Howard Fischer
PHOENIX — Gov. Katie Hobbs on Wednesday vetoed five bills changing water laws in Arizona, concluding they would cause more harm than good.The governor rejected an extensive measure that would have allowed the construction of new subdivisions in certain areas of the state which are dependent on groundwater.Proponents have argued that these developments would take place where there have been farms that already have been irrigated with groundwater. The net result, they contend, is that there would be no net increase in the amount pumped.“The concept at the core of this bill — conversion of agricultural lands to lower water use development — is a policy that has broad potential benefits,’’ the governor said in her veto message. And Hobbs said she supports the goal.
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But Hobbs, in her veto message, questioned whether there really would be any savings. And she was hesitant to start crafting exceptions to the state’s 1980 Groundwater Act which became the first real effort to recognize that there is not an infinite supply of water.Other measures vetoed Wednesday include:Allowing someone seeking a certificate of assured water supply for a new subdivision in the Pima, Pinal or Phoenix active management areas to include effluent that is projected to be produced to show there is water available for the project;Altering what the Department of Water Resources can consider when determining whether to issue a certificate of an assured water supply necessary for development;Giving long-term storage credits to anyone who builds something that happens to incidentally recharge an aquifer;But it is the measure about retiring agricultural lands and converting the water for new development that has the most potential impact.The state always has had an interest in retiring agricultural use. Once as high as 90% of the available supply, it now is in the neighborhood of 75%.That is due to both more efficient farming practices as well as some farmland being bought for development. The bottom line, according to the Department of Water Resources, is the state uses approximately the same amount of water now as it did in the 1950s, even with the growth in population.What is in SB 1172 was designed to spur that along with a promise that for every acre of farmland retired a developer could get credit for two acre feet for residential use. An acre foot is nearly 326,000 gallons of water, with various estimates saying that is enough to serve between two and three average households a year.Th …
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