 3 is potential litigation. Three challenges to the decision-makers of Prescott, the principal party in the pipeline’s construction—and the Deciders will have to decide what to do about them.

Gimme an M! Mitigation!

The M word floats through years of pipeline discussion, with a slightly cloudy meaning. Webster’s suggests, “make less severe or painful.” What, exactly, might be severe or painful? In this case, pumping over four billion gallons of Big Chino water every year, water that would otherwise make its way into the Verde headwaters, thereby diminishing the river’s flow, eliminating wildlife habitat and perhaps provoking major Verde water-rights holder Salt River Project.

  
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Lately the City prefers the label “impact avoidance measures,” not mitigation. Back in May 2001, the City of Prescott presented Yavapai County’s Water Advisory Committee (WAC) with a draft concept for mitigating potential Big Chino pumpage impacts to the river’s baseflow. In March, 2004 WAC co-chairman Tony Gioia from Camp Verde asked for “the Mitigation Plan from Prescott that was basically promised some time ago” but had yet to be seen. Prescott was under pressure from an expiring option on a water ranch; Gioia and others wanted a plan in place before that purchase.

History records that purchase completed in December 2004 with no detailed mitigation plan ever appearing. City officials were, however, meeting with a group called the Mitigation/Impact Analysis Working Group (MIA), which included US Fish & Wildlife Service and Arizona Game & Fish Department representatives. Back then the idea was to get a detailed mitigation plan in place before the project began. At the March 2005 MIA meeting, a Prescott official voiced the City’s commitment to producing a plan within a year. That didn’t happen, but the group continued to meet sporadically into 2006. The City’s plans now incorporate some of the suggestions generated there. 

Avoidance approaches

Ask City officials what steps they’ve taken or planned to protect the river, and they begin with the purchase of a chunk of the Kieckhefer Foundation’s JWK Ranch. Now renamed the Big Chino Water Ranch (BCWR), the land lies some 20 miles from the Verde headwaters. Prescott Valley Water Resources Manager John Munderloh explains, “We spent, in rough numbers, an additional $70 million we would not have normally had to spend by committing to purchase the [BCWR and] extend the pipeline out that far.” Prescott Valley Town Manager Larry Tarkowski clarifies that Prescott could legally have pumped from its property “much closer to the Upper Verde Springs, at a significant cost savings to [Prescott and Prescott Valley].” This distance, he says, “allows…ample opportunity to monitor groundwater changes and address potential impacts decades before [they] are manifested in the river itself.”

Monitoring of groundwater levels through wells on and near the water ranch constitutes a second impact avoidance measure. Pipeline project manager Jim Holt says the MIA group provided “the monitoring plan that we’re currently implementing,” including drilling new wells and sharing with ADWR in its existing monitoring wells. Some record water levels continuously; most will provide data every six or 12 months.

A third step is the fussily named Retirement of Historically Irrigated Acres (HIA). This deal says, essentially, that if the City retires from irrigation any land it owns that was ever irrigated between 1975 and 1990, it gets a credit in its water “account.” The idea is that by not irrigating its land, the City relieves a demand on the aquifer. As you might imagine, if the land hasn’t been irrigated since the Carter Administration anyway, promising not to irrigate there now won’t help the aquifer much. But Prescott will retire some 1,200 currently irrigated acres, for an annual credit for 3,600 acre-feet of water.

Unanswered questions include how much irrigation water poured onto the land percolates back into the aquifer (“incidental recharge”). Experts disagree. Of course, if the water that would have constituted incidental recharge instead sloshes away to the dishwashers and jacuzzis of Prescott Valley, there’s clearly a net loss to the aquifer. But here’s another impact avoidance move: the cities pledge the retired HIA water to mitigation or safe yield, leaving it in the ground. 

Yet another water group

The water managers’ fourth step was forming a Prescott-area group through a May 2006 intergovernmental agreement. This Upper Verde River Watershed Protection Coalition has recently brought more pipeline-related decisions before the Deciders. Here again, Bob Luzius votes ‘No.’ He’s not alone in believing that the Quad Cities and Yavapai County formed the Coalition as an alternative to the Verde River Basin Partnership (VRBP), which these governments have declined to join. Luzius feels it would have made more sense to join the VRBP, partly for financial reasons. The vote before Council on March 13 was to earmark some $200,000 over three years for Coalition studies of possible impact-avoidance moves. Luzius prefers the VRBP’s federal support. “I would rather have [research] money come out of the pockets of 300 million people,” not just local taxpayers, he said. He also objects from a belief that the Coalition only duplicates VRBP work already underway.

With the question of VRBP once again under discussion, Councilman Roecker asked project manager Holt to clarify VRBP and Coalition differences. Holt stated the VRBP exists to make studies, while the Coalition’s task is “implementing a number of projects.” But that’s in contradiction to last fall’s wrangles over joining the VRBP, when many Prescott-area politicians voted ‘No’ precisely from a fear that the VRBP would “implement projects,” not just research. Holt also opined that VRBP studies would focus more on the Verde Valley, while the Coalition concentrates exclusively on the Upper Verde. However, one of the VRBP’s first major efforts is sponsoring the upcoming Ecological Flows Workshop, which is focusing on the Upper Verde habitat as a dynamic system.

Some Prescott Deciders express interest in joining both groups. Lamerson sought reassurance that Coalition membership wouldn’t preclude someday joining the VRBP, because “we should be a member of all organizations with the ability to help understand the water resources in this part of the country.” Councilman Steve Blair declared, “I agree with Jim. I’m not so proud sittin’ up here that we shouldn’t join the other group,” and Councilman Bob Bell launched the innovation of offering the VRBP a Coalition seat. 

Mitigation  Uh, Best Management Practices

But the immediate decision Council members faced on March 13 was funding Coalition mitigation project studies. Most of these projects aim at increasing recharge to the Big Chino aquifer—capturing more of the area’s rain and snowmelt to percolate underground. A recent USGS statistic impressed the water managers: Of all the annual precipitation falling on the Upper Verde watershed, only about 2% recharges the aquifer. “A very small increase in the amount of recharge will not only be sustainable, it’ll be responsible,” John Munderloh concludes. Other suggested projects include conservation and expanded monitoring (see box).

Each strategy deserves deep study. Some—flood detention and vegetation management—kindle controversy and produce clashing data, and assessing results is tricky. Munderloh introduced the projects not as mitigation strategies but as Best Management Practices (BMPs), but Prescott citizen Jack Wilson objected, calling them “a wish-list of projects they hope produce results, but [without] scientific data to back them up.” From his corporate experience, he told Council, he expects professional parameters for deriving BMPs, including evidence of feasibility and cost effectiveness. The process here looked less rigorous, he said. Establishing the BMPs’ validity appears to be part of the Coalition’s proposed study process.

Gimme an L! Litigation!

But the Coalition’s planned steps are too little and too underdeveloped for some critics, who threaten to take action—Threat Number 3, litigation. The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), a nonprofit group of biologists and lawyers, wields legal action to persuade governmental and private parties to do the right thing (from their perspective). They want the pipeline partners to focus on the overall Upper Verde ecology, which is at risk if the water drops as a result of pumping the Big Chino.

 
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“The way I see it, [the Coalition’s] best management strategies are primarily aimed at increasing recharge so that they continue to have water to pump,” said CBD spokeswoman and lifelong Prescott resident Ashley Fine. “I’m sure they hope this helps the river out too, but the river’s protection does not appear to be their primary motive. If it were, their discussion would center around habitat conservation, and they would be taking the necessary steps to actively address the inevitable impacts to wildlife.”

Steps would include voluntarily filing a Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP; see box). Along with addressing impacts, this would limit Endangered Species Act liability and it could entail preparing an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). CBD filed a letter of intent to sue if the pipeline partners don’t take these steps, and is waiting to see whether federal agencies will require them. Even if not required, an HCP is an essential planning tool for protecting the unique Upper Verde habitat, CBD believes.

Back in the 2005 MIA meetings, the US Fish & Wildlife Service representative encouraged the cities “to [work] with us to develop a Habitat Conservation Plan.” The cities rejected the option then, as now. “If an EIS is required for this project, then we will complete one,” Munderloh said. “To just call out the need for an EIS is, in my opinion, unwarranted federal intervention in our local affairs.” He also said that authority over the other straws in the aquifer should rest with the counties, and that Coalition governments have supported legislative efforts to give counties more tools for managing growth to lessen pumping impacts.

Another potential lurking litigator is Salt River Project (SRP). You follow the water drama, you hear the talk. SRP’s lower Verde reservoirs serve one third of its metro-Phoenix customers; with senior rights to Verde River surface water, the quasi-governmental utility takes acute interest in its continuing robust flow. SRP’s Greg Kornrumph sits on the VRBP and other local groups and has discussed Coalition participation. SRP having indicated no intent to sue, Prescott City Attorney Gary Kidd sees no threat there. Councilman Luzius, however, reports that “Mr. Kornrumph has led me to believe in no uncertain terms that…if [the pipeline diminishes] the Verde River, there’s quite possibly going be a lawsuit.” To meet all eventualities, the cities have retained prominent Southwest law firm Fennemore Craig. 

Over to you, Deciders

Availability, mitigation, litigation. The information can be contradictory, even overwhelming. When Councilman Steve Blair asked ADWR’s Guenther about the agricultural pumping in the 1960s and ’70s (“Seemingly there was no effect to the Verde at that point,” Blair noted), Guenther replied that, between projected development and municipal pumping, demands on the aquifer will eclipse any precedent—and “eventually, the pumping of those basins in excess of historic pumping will lead to a decrease in the flow of the Verde River.” Then lawyers can head-butt over senior water rights and who is liable for which percentage of the decrease.

Serious business, Deciders!

Candace lives in and writes from Prescott. You can reach her at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it )

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