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Tag: Department of Water Resources

Water rule washed out: Judge voids state agency’s water demands for developers

Key Points: 
  • Judge rules state agency imposed illegal “tax” on developers
  • Developers still need 100-year water supply to build in certain areas
  • The ruling may have significant implications for future housing development and affordability

A state agency acted illegally when imposing what developers have dubbed a “tax” to build in areas with scarce sources of water, a judge has concluded.

In a highly-technical ruling, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney said the Arizona Department of Water Resources does have the rightful power to make the rules deciding when a planned development in one of the state’s Active Management Areas complies with legal requirements to show a 100-year supply of water.

But what the agency does not have, the judge said, is the ability to withhold legally required building permits unless the developer can show it has access to not just the water it needs for the next 100 years, but another 33% on top of that.

Attorney Andrew Gould said this is a victory not just for the Homebuilders Association of Central Arizona, who he represents, but also for those looking for homes.

“At the end of the day it was forcing, ultimately, homebuyers to subsidize groundwater for other uses,” he said. “And it was impacting housing and affordability.”

This is the second recent legal loss for the state Department of Water Resources.

In a separate ruling, Blaney voided the agency’s policy for determining if specific developments have “unmet” water supplies — a conflict that essentially triggered the new rule about the 133% requirement. The judge said the agency did not follow proper procedures for enacting that rule.

The net effect of all that is unclear.

Gould contends this means the rules are back to the way they were before the Department of Water Resources imposed its 2023 moratorium on new development in areas around Buckeye, Queen Creek and parts of Pinal County.

More significantly, he said, it means as long as a developer can show it has sufficient water for its project — from any combination of sources including groundwater, surface water or anything else — the agency cannot refuse to issue building permits.

But it also may be that, in voiding the rule that gave developers the option to find new sources of water — albeit with that 133% requirement — there is no way for them to get around ADWR’s 100-year supply determination in the affected areas. And that could mean they don’t get permits for new housing.

That possibility is causing concern for Gov. Katie Hobbs who pushed DWR to enact the rule that the

judge voided.

“The superior court issued an order that threatens to shut down housing development and increase housing prices, harms our water security, and gets Arizona law wrong,” said gubernatorial press aide Christian Slater. He also said the program is “voluntary” despite the fact that the judge said the moratorium enacted by ADWR in 2023 made the alternate procedure — the one he found is in violation of state statutes — “the only path for developers seeking to obtain an approved subdivision plat.”

Slater said there will be an appeal.

At the heart of the lawsuit is the 1980 Groundwater Management Act.

It created “active management areas” where groundwater supply is a concern. That, in turn, led to the requirement that developers show they have a 100-year supply.

Most developers can obtain that by simply having a contract with a municipal or private water company that has its own certificate of an assured water supply. But that doesn’t work in areas where that is not an option, meaning developers have had to provide their own proof.

In 2023, ADWR released a study showing that, according to its modeling, there are areas where there simply isn’t enough water to provide that assurance. And that resulted in a moratorium on new permits in those areas.

Under pressure from the governor, the agency came up with rules for an “alternative designation of a 100-year water supply.”

That allows developers to meet the legal requirements — and get building permits — if they can identify sufficient sources of water that can include effluent, surface water, allocations from the Central Arizona Project and water transported from elsewhere. More to the point, it does not rely on scarce groundwater.

Several water companies and developers have pursued that option. Most recently, the Arizona Water Company got one of those alternate certificates for Pinal County that will enable it to build 80,000 new homes.

But that still left the issue that to obtain the alternate certificate there had to be enough for not just the needs of a new development — and from only certain sources — but 33% more. And that, he argued, is beyond the authority that state lawmakers gave the Department of Water Resources.

“What they’ve done with the regulation is they’ve rewritten the statute and said you have to have this combination of water supplies and you’re going to have to pay this amount,” Gould said. “And there’s nothing in the statutes that authorizes the executive branch agency to rewrite the statute.”

He said that some people may agree with what the agency was trying to do by providing an alternative to get around the problems of developers having to show an assured supply of water to get the building permits. But Gould said that’s legally irrelevant.

“The fundamental legal issue is: Did ADWR have the authority to write this rule,” he said. “And they didn’t.”

Blaney agreed that the agency, in demanding that developers provide 133% of the water they actually need, broke the law.

“The statute plainly requires that applicants show that water will be continuously available to satisfy the water needs of the proposed use for at least one hundred years,” the judge wrote. The requirement for something above that, he said, conflicts with the plain language of the statute.”

Appeals court declines to order state study of San Pedro River

Key Points:
  • Judges say law requires periodic groundwater studies, but doesn’t define how often
  • Lawsuit filed by biological diversity group claims area is going dry
  • Group official accuses governor of failing to act

Arizona judges won’t force the state to determine if there needs to be greater state oversight of water use along the upper San Pedro River — a move that could ultimately lead to a limit on groundwater pumping.

In a new ruling April 29, the state Court of Appeals acknowledged that Arizona law requires the Department of Water Resources to “periodically review” whether to create what are known as “active management areas” in parts of the state which now have minimal to no limits on the pumping of groundwater. Such a designation would give the state the power to impose new restrictions.

And the court did not dispute arguments by two environmental groups that it has been more than 20 years since the state agency conducted such a review of the San Pedro Basin.

But appellate Judge Kent Cattani, writing for the unanimous three-judge panel, pointed out that the Legislature, in crafting the law, never spelled out how often such reviews must be conducted. Nor did they define the term “periodically” in the state Groundwater Code.

“This phrasing thus leaves the department discretion to determine how frequently to conduct reviews,” Cattani wrote.

The ruling drew an angry reaction from Robin Silver, a co-founder and board member of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that filed suit.

“We understand why the court ruled,” he said, even if, as he contends, it is “laughable that ‘discretion’ is more than 20 years.”

But his harshest comments were reserved for Gov. Katie Hobbs who has oversight of the Department of Water Resources, even able to replace Tom Buschatzke, its director.

“Why would a governor who professes to care about water fight an active management area for an area whose central area is going dry and whose aquifer is over-allocated,” Silver asked. “The governor has made a choice to aggressively try to help the river die. That’s on her.”

He also said that Hobbs has sided with developers on other issues in the area, fighting efforts over whether there is sufficient water for a planned 7,000-home development in Sierra Vista.

“What has she done environmentally?” Silver asked. “She’s done absolutely nothing.”

There was no immediate response from the governor.

The 2024 lawsuit contends that the Department of Water Resources has failed to carry out its ‘mandatory duty” to conduct a review to determine if there needs to be some sort of state management to “preserve long-term, reliable groundwater supplies” in the San Pedro basin. And the lawsuit separately says that the governor, by failing to tell the agency to conduct a review, has violated her constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

What a study would determine, the lawsuit says, is if the basin needs to be designated as an “active management area.”

The 1990 groundwater code initially set up four such AMAs in the Tucson, Pinal, Phoenix and Prescott areas. There are now eight, with one formed by a vote of residents of the Douglas area and the others designated by the Department of Water Resources based on studies about things like water use and potential water quality degradation.

In filing suit, the Center for Biological Diversity and the San Pedro Alliance said those conditions are present in the area. More to the point, they argued that the law requires the state to act.

Cattani, in the eight-page opinion, agreed that the San Pedro River, at the heart of the basin, is unique, being the last undamned, free-flowing river in the desert Southwest.

“It is an arid region, and groundwater is the sole source of water for inhabitants of the basin, which includes Sierra Vista, Benson, Bisbee, Tombstone, Huachuca City, and the Fort Huachuca Military Reservation,” he wrote. “Pubic and private water use over the past century has contributed to the degradation of the San Pedro River ecosystem and the alteration of the river’s flow.”

Cattani also pointed out that the basin includes the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, designated by Congress in 1988 “to protect the riparian area and the aquatic, wildlife, archeological, paleontological, scientific, cultural, educational, and recreational resources of the public lands surrounding the San Pedro River.” And he noted that Congress reserved water “sufficient to fulfill the purposes” of the conservation area.

But none of that, the judge noted, entitles the challengers to what is known as “mandamus” relief, essentially a court order to compel a public official to perform an act that is specifically required by law.

The key to getting that legal relief, he said, is that the act that someone wants a court to enforce has to be purely “ministerial.” And that means the law specifically describes what the official must do and “nothing is left to the public official’s discretion.”

But Cattani said the law requiring the director of the Department of Water Resources to “periodically” conduct a review to look for areas to regulate hardly meets that test. And the key is the failure of lawmakers to define how often that has to occur.

“The Legislature did not specify a frequency for review under (the law), although it could have done so,” he wrote. “The omission of a fixed time period thus indicates that the Legislature did not intend to prescribe a particular frequency and instead left the matter to the department’s discretion.”

Challengers said that may be true. But they argued that the responsibility of the Department of Water Resources to control and supervise Arizona’s groundwater, coupled with worsening water conditions in the basin, means that the court should conclude that “periodically” in this case necessarily denotes something more frequent than what the agency has done — or not done for more than 20 years.

The appellate court was not convinced.

“Nothing in the statute requires the department to take into account area conditions before it decides whether to conduct a review to determine if conditions in the area meet the criteria for active management,” Cattani wrote. “And we may not read such a requirement into the statute.”

And there’s something else.

The judge noted that even if the Department of Water Resources won’t create a new active management area, that isn’t the only option. Cattani said the law allows the Legislature itself to do that — or even local voters, as happened in the Douglas area.

Unelected bureaucrats decide whether you can buy a home

During this last election, I heard from the voters in my district that they were fed up with high inflation costs, with many hard-working families wanting the high cost of housing addressed. Yet, in the middle of a housing crisis, the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) issued an order halting home construction in large swaths of our state that rely on groundwater as their main water supply. This is not only an overreach of power exerted by unelected bureaucrats, it completely sidesteps the legislative process, stripping power away from legislators and the Arizonans who voted them into office.  

Sine Kerr

Simply, this decision was made without the proper authority. It was made by officials who are not obligated to consider the need for affordable housing, the critical need for shelter, the loss of jobs, and the economic impacts to our local cities and towns.  

Arizona has a rich, robust and proud management system for protecting our environment and most vital resource, Arizona’s groundwater supplies. This system has created programs that are the envy of the Western United States, such as the largest groundwater replenishment district in the country, the Central Arizona Groundwater Replenishment District (CAGRD), the Arizona Water Bank, Arizona’s Groundwater Management Act, and numerous programs to recycle our existing water supplies.   

These programs are the reason that Arizona uses the same amount of water that we used way back in 1957, even though we have grown by over 6 million new residents.   

During the creation of these historical conservation programs, one critical and important principle has always remained constant – they were adopted through our constitutional process of creating laws, which requires approval by the elected officials who serve in the Arizona Senate, the Arizona House of Representatives, and ultimately signed into law by the governor.  

Today it seems that this is no longer the case.   

In 1995, Arizona’s legislative process created a system to protect our groundwater aquifers that requires home builders to secure a 100-year water supply prior to building a home. In addition, if that home is served by groundwater, then that groundwater must be replaced. No other industry or land use is held to this standard, which was intended to strengthen Arizona residents’ ability to achieve affordable home ownership with a reliable water supply.   

This heightened standard was also designed to  ensure that if our groundwater supplies  were in jeopardy, that the state would look to land uses other than housing (such as commercial development or agriculture) for possible reform.  Prioritizing homeowners over corporations seemed like the right thing to do.   

But the opposite is happening today. Unelected bureaucrats at ADWR have decided to deny groundwater for housing sorely needed to address Arizona’s critical housing affordability crisis. This has not only stalled housing projects, it has taken more affordable areas of the Valley out of the housing market entirely.  Allowing housing in some areas, and not others, has raised housing prices substantially. 

If we cannot provide groundwater for homes, then you would think that all types of development would be denied access to groundwater as well. This is not the case. In some areas of the Greater Phoenix Metro Arizona, you cannot build a home, but any corporation can build a large groundwater using facility like a manufacturing plant.  This adds more pressure to our housing crisis as we attract workers, who are also struggling to afford a home, and leads to the draining of our aquifers.  

This decision has significant implications for all of Arizona from the increased cost of housing, the questionable management of our aquifers, and the economic implications to our local cities and towns.   

Previous elected officials created this system to ensure that this exact scenario would not happen. Rather than halt housing projects and make our affordable housing crisis even worse, elected officials, not bureaucrats, need to consider the needs of our citizens to ensure they, their families, and their futures are protected.

Sine Kerr, a Republican, is a former state senator in Legislative District 25, and a former chair of the Senate Natural Resources, Energy, and Water Committee.

 

Colorado River conference ‘mixed bag’ for Arizona water officials

Arizona’s water community left the annual conference of Colorado River users with mixed feelings about the future of negotiations on a new compact. 

Arizona Department of Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke and Central Arizona Project Board President Terry Goddard joined other water stakeholders from seven states at the annual Colorado Water River Users Association conference. Tensions were high, according to media reports, and negotiators from Upper Basin and Lower Basin states traded barbs. 

The conference came as negotiations over the renewal of the Colorado River compact, which is set to expire in 2026, are at a standstill. Goddard said he was “more confident” after the conference than he was going into the conference, but acknowledged that it was a “mixed bag.”

Terry Goddard

“I could see some very serious discussions taking place informally, person-to-person, the right people were talking and if there’s nothing else that comes out of that, that will be a major step,” Goddard said.

Buschatzke, who is Arizona’s chief negotiator for the Colorado River compact, said he felt like not much had changed between the beginning and the end of the conference and that there’s still a lot of uncertainty surrounding negotiations.

Upper Basin states and Lower Basin states are at an impasse over where cuts need to be made to ensure all seven states will have enough water in the coming decades. The Upper Basin consists of Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and Utah, while the Lower Basin includes Arizona, California and Nevada.

The Lower Basin states say they have already made deep cuts to their water usage and would be willing to make more, if the Upper Basin states make their fair share of cuts. However, the Upper Basin states say they have always used less water than their southern counterparts and are unwilling to make cuts to what they currently use. 

Goddard said the Upper Basin states’ presentation during the Colorado Water River Users Association conference on their proposal for the river was “very disorganized.”

“That said a lot, because you really don’t have a proposal except to say ‘no,’” Goddard said. “That was a pretty weak position, and I think that led immediately afterward to some very serious discussions as to how we could pull together, because they simply did not have structure that would take us into the next 20 years.”

Buschatzke, alongside representatives from California and Nevada, gave a presentation on the Lower Basin states’ proposal and said he felt they did a “credible job” explaining what he called a “middle of the road” proposal.

water, drought, Hobbs, Ducey, Colorado River, Lake Mead, groundwater
Arizona Department of Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke

“I thought it was evident to everyone … the wide divergence between the Upper and Lower Basins that was evidenced at CRWUA,” Buschatzke said. 

Buschatzke and Goddard said that this year’s CRWUA conference marked the first time in their memories that the seven states did not give a presentation on the state of the river together. Buschatzke said this year’s conference was planned by representatives of Upper Basin state Utah, and they decided not to put the two groups on a panel together.

During the conference, a negotiator from California and a negotiator from Wyoming traded criticisms over the opposing plans for the river, according to media reports. California’s negotiator, J.B. Hamby, accused the Upper Basin states of using their share of water to “build pipelines to more golf courses.” Wyoming’s negotiator, Brandon Gebhart, called the comment “bullshit” and called for leadership over “rhetoric.”

The comments reflect the tensions that have led some to consider alternate pathways to a deal. Buschatzke and the Arizona Department of Water Resources have asked the Governor’s Office for funding for a potential legal battle, while the Central Arizona Project voted last week to ask the federal government to explore the possibility of a “compact call,” referring to language in the original 1922 Colorado River agreement.

Under a compact call, the Bureau of Reclamation would impose cuts on the Upper Basin on behalf of the Lower Basin. Goddard said the CAP board’s vote on a compact call did cause a lot of conversation at the CRWUA conference and said it is “a very real possibility in the future.”

Buschatzke noted that the Lower Basin states presentation at the conference highlighted just how dire a compact call could be for the Upper Basin compared to the proposal offered by the Lower Basin.

“The volume of water that the Upper Basin would need to reduce under a compact call, from our perspective, was significantly bigger than what we’re asking them to reduce in a collaborative, voluntary plan, and that has been lost, I think, in relation to what’s on the table,” Buschatzke said.

While entities like CAP are interested in a compact call if negotiations stay stalled, Gov. Katie Hobbs would not comment on that or the possibility of a legal battle over the river.

“These are hypotheticals,” Hobbs told the Arizona Capitol Times on Dec. 9. “At this point, we’ll continue to move forward and work with the process as it unfolds.”

Despite the tensions, Hobbs said she feels “good about negotiations continuing to move forward.” She said Upper Basin states need to bring meaningful compromises to the table in order to make that happen.

“The Lower Basin cannot bear the brunt of any cuts that come, and we’re going to continue to make that case and negotiate,” Hobbs said.

Goddard said he thinks the Lower Basin states need to keep all options open to ensure a deal is made because any agreement would need approval from Arizona’s Legislature and Congress. 

“We much prefer to have the seven states – as they have before – work it out without federal interference and without court interference,” Goddard said. “But we’d be foolish to ignore that when the other side refuses to come to the table under any circumstances, that legal action might be needed.”

He said the ideal timeline would see productive negotiations taking place throughout 2025 until a deal is reached, so that 2026 “is a time to wrap the package up and put a bow on it.”

While Buschatzke and ADWR are preparing for alternative possibilities, he agreed with Hobbs that they will continue to work with the usual process.

“The state of Arizona wants a negotiated outcome,” Buschatzke said. “We do not want litigation. I know Governor Hobbs made a statement to that effect. So obviously I know what my marching orders are.”

Tom Buschatzke: Keeping Arizona’s faucets functioning

For nearly 10 years, Tom Buschatzke has been the arbiter of Arizona’s water supply as director of the Department of Water Resources. In a career spanning decades and beginning with an internship at the very department he now heads, Buschatzke said there’s never been a dull day.

The questions and answers have been edited lightly for style and clarity.

What initially got you interested in water and water policy?

When I was an undergraduate student, I decided to become a geology major because I liked the opportunity to potentially work outdoors, especially when you’re younger in that field. I went to undergraduate school in upstate New York, where there were lots of rivers, streams, etc. So the three pathways with that degree were probably mining, oil or water. And I just got more interested in water, but more from a technical standpoint. I had aspired to work for the United States Geological Survey, and actually had a job offer from them, a job that would have started on October 1, the first day of the federal fiscal year. Shortly before that job started, their funding got cut. My job was no longer there, so I didn’t pursue that pathway … So then I decided to come here to go to graduate school and in school, I saw an advertisement for the newly created, at that time, because it was 1982, this department was created in 1980, I saw an internship advertisement on a billboard at ASU and said, “I kind of need some money, so I’ll go take this internship.” And once I got here, I started thinking, “Well, this is kind of interesting.” 

What is it like to be the director of a department you were once an intern at?

If in 1982 someone said, “Tom, someday you’re going to be the head of this department,” I’d have told them they were out of their minds. There are a lot of really positive benefits that flow from it. First, having kind of worked my way up the chain, I recognize what it’s like to be at that level, at the intern level first, and then at the entry level and understand the challenges. I understand, because I’ve done it. But I also understand, having been an intern and worked my way up, how we viewed leadership at the time and how we would have loved to have had more of an opportunity to get input into leadership in a meaningful way. When I’m in the room with my staff, if they don’t tell me, I call on them and say, “What do you think?” They don’t get away with just sitting there because I value what they have to say. I know when I was younger, I had stuff to say probably that could have been valuable that I had a lot less opportunity to say. In that regard, the work world has changed. There is more value assigned to less experienced employees in general in the work world than there was back when I was younger. I think that’s a very positive step forward.

What has kept you involved in water policy for the past few decades?

I think there’s several factors there. One, the policy side is really very interesting. It is hugely challenging, but it has so many different pieces to it that most days I come into my job – and it’s been this way for a long time – I learn something new. After 42 years plus, you wouldn’t think that would be the case, but it definitely is. And I just think that for the future of Arizona, what I do is really important, and probably that drives me as much as anything, and has always driven me. When I was in Phoenix, it was for the future of Phoenix, but also in the context of the state and the region. Now, it’s the state and the region as well. So, I actually, crazily maybe, enjoy the interaction at the federal government level with the Department of Interior, other agencies that I’ve interacted with over the years, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, EPA, etc. I think those are also really interesting connections to doing water policy, just the breadth of it is sometimes daunting, but also what keeps you motivated, because there’s rarely a dull day. I always say part of what’s motivating me now is my two grandchildren who live here and who probably will live here for a very long time, if not their entire lives. But I characterize that as not just my own [grandchildren], but everyone else’s. Again, I’m doing this for the future, the future good for the state.

What do you wish people knew more about when it comes to water in Arizona?

So, I think maybe the single biggest issue is people don’t understand that the community they live in matters in terms of the reliability of their water supply. There are communities that are very reliable, and there are communities that are less so, and when the Rio Verde Foothills thing blew up, I doubt those people knew the risk that they were under before it blew up. I have a younger daughter who was a club soccer player. [The parents] would say, “What do you do Tom?” and I tell them, and they’re like, “Well, how’s my water situation?” And I’d say, “Where do you live?” And they’d be like, “Well, why does that matter?” I’m like, it does because [of] the way water rights and supplies have developed over the years, this whole first come, first serve, prior appropriation and other things. I would really be a lot happier if people were more aware. I don’t want this to sound negative, because I think this is a two-sided coin. What I have helped do, what I’ve helped create, is a level of reliability for people that perhaps is taken for granted. There is no one who goes like this with their faucet and nothing comes out, right? That’s because of stuff that I and many, many, many people have done over many decades. And I think that is somewhat of a unique situation in the world. The number of people, or the number of areas, that have refined water, 24/7, that’s clean and healthy is a very small percentage of the population of the world. I think it would be good if people recognize how good they have it. The last thing, and this gets into really difficult issues, people want their services to be as low cost as possible, yet to address what we’ve already created and to address what we need to do in the future is going to take more money. When Flint, Michigan, had their issue with their water quality, it was about a couple of million dollars they didn’t want to spend because their constituents are saying, “We don’t want to have to pay those rates.” I think that’s something that people have to start thinking about. If they want to continue that reliability, the cost is going to go up, probably higher than the cost of inflation. 

What do you recommend for people who want to learn more about their water?

We live in an information overload world, but through your individual water provider, whether that’s a city or a water company, the universities, this department, there is so much information that’s at your fingertips on the internet. It just takes a lot of time to slog through it, and it’s very down in the weeds, if you really want to understand it. One of the most difficult things for me, certainly, is when I get interviewed on television media and they want to be able to tell the story in 20 seconds. You can’t tell the complete story in 20 seconds. You can’t tell enough of the story on X. We live in a sound bite world, and these issues are pretty hard to describe in a sound bite world. So that’s a challenge for us, and it’s a challenge for people who are trying to get information, to make the commitment to really get down into the weeds so they can really understand the benefits and the risks that are facing them and us. 

Being an agency director sounds like a stressful job. What do you do to keep yourself grounded?

The first thing about the stress level is it’s very stressful, but my stress is reduced by the people I have around me who work with me and who provide that support. Then some of it is my home life. I’ve been married for 40 years. I have three daughters, two who live here, so I still see them. I see my grandkids. I used to be very physically active. I worked out a lot of my stress in the gym. I always went to the gym several times a week, played golf when we were younger, played other sports that you can’t play when you’re older. But I still play golf on occasion, I don’t expect to play golf and shoot some fabulous score. It’s my social event with my friends. I have season tickets to ASU football games, so during football season, we go to six or seven games, depending on the year. We go to one game out of town, one away game a year. Those are the ways I deal with that pressure. I think it works out well most of the time, but sometimes it can be tough to deal with. But like I said, having my friends network, my family network is a good outlet.

Are you reading or watching anything interesting?

My reading outside of work is pretty minimal these days, which is very different than when I was younger. I don’t watch a lot of TV, when I do it’s sports. I like to watch the Turner Classic Movie channel, and then I like to watch documentary-type stuff. I just watched on Netflix, something about the Cold War nuclear weapons, and now I’m watching a World War II in color documentary on Netflix. I like history, which, interestingly enough, one of the really important parts of our policy is the history of how everything evolved. I almost decided to be a history major in college, but I figured I’d never get a job.

You’ve been at ADWR for nearly 10 years, do you plan on sticking around?

I have no plans to leave anytime soon. I do think when I leave, when I finally decide to retire – which I’m way past eligible – I think it’s going to be retirement. Lots of people do consulting or try to keep their hand in it. One of the things my water policy adviser mentor always told me is, “Tom, when you do the water policy, if you’re not down in the weeds and at every level, all day, every day, it’s not something you do part time.” Because you lose the connections, and you lose your ability to be effective. When he retired, he was like,, “Tom, I’m going to disappear.” And since he retired 22 years ago, I think I’ve seen him four or five times. He doesn’t follow the water stuff anymore. The couple times I’ve seen him, [one] was when I accepted being the director, and he called me like, “Let’s go to lunch, explain to me why you did this.” So I think I’m gonna probably go down that same path.

What legacy do you hope to leave on ADWR and the state of Arizona?

That I left the state in a place where there’s a road map to addressing the water challenges that are facing us. I don’t expect to solve them all, but I want to make sure that there’s a pathway to doing it so that the next whomevers, director, staff, etc, have a solid foothold on solving those issues. Also, I am a huge proponent, as you can imagine, of this department hiring interns. When I was an intern here, there was about a dozen or so interns, most of them went on to really impactful things in the world of water. One went to the EPA. One went to the New York State EPA equivalent. Two of them, one was as the head water person for SRP for years. The other was the second or third in command at SRP on the water side for many years. So I fully embrace and recognize the value of internships in terms of launching people’s careers, and the value that not only it gives to the state, but the value that it gives to the water community.

Is there anything else you think people should know?

I would just hope people understand that this department makes decisions in view of what’s good for the entire state of Arizona. That’s our charge. So, sometimes when you do that, individual groups are aggrieved. But I hope people understand that that’s what we have to do. The other thing that I want them to understand, in relation to the Colorado River, this state was the first one to really embrace meaningful roles for tribes. Now, there are other processes in other states, but we were really the ones who started bringing them into the fold, probably around 2016 or 2017. It goes to what I say publicly all the time, we need everyone to participate if we’re going to address the challenges of that river. One of the other big things we hear is like, “We want to be in the room.” Well, it’s hard to negotiate something with 100 people in a room. We’ve tried to create layers of participation, but that frustrates a lot of people [who say], “I have a stake, I should be in the room.” I think we have, relatively successfully, figured out a way, through having different layers, almost like an inverted pyramid, to get people to have the opportunity to really weigh in with us. Also, this department was devastated by the Great Recession. It went from 240 or 245 people to 90. When I became the director in 2015, we were probably about 122. We’re twice that now, and that occurred with the support of the stakeholders in this state. They wanted this department to grow back again, because even though they are aggrieved sometimes by some of the decisions, they understand. I think that is part and parcel of demonstrating they recognize the larger benefit that this department creates. I’m very thankful that we have that support.

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Arizona must develop new water supplies now

Arizona is at a crossroads. Nearly 40% of Arizona’s annual water uses are supplied by the Colorado River. However, the outlook for Colorado River water availability – and Arizona’s junior...

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Ducey signs bill to address dwindling water supply

Gov. Doug Ducey signed legislation Wednesday to provide $1.2 billion to fund grandiose projects to find new water for Arizona and smaller ones to conserve what the state already has....

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Ducey gives tribe $30M for water rights

In this Aug. 13, 2021, file photo a buoy rests on the ground at a closed boat ramp on Lake Mead at the Lake Mead National...

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